You're raised on a farm in Wisconsin and are fortunate to have both grandparents in your life for many, many years.

That's a blessing in itself.

You get to eat so many of grandma Emily's tasting meals and desserts.

You hear some of the stories of your grandparents' life including their ability to survive the Depression come to find out your grandmother was born in Brooklyn, New York some 915 miles away from Milton, Wisconsin and she came West by train.

I'm Christine Zack Edmonds.

And I have two guests with me, Jim and Clark Kidder who shared their grandma's story with us.

(upbeat music) Why will we discuss this train travel and consider this.

That was no ordinary method or it was an ordinary method of transportation.

It was called the Orphan Train in this situation and WTVP will be airing a special about Emily Kidder's circuitous route to the Midwest which the story was written by my guest Clark Kidder, whose cousin many of you know, from Peoria's Kidder music, Jim Kidder.

Welcome to both of you.

- Thank you for having us.

- Thank you.

- This is quite a fascinating story.

It's called the Orphan Train.

This program went on.

I guess I can call it a program for 75 years but why is it that really none of us know about it.

Clark or Jim, who would like to talk first?

- Well, you're correct in saying that nobody knows about it because I've spoken with several people since we entered this little venture and nobody does know about it.

It's never been in the school books that I'm aware of.

And it's just one of those things that fell through the cracks that I think nobody wants to talk about particularly.

- Right.

And it's not that it's bad or it doesn't sally anybody's reputation or sally anybody's reputation rather.

So what do you think the big secret isn't how did you find out about your grandmother's story?

- Well I grew up, I was fortunate enough to grow up in the same farm home that they did.

So I was like 23 years old when they passed away in their nineties and grandma would often talk about how she was brought out on this train from New York city, by a minister.

And he placed her in several homes and it wasn't long after grandma passed away that they started to talk about these Orphan Trains and that they sent kids out by the train load from New York city to the Midwest.

- A quarter of a million.

- Yeah a quarter million kids.

- That's just incredible.

- As you said, never mentioned in our school history books at all.

And as you said, you know, no real stigma attached to it.

There certainly may have been for the kids themselves but it's really, it's amazing that it took place from 1854 to 1929 and a quarter million kids being involved.

And yet it's not in any of our history books.

- It's just some big, hidden secret, so backup and tell us.

So we'll learn this on the special that is airing that you authored.

Tell us about the Orphan Train itself and this church group and ministers who put this program together and why they did it.

- Well New York city filled up with immigrants quite early on 1850.

They started arriving at the rate of about a thousand a day.

A lot of the kids, you know, got lost or separated from their parents on the streets of New York.

Poverty set in, there wasn't any jobs to be had.

And if mom or dad died there wasn't the extended family, no aunts or uncles or cousins to take the kids in.

A lot of them turned to crime.

And so a minister named Charles Lauryn Brace, protestant minister and several other ministers in New York city decided they needed to do something to help alleviate New York city's problem of so many destitute and homeless children.

- Well and those were the ones that were selling newspapers shining shoes, doing whatever they could do.

- Or worse yeah right, right exactly.

They committed a lot of petty crimes.

- Right right, pick pockets right?

- Yes.

Yes.

So Brace decided that if he were to find good homes for them out in the Midwest with farmers and good religious families in the Midwest, that that would be their salvation and the city's answer to their problem.

So he started loading them on terrains, September of 1854.

They sent the first Orphan Train to Dowagiac, Michigan and it was deemed a success and he didn't stop until 1929.

And other organizations joined in with the Children's Aid Society in sending these trains West and a quarter million kids later.

- That's crazy.

- The Orphan Train movement.

- Right.

So Jim, and you just learned about this from your cousin and there's a quite a bit of difference in age between the two of you.

And he was around grandma a little bit longer.

- I was around grandma quite a lot till I was 18.

And then I came down here to school and obviously visited her.

I was 45 when she passed away.

She and grandpa.

So I had a long relationship with them although not as impersonal as Clark's was.

And you know-- - But you didn't know any of this?

- Yes, I knew but not the particulars that we know now.

- Okay.

- There was a rumor about our two aunts, one of her six or two of her, six kids, Peewee Reese the famous baseball player.

Was, grandma's name was Reese.

And the rumor was that he was an orphan as well.

And so my two aunts had conjured up this image that they could be brother and sister and they pursued that for a while.

And that was the discussion around the family but it never came to fruition of course.

- But the thing is that she wasn't really an orphan that they called it the Orphan Train but she was the youngest of 10 children.

And somebody came knocking on the door.

- Well, I think the father left.

- Abandoned them.

- When she was like two.

And with 10 kids though, I think that just it's tragic in so many ways.

But as you look back on it it turned out pretty well for her anyway.

- Exactly.

- I mean, being able to have a 74 year marriage although there were a couple of bumps and bruises along the way.

- There always are.

- And have six successful children that were, you know lived a long and happy lives as well.

It turned out great in her case, but I'm sure there were some that it didn't turn out quite that well.

- Right, right.

- Right right.

- Yeah.

Many of them were half orphans, you know one parent passed away.

The vast majority were not orphans.

So it's, you know, a little strange to of course have it be called the Orphan Train.

- But there was poverty, there was illness, there was abandonment there were so many other issues.

And, you know, I mean, when you're living in cramped quarters, then that can create all kinds of problems.

- Exactly.

Yeah.

- So okay.

So now you find out that Emily Reese is taken by the authorities with a brother who's just two years her senior Richard.

They're taken away and put in an orphanage and they were there for several years.

At least your grandmother was, I don't know about Richard.

- Richard was adopted about three years prior to grandma being sent on the Orphan Train.

He got lucky and was adopted by a wealthy family in the New York city area there.

And grandma was put in the orphanage well they both were when they were very young.

Grandma's about three and Richard five.

And they stayed there for, you know until grandma come out on the Orphan Train in 1906.

She was in that orphanage all them years.

- 13, 14 years old.

- I have a granddaughter 14 years old.

I can't imagine something like that going from 900 and some miles knowing nobody and-- - And not knowing anything right.

- Nothing right.

- So then, and we'll find this out as we watch the special but she, I mean her first landing, wasn't her first landing.

She left the orphanage for a while in New York and went to work with someone for a while.

And they thought she was encourage able.

- Yeah.

She was probably Elizabeth Home for Girls in New York city.

And from there placed with a woman in New Rochelle, New York who found her unsatisfactory and the sent her back to the Elizabeth home.

And then that opened the door for the Children's Aid Society who operated that Elizabeth Home for Girls that she was put in to send her out on the train at that point.

But grandma always pointed out that when you reach age 13 or 14, they kick you out.

She says, and they did, you know, these kids aged out of the system as we call it now.

You can imagine at 13 or 14 being told to get out the door, good luck-- - You're an orphan now you have exactly.

- In New York city of all places.

- So she got on the train when she was 13 that had to have been tough anyway.

And she went as far as Chicago she was supposed to go to Iowa, but somebody adopted her in-- - Yes yeah.

A friend of the minister that brought her out on behalf of the Children's Aid Society in Chicago, the Parker family met them at the Union Depot in Chicago.

And they were able to take their pick of any of the children in this little company.

And grandma stepped forward and said, she'd like to go home with them.

And it was going great for a while.

She called them aunt and uncle, and then Mrs.Parker developed a heart condition and a tumor and they had to give her up.

So out to Iowa, she went to the next home.

- To the next place.

Right.

- Yeah one of several, second of several.

- Well, yeah.

And how do you deal with that when you were a teenager?

Things are going crazy as it is.

And then, so this is basically the only home that she had known at that point.

She didn't really remember when she was a little girl or a very little girl.

- Right?

Yeah.

She was just three when she went to the orphanage.

So all those years, you know, spent in the orphanage and then just put on a terrain and sent to the Midwest to live with strangers.

It was a tremendous leap of faith that these kids had to take.

And Brace's idea was a good one in many ways.

A lot of the kids did end up being abused in one form or another after they were sent on these trains.

But one might argue that if they'd have stayed in New York you had all of the, many of these same things may have happened to them.

- Might not have made it to that age.

- Exactly.

Yeah.

- Well, this is like, from Oho the Wells Fargo wagons coming to town and people were excited about it.

So Jim, you were telling someone that they'd put up these big banners, some billboards and just say Orphan Train's coming, and then they'd get there.

And everybody would gather in the small town.

- If I'm not mistaken, I think some of these small towns advertised for people like that to the Reverend as well.

And wanting most of it was for labor.

If we were honest with each other.

- [Christine] Nannies or farmhands right?

- Girls tending other children.

And I remember one ad I saw someplace that said would like someone that could sing and the blonde hair-- - [Christine] The curly hair.

- Right.

Yeah.

- But when they got out to some of these places there was more to it than that.

And it worked them very hard.

I would imagine some places-- - Well they dolled them all up when they got, as they were before they got off the train, heard they were all scrubbed and clean and bows in their hair and you know, and then they put them on a stage and like auction them off.

- Like a little dog and pony show to see, yeah.

- Yeah.

They'd have them sing a song.

And then the farmers would come up and feel their arms and-- - [Christine] Check their teeth.

- Check their teeth.

Like they would livestock, and it was quite traumatic.

Many of the kids were passed over and then were taken onto the next town.

And you can imagine how traumatic that would have been.

- Like being the last one picked for the baseball league.

- Exactly.

Yeah Exactly.

Right.

- Clark had more experience with grandma talking about this, but I never heard her say anything about being an orphan or an (converses quietly) to me one-on-one from her mouth.

My aunts and uncles knew about it, but I never heard grandma.

- So she was never resentful.

I mean, so she ended up, we're just gonna kind of skip around a little bit, but she ended up in the sixth place.

Wasn't that?

Is that right?

The sixth-- - Six homes, in the end.

Yeah.

Yeah.

By the time she was done-- - And she wasn't resentful I mean, you never heard her say, how did this happen to me?

- At least not to us.

Of course she was quite aged by the time I came along.

But she would talk about how she learned how to make buttonholes when she was in the orphanage.

She did tell me that, that she was brought out on the train.

- And stitch them.

- Yeah, exactly.

They'd teach them little things.

- [Christine] Skills.

- Yes.

Yeah.

- Good girls skills at that point.

- Taught girls how to cook and clean and basic skills, before they send them out on the Orphan Trains.

And, but she didn't talk about it much otherwise.

And of course, that generation weren't real big on.

- No they were bred.

- There was no Dr.Phil around back then to help them turn in the right way.

- Technically and let the whole world know at that point.

- Exactly.

Yeah.

- Well, some of the kids who were on the Orphan Trains or placed some of them actually ran away from their adoptive homes.

Didn't they?

Just because they felt they were being abused.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

A lot of them were truly abused, in various ways, worked like slaves and so forth and they just, at some point would run away.

Grandma never did, even though she was abused.

- And she at one of the homes, - At least one of the homes.

- In Iowa.

- Yeah yeah.

She was somebody in town alerted.

We think it was the school teacher alerted the minister that brought her out from New York, that something was awry.

And he quickly-- - There were some teenage boys at home.

- Yes, yes.

And he quickly came out and found her a new a home.

But yeah, a lot of them did run away.

A lot of them just vanished.

They never did find out where these kids went.

The people back in New York, there was rather lack supervision back then it got better as the years went by-- - They were the families, the adoptive families were supposed to be vetted as well rather than putting them up on an auction block and taking them home after they found they had good teeth or whatever.

- I think there was probably a little loose.

- Yes.

Not too well data-- - No, no.

There's more paperwork involved nowadays in adopting a cat for crying out loud, they would have, the local ministers and businessmen that these farmers that came in, or whoever came in to potentially take a child with them.

And a lot of time they were customers of the people that were vetting them.

And it was as kind of lax-- - I'm gonna pat your back, you pat mine let's go away happy.

Well, now your grandmother was even doing pretty well with a family that had moved to Wisconsin but then they went to a picnic and they left her behind.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Just that alone.

I would be resentful about.

- It was one of the families that took her in Le Claire Iowa, Lansing, I'm sorry.

Lansing, Iowa took her to her religious camp meeting and they just disappeared during the night and left her.

- So where did she go when she was just, there?

Did some, I mean, some nice people let her have a pillow?

- The minister that brought her out on the Orphan Train was called by one of the other people on the camp to come in and rescue her.

And he took her for... At that point to her final foster home in Wisconsin.

- Okay.

And then that was in Milton, Wisconsin, where she lived out the rest of her days, met your grandfather.

And that's a good love story in itself.

- Definitely.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

- 74 years of something had to be right.

- Exactly.

- But they went through a lot of ups and downs, they made it through the Depression that with the dust bowl was going on and they had a lot of challenges to do with farm life.

Yeah.

- She lost a baby at, they survived a tornado.

And as you said, the Depression, but it incredible life all said and done, a 74 and a half years of marriage.

And as Jim said, half dozen kids that all grew up and did really well.

And so she got to live the American dream after all after that rocky start and those numerous foster homes and the abuse and-- - Grandma was a worker too.

- She was definitely.

- She wasn't a social creature that I remember.

There wasn't a lot of laughter.

I mean, she's taskmaster.

Most of my experiences with her the longest ones were they always raised a cantaloupe muss melons on this farm and they had a roadside stand out.

So in summer times, I'd spend a lot of time up there helping her sell melons or people driving by.

And it was noted for that for years and years and years.

- That was your special bonding time with your grandma.

- That was my bonding with my grandma.

- [Clark] Yeah sure.

- So next time I go to get a cantaloupe will you come with me?

Because I know you're supposed to smell the thing.

- No, yeah.

I can pick one out easily.

- Both of us can.

Yeah.

We grew up with that.

And as you said earlier, on the way here, they always kept chickens.

So, you know, you can get fresh eggs and they had a sign hanging out in front of the farm, that you can buy the fresh eggs.

- When I would come home from college or after we got married and come back and I always had to go to grandma's to get a dozen fresh eggs.

So-- - And you said she charged you-- - She charged me a dollar if I remember right?

Yeah.

- So she was a good steward of her properties and things.

So what other story do you remember about her and your grandfather do know anything about him knowing her history?

I mean, he did because he saw that she had been placed and she was sent away to work for a while at sanatorium.

- He met her, it says in that Clark's one of the books and I forget how it was at some of course it was horse and buggies.

Right.

And it was some of gathering.

- Wasn't it his father that wanted him to meet her or something.

- Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She, at her last foster home in Milton.

Well, it was Janesville township.

Wasn't far from where my grandpa grew up and his family lived.

So his dad had gone to Janesville with a load of cordwood to sell.

And on his way back, my grandma was walking on her way back to the farm.

- And she was just a little thing.

- Just a little bit of a thing.

Yeah.

Yup.

He gave her a ride home.

My great grandpa did.

And when he got home, he said to my grandpa Earl I just met the sweetest young girl with the blackest eyes you've ever seen.

And she's just a little bit of a thing, really smart.

And if I was a young man, I'd look her up and grandpa did look her up and they went on a date and they went for a buggy ride.

It was around the block.

Of course, back then it was a contrary block.

- A block was it.

- Four miles.

- Four miles.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

And it wasn't long before she had to leave and go to work at the sanitarium in South Dakota.

And she was going to study to become a nurse while working there.

And that lasted about six or eight months.

And she ran out of money to continue the schooling.

And didn't like the climate up there in South Dakota.

So back to Wisconsin, she went and-- - No, I don't think I ever knew that part.

- See what we're learning hear today all right.

- Exactly.

Yeah.

She rekindled her relationship with Earl and they dated and they were on their way home one night from going to church at Sandy Sink.

Little country church.

And it was really dark.

They were the only two that went at that night because of a terrible winter storm.

And grandma's started to cry on their way back to the farmhouse or to each of the prospective homes.

And grandmas said, well, I don't know what I'm going to do.

I don't have any friends here.

And it appears that I'm going to have to go back to South Dakota to live.

And grandpa said, well, I don't know what I can do to to help.

And she continued to cry.

And after they walked a little further, he said, well I guess the only thing I can do would be to marry.

And she jumped up and down and grabbed him around the neck.

He said, that-- - Might be some embellishment there you didn't know.

- There could be a 74 and a half years later.

They were still-- - That's amazing.

So your parents, after she was gone, they both died in 1986.

- That's right.

- Two months apart.

- They gave some, some stories then or you started going through papers and you found a lot of different information.

- Yeah.

Because grandma didn't talk a lot about it during her life.

And then I began to hear about this Orphan Train heritage society of America.

And I thought, boy, grandpa just had to be one of these kids that they're talking about that came out on these, what they were now calling Orphan Trains.

And I began to do some research and about seven or eight years later had written the book that the film that it'll be showing is based on it's Emily story.

I call it the brave journey of a Orphan Train rider and yeah, it all came together.

And it was amazing as you discover all of the...

They still have the original records at the orphanage in Brooklyn.

So that filled in a lot of gaps, you know?

And then you'll learn about all these multiple foster homes.

We never knew know that she'd gone through.

- [Christine] No.

And that's tragic.

It's tragic that this is something it's in our rich history, but that we didn't really know.

And maybe is it because nobody wanted to talk about it your grandmother, you know, let her kids know little bits and pieces but then you had to come by and do all the unearthing.

- Filling in a lot of blanks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It took seven years to get it all together.

But I got a lot of details and a lot of wonderful photos that help tell the story of her life.

And I wish she were here to see the film and the book of course, but she's looking-- - Oh you authored the film too I mean you wrote you co-wrote it.

- I co-wrote and co-produced the film with Iowa Public Television and a great director, Coleen Krantz.

- Well I'm so glad that you let your cousin know about this because we have the Peoria connection and then you brought it to us said, hey, can we get this aired?

- Yeah, no, it's when Clark said it's on YouTube.

If you want to look at it.

And I was really impressed.

It was, I'd heard about it.

And he gave a (mumbles) several autographed copies of this various books in the past.

- And here it is.

- And here it is, it's came to fruition, you know?

And it's not just about grandma, grandma's one of quarter of a million.

- And there are over two and how many million did they say descendants there are now?

- Descendants of them, yeah.

- Two to three million descendants.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

And you are two of them.

How about it?

- Yeah right.

- Okay.

I can't do the math that fast, but we are out of time.

I would like to thank you so much for coming down from Sconsin, as they say, Sconsin not Wisconsin like we say here.

And Jim, thanks for bringing the story to us.

- My pleasure.

- This is just amazing.

So I hope that you enjoyed this little glance into what's coming on West by Orphan Train right here on WTVP enjoy your day.

(soft music)