Children's Aid Society records

The Founding of the Children's Aid Society

The Children's Aid Society (CAS) was founded in February 1853 by a group of nine men including Protestant minister Charles Loring Brace. Brace was selected by the group to become the Secretary of the new organization. According to the first annual report, the founding was motivated by concern over the burden upon city resources caused by unprecedented numbers of immigrants, and over concern that impoverished immigrant children were turning to crime or barely surviving as homeless vagabonds selling matches or sweeping streets. The founders believed that gainful work, education, and a wholesome family atmosphere would transform New York's street children into self-reliant members of society. The organization raised substantial funds from the public and many wealthy philanthropists including members of the Roosevelt, Astor, and Dodge families, and immediately began opening lodging houses for homeless youths, as well as industrial schools to teach cobbling, sewing, and many other trades. They also initiated an emigration program, which they explicated in the first annual report: "We have thus far sent off to homes in the country, or to places where they could earn an honest living, 164 boys and 43 girls, of whom some 20 were taken from prison, where they had been placed for being homeless on the streets. The great majority were the children of poor or degraded people, who were leaving them to grow up neglected in the streets. They were found by our visitors at the turning point of their lives, and sent to friendly homes, where they would be removed from the overwhelming temptations which poverty and neglect certainly occasion in a great city. Of these 200 boys and girls, a great proportion are so many vagrants or criminals saved; so much expense lessened to courts and prisons; so much poisonous influence removed from the city; and so many boys and girls, worthy of something better from society than a felon's fate, placed where they can enter on manhood or womanhood somewhat as God intended that they should."

"The Orphan Train"

From 1853-1929 the Emigration Department, interchangeably known as the Placing-Out Department, and finally the Foster Home Department, sent tens of thousands of children to the country, placing them most often with farm families. With this program, the Children's Aid Society became one of the first and principal organizations orchestrating the mass migration of children now known as "the orphan train," and established itself as a pioneer in the development of foster care for children, as opposed to institutionalization in orphanages or almshouses. The CAS sent children all over the United States. At first, they sent children primarily to the Midwest and West, taking advantage of new train lines and the need for farm labor during the period of westward expansion. Children were also sent south, often to Delaware and Maryland. By the early 1920's, half of all children placed went north to upstate New York. "Orphan train riders" ranged in age from infants to older teenagers. Some were foster children; the families agreed to treat them like members of the family and send them to school, and in return expected the children to help on the farm or in the house. Other children were formally adopted. Still others (usually older boys) were sent as paid laborers. The Children's Aid Society followed up on all children they placed. The children and/or their foster families were expected to write regularly to the CAS. In addition, field agents made regular visits to homes where children had been placed, and wrote reports after each visit. Children were frequently removed from homes and transferred to other homes when the situation was not harmonious.

Although the emigration program became known as the "orphan train," many of the children were not orphans. They were children whose guardians could not care for them, or who hoped they would find a better life, and who signed surrender documents releasing them to the care of the Children's Aid Society. Many others were adolescents without known guardians who were seeking their own fortunes by heading west. Some children came via CAS lodging houses or schools, or were recruited by CAS agents. Many other children were transferred to the care of the Children's Aid Society from orphanages, almshouses and correctional facilities all over New York City and State. For older boys, the CAS operated a farm school (Brace Farm opened in 1894 in Valhalla N.Y. and was superseded by a more substantial program at Bowdoin Farm in New Hamburg N.Y. in 1929) to train boys in farm work and give them a taste of what to expect, before sending them to farms. By 1929 the emigration program in its original form had ended, and the only children sent to farms in the country were older boys placed as paid laborers after training at Bowdoin Farm. A smaller training program at Goodhue Home on Staten Island prepared girls for foster care and adoption placement, beginning around 1921.

The Children's Aid Society also operated a "Family Emigration Program" through which they provided train tickets for entire families to rejoin a breadwinner who had found work in another state, for example, or paid a portion of the fare to return to Europe. The CAS had occasionally provided help for entire families from its earliest days, but the records of the Family Emigration Program date from 1874-1926.

Schools, Lodging Houses, Convalescent Homes, and Other Programs

The Society did not confine itself to sending children or families away from the city. The CAS also devoted significant resources to helping children in the urban environment. In New York City, the well-endowed society rented spaces and hired world-class architects to build an impressive number of facilities to their specifications. Most notably, the architectural and engineering firm of Vaux Radford built at least a dozen buildings for the Children's Aid Society. The CAS operated lodging houses, a shelter for mothers with children, industrial schools to teach trades, nursery schools, boys' and girls' clubs and children's centers, and playgrounds. It operated nutrition programs, dental programs, and medical programs. In the country (Westchester, Staten Island and Coney Island), the Children's Aid Society operated convalescent homes, a seaside retreat, summer camps, summer excursion programs, and the farm schools. When a neighborhood no longer needed CAS services, the society closed its facilities there and moved to where the demographics indicated a greater need.

Evolution of the Children's Aid Society

The mission of the Children's Aid Society changed as the needs of New York City children changed and as the CAS developed new ideas about how best to serve them. During the 1920's the "orphan train" in its original form slowed to a halt, but the problem of homeless and jobless boys remained urgent, especially during the Great Depression, and boys continued to be placed out as laborers on farms throughout the 1930s. A new emphasis on helping children stay with their families supplanted the goal of transporting children away from the city, but the CAS continued to provide foster care and adoption services for children when staying with their families was not an option. A Foster Home and Temporary Boarding Home Department was initiated in 1924, and it phased out the Emigration/Placing-Out Department by 1929. The Children's Aid Society closed the last of its industrial schools in 1927, leaving education to the public and parochial school systems, and re-fashioned the schools as health centers, boys' and girls' clubs, and community centers. In the 1920's and 1930's the CAS also began to devote a larger percentage of its resources to African American children.

Today the society serves over 150,000 children and other clients annually, at 45 sites in New York City. Their services begin before birth, with prenatal counseling and assistance, and continue through high school, with college and job preparatory training programs, health care, academic, sports, and arts programs, community schools, and an adolescent sexuality and pregnancy prevention program. To stabilize families, CAS also provides services to parents including housing assistance, domestic violence counseling, and health care access. The CAS "concurrent planning" approach to foster care became the basis for the 1996 federal Adoption and Safe Families Act, which defines today's modern foster care system.

For more detailed historical notes about Children's Aid Society officers, facilities and programs, please see notes in Series IV, IX, X, XI, and XII.