The Palimpsest

Berkove, Lawrence I

Iowa Pioneers Find a Lost Child:  A Dan De Quille Memoir

Jelison, Katherine

Let your Corn Stalks Buy a Maytag': Prescriptive Literature and Domestic Consumerism in Rural Iowa

English

The Palimpsest, vol.69 no.2, Summer 1988

Swaim, Ginalie

Index for 1988

Bacthi, Siang

So We Stayed Together': The Tai Dam Immigrate to Iowa

Territorial Thoughts
AS I DROVE BACK HOME
from Des Moines to Iowa City¥
that day in late February, ther / '
Iowa landscape was bathed in 
late afternoon sunlight. The 
ground was golden with wintered 
grasses; snow still lay in the 
creases of the land and along 
fence lines. I saw few of the 
geometric divisions that confront
the traveler s eye in summertime✓
— the rectangular fields, the 
parallel crop rows, the per­
pendicular roads evident when 
dust billows up behind pickups 
speeding along them.
What was visible to me that 
February afternoon was the lay 
of the land — the soft hills, the 
dips, the twists of a river or 
creek, the soggy bottoms along 
the Skunk River, and a bit far­
ther east, the trees, where 
highway deer signs alert the 
interstate driver to life in the 
woods beyond.
I had just spent three days in 
the new historical building in 
Des Moines working with free­
lance photographer Chuck
Greiner and Society curator
¥
Michael Smith as we photo­
graphed over 150 artifacts 
relating to territorial Iowa. I had 
looked at a dozen maps that 
showed no middle or western 
Iowa as we know it today, and 
only a modest wedge of eastern 
Iowa that had fallen under the 
right-angle influence of the
federal surveyor or the entre- 
preneurial zest of early river 
town merchants.
So on this drive back to the 
Society office in Iowa Citv, 
where the Palimpsest is pro­
duced, perhaps I saw the land 
roughly as the early settlers and 
surveyors might have seen it. 
Well, I had to squint, of course, 
to erase utility lines and poles, 
fences, graded ditches, clusters 
of farm buildings. But because I 
had been immersed for three
days in a dark museum exhibit¥
hall surrounded by 150-vear-old
¥ ¥
artifacts and the stories they
¥
yielded, I chose what I wanted to 
see on that drive home. What I 
saw was an expanse of land, land 
with few boundaries and with 
little cultivation. I saw territorial 
Iowa.
In my job as editor of the 
Palimpsest, words are my con­
stant companions. The written 
word is my key to the past, often 
helped by illustrations and
photographs. But while photo­
graphing the museum artifacts, I 
experienced an entirely different 
way of looking at the past — 
through material culture.
The objects made or bought, 
used or flaunted, treasured or
tossed aside by those who lived
¥
in Iowa 150 years ago — these 
pieces of material culture speak 
of the past in a different voice 
than does the two-dimensional 
printed page to which I am 
accustomed. They tell us details
that a writer mav not have con-
¥
sidered important. They tell us 
about the individuals who used 
the items, without the self-con­
sciousness of autobiographical 
writing, without the selectivity of
history.
¥
Let me give an example.
When we were photographing 
artifacts used by frontier farm 
women, I went to the artifact 
table to fetch a household 
broom. Picking it up sent an 
immediate message from the 
past: this broom weighed five 
pounds. Likewise a grub hoe 
used by farm women in their 
vegetable gardens — an iron 
hooked scraper at the end of a 
three-foot piece of wood: No 
grace of design here, no light­
weight, steel-tempered tool.
Here was the broom bv which
¥
strong muscles were formed — 
and exhausted. Here was the hoe
bv which backaches were made.
¥
There is a simple moldboard 
plow in the exhibit. Someone
I stood behind the plow thinking that 
it is no wider than my rototiller.
50 THE PALIMPSEST
(the original user?) had fitted a 
pair of polished, curved horns 
over the ends of the handles — 
an individual s touch on one of 
the most generic pieces of farm 
equipment from territorial Iowa.
I stood behind the plow' thinking
that it is no wider than mv roto-*
tiller. And yet how many of the 
nearly 29 million acres of Iowa 
prairie were broken by plow's no 
wider than a gardener s roto- 
tiller?
Through material culture we 
realize the diversity of lifestyles 
and cultures. While territorial 
farm families were using rude, 
primitive tools to keep house and 
cultivate land, the wealthy in 
Iowa river towns entertained 
guests with gilt-trimmed porce­
lain tea services and silver punch 
urns sporting nymphs on the 
spout. The similarities are there 
too: Native American mothers 
taught their daughters first to 
sew' for their dolls, just as Euro- 
American mothers taught their 
daughters to care for the young 
by giving them dolls to play 
with.
Material culture helps us make 
direct connections between yes­
terday’s user and today’s viewer. 
We begin to understand the 
sense of scale of an individual’s 
setting, the props of one’s daily 
life, the breadth of impact that 
person had, the contact with 
other people and other places.
We can compare that person’s 
life with our own by comparing 
the objects we each use and 
value.
The irony, of course, was that 
on this particular February day 
150 vears later curator and editorw
and photographer accorded the 
same honor to the grub hoe as
we did to the silver punch urn. 
We know' why artifacts such as 
silver punch urns survived the 
century and a half, but who 
saved the grub hoe or the broom 
— and why? Who thought to 
keep them because of the lessons 
they could teach us, not because 
they were useful or valuable?y
This Palimpsest is devoted to 
territorial Iowa and commemo­
rates the 150th anniversary' of 
achieving territorial status. The 
articles that follow have all been 
prepared by individuals invited 
to share their views and knowl­
edge of territorial Iowa, and to 
speak the many voices of the 
people who lived here at that 
time — farm couples, legislators 
and early governors, surveyors, 
native Americans.
As I w'orked with the authors 
and museum staff on this issue, I
examined a dozen maps between 
1787 and 1846. Each time I 
searched for the few recognizable 
boundaries and landmarks — the 
rivers — so that I could locate 
mv home state in a world thaty
had not vet been carved into the 
political units we know' today. As 
the years passed, as neighboring
states were formed and the 
remaining land fell under the 
name of a new territorv, I could 
begin to discern the emerging 
shape of our state. Slowly Iowa of 
the 1830s and 1840s came into 
focus. We hope that as you 
explore this Palimpsest and the 
museum exhibit “You Gotta 
Know' the Territory’ (now' open 
in Des Moines), territorial Iowa 
comes into focus for you.
— The Editor
We begin to understand the sense of 
scale of an individual’s setting, the 
props of one’s daily life.
SUMMER 1988 51


Territorial Thoughts

Thompson, Jerome

Land and Personal Sovereignty

De Quille, Dan

A Christmas Story
Under the Ice
A Thrilling Adventure 
on the Upper Mississippi
by Dan De Quille
Reprinted from the Virginia City (Nevada) Territorial Express,
December 2 5 ,1 8 7 9
O
NE DOES NOT always tell his storyj  *
well. There is much in being in the 
proper humor. Agreeable surround­
ings and attentive and appreciative lis­
teners are also of vital importance to every 
story-teller. When every eye is fixed upon the 
narrator — when every ear greedily drinks in 
his words — when not a shade of his counte­
nance passes away unnoticed — when not a 
wave of his hand is lost — then his heart ex­
pands, his face beams, and his soul goes out in 
his utterances.
I think 1 never told the story of my adventure 
under the ice on the Upper Mississippi, with 
more satisfaction to myself, or to a more rapt 
and sympathetic audience, than on one stormy 
Christmas night, many, many years ago, in a 
cabin on the banks of the Red Cedar River, in 
Iowa.
I was then a traveler, and, for the night, was 
the guest of an honest old Pennsylvania Dutch­
man. The cabin boasted but a single room, and 
in this the whole family slept, ate and carried 
on all the indoor operations of the household.
After I had seen my faithful saddle horse well 
provided for, I shared with the family in a 
supper that was not only the most substantial, 
but which also showed some parade of luxury, 
in honor of the day and season. Occupying the 
center of the table, and a large place in the 
minds and hearts of the family, was a huge 
earthen bowl of large, rosy-cheeked apples. 
These the old farmer had caused to be brought 
from the nearest town on the Mississippi — 
sixty miles away — at considerable cost of 
money and trouble, in order to give his family a 
Christmas treat that would remind them of
their old Pennsvlvania home.✓
At last the grand Christmas supper was over.
The apples, nuts, and other good things were 
things of the past. On one side of the broad fire­
place, wherein was a roaring and crackling fire 
of hickory, sat, puffing his pipe, the head of 
the family — a hale, kind-hearted, ruddy-faced 
man of fifty-five — while I, quite as earnestly 
puffing my cigar, had possession of the 
opposite side of the great hearth.
file wife of the good old Dutchman — 
bright-eyed, full-faced and forty — sat near her 
lord, industriously plying her shining needles
186 THE PALIMPSEST
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upon some piece of knitting work. A girl of 
eighteen, handsome and bouncing, was 
engaged in washing up the supper dishes ’; 
sewing on a child’s ‘frock was a miss of sixteen
— slender and lithe as a willow wand, timid as a 
lawn and sweet as a pink. A much younger girl
— a rosy-cheeked child — and a little curly- 
headed boy, the only son, and the pride and 
pet oi the household, sat on the floor building a 
corn-cob house.
In those early davs mail facilities were
exceedingly limited; the post-office nearest to 
many of the settlers was frequently distant 
from fifty to eighty miles, and often was not
visited by any one in the settlement for a month
0 0
or six weeks.
As the people of the “back settlements’ sel­
dom saw a newspaper, they knew very little 
about what was going on in the great outside 
world. In these places a traveler was looked 
upon as a God-send and if he was in the least 
good-natured, and knew anything in the way of
WINTER 1988 187
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LLUSTRAT ON f r o m  MARCH 1880 S r  N IC H O L A S . COLOR-ENHANCED BY BRENC
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A Christmas Story: Under the Ice

Capitol Kaleidoscope: Victorian Stenciling in Iowa's Statehouse

McOilough, Verlene

* : ■
The Orphan Train 
Com es to  Clarion
by Verlene McOllough
The homeless in the nineteenth century, photographed hy Jacob Riis ( S treet Arabs in sleeping q uarte rs  at night )
144 THE PALIMPSEST
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t
URING THE SUMMER of 1892 
some unusual cargo began arriving at 
the railroad depot in Clarion, Iowa. 
Unlike the usual deliveries of hard­
ware and merchandise, a few train cars carried 
children from the Children s Aid Society of
New York Citv.✓
I he events were anticipated by the towns­
people with the excitement usually afforded 
the arrival of Ringling Brothers’ Circus, and 
they were almost as well publicized. On June 
22, 1892, the Wright County Monitor advised, 
b e  o n  HAND: If you wish to adopt one or more 
child ren be at the Opera House to-morrow 
(Thursday) afternoon immediately after the 
eastern passenger train arrives. E E . Trott, of 
New York City, will be here at the time with a 
company of boys from the Children’s Aid So­
ciety, of that citv.’* *
A holiday atmosphere prevailed as train time 
approached and citizens hurried to the one- 
room, wood-frame depot of the Burlington, 
Cedar Rapids and Northern Railroad. Busi­
nessmen stood expectantly at their doors. At 
the sound of clatter and whistle, many more
people gathered to watch the children disem­
bark.
As the children climbed down, their faces 
wore various expressions of bewilderment, 
fright, or surprise as they looked up into the 
faces of the crowd. Some in the crowd had 
traveled as far as thirty-five miles in the hopes 
of taking home a child. The children, with the 
same hope, had traveled a thousand miles.
A
T LEAST one match of New York City 
orphan and Clarion citizen was made 
from that June orphan train. The news­
paper reported that a “bright, manly 
appearing lad about fourteen was given “a
good home and we hope the change will prove 
a beneficial one for him.
A beneficial change was the goal behind 
bringing destitute children to small towns — 
an idea that had been developed in the 1850s 
by a young minister/social worker named 
Charles Loring Brace. Brace had been shocked 
by the numbers of destitute children in New 
York City. By police estimates, at least ten 
thousand children in New York City were 
homeless. Youngsters slept in doorways and 
alleys and lived by their wits, which often 
meant begging and stealing — or worse. In 
1852, four-fifths of the felony complaints were 
against minors. Too often, impoverished chil­
dren ended up in overcrowded prisons, poor- 
houses, and other institutions that offered little 
correctional training.
In 1853 Brace founded the Children’s Aid 
Society to help such children through school­
ing, jobs, and religious training. He estab­
lished lodging houses and trade schools. Yet 
perhaps his most innovative approach was the 
large-scale “placing out program,’ which sent 
children west in orphan trains to small towns 
where they might find foster families.
Loring believed that through a wholesome 
environment and love, a child could be re­
claimed, and that rural America could provide 
such homes. “For an outcast or homeless or 
orphan child, not tainted with bad habits, the 
Annual Report of the society maintained, “the 
best possible place of shelter and education, 
better than any prison or public institution, 
was the farmer’s home. The orphan trains that 
stopped in Clarion in 1892 were among the 
hundreds that steamed into small midwestern 
communities beginning in 1854. (The earliest 
arrivals came in freight cars.) Eventually the 
Children’s Aid Society placed out 100,000 chil­
dren by way of orphan trains, and other child
FALL 1988 145
welfare agencies in eastern cities sent another
50,000.
Willing families would sign placing-out 
agreements guaranteeing the child the same 
food, lodging, and education children born to 
them would receive. In return the child would 
become part of the family, which in the nine­
teenth century generally meant taking on a 
sizable share of the work. At any time, the 
agreement could be ended by parent or child.
Despite the name, children who rode the 
trains west were not all orphans. Many had one 
or both parents still living. But as the Chil­
drens Aid Society ferreted out neglected chil­
dren from the poorer districts, they convinced 
many impoverished parents that a child s best 
chance lay in permitting the society to find the 
child a new home far beyond the urban slums 
and its miseries. The society obtained written 
consent from the parents, promising them that 
they could keep in touch with their child. 
(Unless the child was formally adopted, the
C harles Loring Brace founded the C hildren’s Aid Soci­
ety, which placed out thousands of destitu te youth from 
the urban East Coast to rural homes farther west.
society or biological parents were guardians. 
Biological parents could reclaim their chil­
dren.) Police and welfare workers also directed 
needy children to the societv, as did or-j * *
phanages and juvenile correctional institu­
tions, eager to reduce their populations.
Meanwhile the society sent agents to small 
midwestern towns. Announcements were pub­
lished in the newspapers, and local committees 
of community leaders were appointed to adver­
tise for potential parents and to arrange tempo­
rary lodging for the children who were not 
chosen. As Clarion committee members, min­
ister John E. Bowen (a state senator in 1894 and 
1896) and attorney (and later mayor) James A. 
Rogers also screened local applicants and for­
warded requests for children.
Apparently in June 1892 more children had 
been requested than arrived. The July 13 
Wright County Monitor reported, “We hear 
that quite a number of our citizens who desired 
adopting one or more children from among the 
number sent here bv the Children s Aid So-
cietv of New York City last month were disap- 
pointed, there not being a sufficient number to 
meet the demand. The agent of the society, 
E. Trott, Esq., desires us to say that il those 
who still wish to adopt children will leave their 
names at this office stating the number desired, 
age, sex, nationality, etc. he will do the best he 
can toward supplying the want, provided there 
are a sufficient number desired to justify him in 
making another trip to this place. If you wish to 
adopt one or more children please act upon the 
suggestions above outlined, furnishing us with 
the information called for on or before August 
1st, which date the list will be forwarded to Mr. 
T rott/’
Back in New York, the Children’s Aid So­
ciety screened out children with certain phys­
ical or mental handicaps or serious crime 
records. Bathed, clothed, and given Bibles, 
they were loaded onto specific train cars with a 
Children’s Aid Society agent as escort.
Although some children might have seen the 
train ride as an exciting adventure, it was 
hardly that for the agent who had to care for, 
keep track of, and find homes for a group of 
perhaps fifty children ranging from infancy to 
age fourteen — and making up to a dozen such 
trips a year. Aptly named Trott, the agent who
146 THE PALIMPSEST
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TERMS ON WHICH BOYS ARE PLACED IN HOMES.
A L L  A P P L I C A N T S  M U S T  BE E N D O R S E D  B Y  T H E  C O M M I T T E E
Boys fifteen ¡/ears old are expected to work till they ore eighteen for their 
hoard and clothes. A! the end oj that tune they arc at liberty to make their 
own a rrange m ents.
Hoys between twelve and fifteen are expected to work fo r  tJ.eir hand and 
clothes till they are eighteen, but must be sent to school a part o f each year, 
after that it is expected that they receive wages.
Hoys under twelve are expected to remain till they are eighteen, and must 
be treated by the applicants as one of their oicn children in matters (>/' school­
ing, clothing and training.
Should a removal be necessary it can be arranged through the committee 
or by writing to the Agent.
The Society reserves the right of removing a boy at any time fo r  j  ust cause.
W e desire to hear from every child twice a year.
A ll  E x p e n s e s  o f  T r a n s p o r t a t i o n  a r e  P a id  by t h e  S o c ie ty .
CHILDREN’S AID SOCIETY.
2 4  ST. M A H K ^  P L A C E ,  N . Y . E. TROTT, A g e n t .
w ith the help of community leaders, Children s Aid Society agents announced their arriv als through newspapers
served Clarion and other midwestern towns 
announced through the August 17 Monitor 
that “another invoice’ of children from the 
New York Aid Society will arrive here about 
the 15th of September. Those wishing to adopt 
one or more are requested to leave word with 
either J.E. Rowen or J.A. Rogers, of this 
place.”
T
h e  t e n a c io u s  l it t l e  t r o u p e
that arrived in Clarion September 15 
was herded north from the depot up 
the dirt and planking of the broad main 
street, past clapboard store fronts and gilt-let­
tered bank windows. They stopped at the 
wood-frame skating rink and opera house (also 
used by the Presbyterians as a meeting place).
Here they lined up on the wide porch. Agent 
1 rott stepped forward and told about the work 
°f the society and a little about each child, 
Urging takers. Prospective parents walked 
among the children. The women talked to 
them as their skeptical farmer-husbands felt
young muscles and checked the size of arms 
and legs. Some were hoping for a child to love, 
and some wanted free farm labor. A few just 
wanted to see the goings-on. A few more wiped 
eyes bright with tears.
In the line-up stood six-year-old Joe Wall, 
sobbing. A little girl named Emma was there, 
too, probably a less-desirable candidate for 
placing out due to a lame leg. Ten-year-old 
Charles Merkle maintained a protective air as 
he stood with his three sisters, Lizzie, nine, 
M ary, six, and Minnie, four.
Minnie Ketchum, now 100, is the only Clar­
ion arrival alive todav, and one of only a few✓ 7 j
hundred still living who traveled the orphan 
trains in America. The following excerpts from 
a recent oral history interview yield a child’s 
reaction to being part of the orphan-train phe­
nomenon.
Ketehum’s memorv oí earlv familv life in* j j
New York City is hazv and relies somewhat on✓  *
her oldest sister’s memories: ‘Lizzie said she 
remembered our father bringing his shining 
tools home. He was a machinist and they car­
ried their tools with them in those days. He
FALL 1988 147
would put them down hv the door instructing 
her to not touch them’ and Lizzie said we 
never did.” The father worked on ships and the 
children ran down to the docks every night to 
meet him.
Ketchum continues, Lizzie said we lived 
not far from the Statue of Liberty. She said we 
played around the statue. My mother died 
when I was a vear old. And that’s when we were 
put into the Children’s Home.
‘There was a man who came to see 11s [at the 
children’s home] before we left to go away to 
Iowa,’ Ketchum recalls. I suppose it was my 
father. I thought I d sat on Jesus lap. I suppose 
we had had lessons on the Bible and my father 
probably had a beard.
W hen we came on the train west we were in
separate cars. One car for the boys and one for 
the girls,’ she says. I remember one thing 
about the ride. Someone brought a tray of food 
into our car. There were two children on one 
bench and two on the other facing each other, 
fhe tray sat in the middle of us. 1 remember 
that because I suppose I was hungry.’
Children and foster parents were not
matched up before the arrival. I think we just
came,’ Ketchum says. “They dumped 11s out
here. One child would step up and whoever
wanted him took him.
took me at first. . . . Thev didn’t
*
have any children and [the wife] wanted me 
but the husband didn’t.
“There was a Dr. Merrietta [Marietta?] who 
was there that day and saw [that the family had 
brought me back] and he went over to Herbert 
Aldrich’s at Calt and told Mrs. Aldrich, 
There’s a little girl in Clarion who came in on 
the train. She looks like you. You ought to have 
her.’”
The Aldriches already had two boys. But 
they wanted a daughter, too, so they traveled 
to Clarion. Ketchum remembers sitting on 
Herbert Aldrich’s lap, looking up into his face, 
and telling him, “You look just like my father.’ 
‘And that did it,” she says. I guess I was a 
schemer.”
Her eyes shine: “My [adoptive] brothers 
spoiled me. I couldn’t even walk to school 
[because] my older brother, Ben, always car­
ried me. We lived across the road from the 
church in Galt and Ben carried me over there
“A family
The frontispiece of the 1886 Annual Report of the Chil­
dren’s Aid Society depicts the transformation of an 
urban waif into a happy, productive member of a rural 
family through the society’s placing-out system.
too, every Sunday. My brothers worshipped 
me. There wasn’t anything I wanted that 1 
didn’t get.”
As she grew up, Minnie Ketchum appar­
ently forgot her father in New York amidst the 
love of her new familv. I didn’t know I was
adopted til 1 was about twelve years old,” she 
says. I found out when some kids got mad at 
me at school and one girl said, “W ell, blood is 
th icker than water.’ I went home and asked my
mother what she meant and my mother told*
me. I cried. It was a shock. It just didn’t seem 
right.”
Not all orphan-train children found homes as 
permanent and loving as Minnie Ketchum s. 
Sometimes the parents asked the Children s 
Aid Society to remove the child, who might 
then be placed in several different families 
before an appropriate one was found. Some 
youths claimed that society agents never made 
the yearly follow-up visits required. Occasion­
ally a child would run away, only to be brought 
back and punished. Stories of abuse or ill treat­
ment reached society headquarters.
Ketchum notes, “My brothers and sisters* ✓
didn’t get into such good homes. When 
Charles stepped out on the platform a family 
took him for a while. He staved with them 
seven months when [the foster mother] wrote 
to the society requesting that he be removed at 
once. I don’t know why. He was then placed 
with a Grundy Countv family. “The man who 
took my brother took him to work. That was all 
he wanted him for. The father wasn’t good to 
him hut the mother was. When Charles was 
eighteen he left home and worked in various 
states as a carpenter.
fhe oldest Merkle daughter, Lizzie, was 
taken by a family from Goodell who reportedly 
did not offer her the love and warmth Minnie 
received. Ketchum says, “They had a family of 
several children of their own. The other kids
teased her except for one boy. He liked her and 
was good to her. He looked out for her and took 
her side.
Mary Merkle was taken by a Clarion family. 
She died of tuberculosis shortlv after her highJ
148 THE PALIMPSEST

school graduation. Emma, the physically hand­
icapped child, was taken by a local family. Joe 
Wall was the last child to be chosen in the 
September line-up. Joe was thin and thought 
to be slow of mind. Finally a farming couple 
took him. Folks who remember sav he was 
treated well. When his parents moved to 
Emmetsburg to dairy farm he moved with 
them. After the parents retired, Joe came back 
to Clarion and worked for various farmers.
A
 WEEK BEFORE Minnie, her sib­
lings, Joe Wall, and Emma had found 
homes in Clarion, a child from an ear­
lier train lost his. “One of the New 
York children, a little boy, died at the home of 
his adopted parents, Mr. and Mrs. J. L. Rob­
son, on Friday evening of d iphtheria , 
reported the September 7 Monitor. “Burial 
took place a short time after and the premises 
were thoroughly disinfected. A little grand­
daughter of the parties named also died from 
the same complaint on Sunday night. As soon 
as the nature of the disease was known a 
quarantine was promptly established and 
every effort possible taken to prevent the dread 
malady from spreading, hence it is not proba­
ble there will be any new cases.’✓
When the September 15 train arrived agent 
Trott had said that he would be back with 
another group in four weeks. Yet no reports of 
other orphan arrivals were found in the 
1892 Monitor. Perhaps fear of diphtheria or 
caution toward the approaching w inter 
weather played some part. Perhaps no other 
parents requested children.
Nevertheless the Childrens Aid Societyw
continued to send orphan trains to the Midwest 
and West until 1929. As social welfare philoso­
phy changed, so did the attitudes towards the 
pract ice of placing out, used by Charles Loring 
Brace and his successors at the Children’s Aid 
Society and a handful of other eastern juvenile 
welfare institutions.
W elfare workers who favored institu ­
tionalization criticized placing out. At the 1882 
National Conference of Charities and Correc­
tions in Madison, Wisconsin, some delegates 
accused the Children’s Aid Society of shipping 
“thieves, liars and vagabonds’ and thereby
menacing western society. Some claimed that 
local screening committees hesitated to reject 
foster-parent applicants for fear of miffing their 
small-town neighbors and associates, and that 
faulty screening of families sometimes brought 
harm to the children. The society investigated 
such charges and stated in its annual reports 
that few children had turned out for the worse 
and that cases of abuse were rare. A survey in
1900 of all children placed out since 1854 found 
that 87 percent were “doing well.
Following the move to professionalize social 
work, the society initiated inspection of foster 
homes and more follow-up supervision by the 
turn of the centurv. It established a farm school
w
where boys could first find out whether farm
r
work was for them. Babies were adopted 
directly from the society’s New York nursery 
rather than being shipped west.
The turn of the century also brought slum 
clearance, stricter child labor laws, and com­
pulsory school attendance in the urban East. In
Mm W p d  Mmrp w a k  Ipkk npprl  for fa rm  w o rk e rs .
Social legislation and new policies by govern­
ment and private agencies emphasized keep­
ing families together. The C hildren’s Aid 
Society modified its own program to endorse 
services aimed at improving the quality of life 
in their homes.
Brace’s idea to place out children by the 
orphan trains was not the perfect solution, but 
it was a bold, large-scale step towards resolving 
the plight of enormous numbers of homeless 
children in the East. In the peak years of the 
1870s and 1880s, three to four thousand chil­
dren a year were placed in new homes far 
beyond the poverty and crime in which they 
had been born. Minnie Ketchum has no 
regrets. I couldn’t have had a better family il 
I’d been born into it, she says. “They took me 
because they wanted me. D
NOTE ON SOURCES
Wright County histories and the Wright County Monitor 
yielded valuable information, as did interviews with Min­
nie Merkle Aldrich Ketchum and others familiar with 
Clarion orphan-train children. Secondary sources include 
Donald Dale Jackson, "It took trains to put street kids on 
the right track out of the slum s,’ Smithsonian 
(Aug. 1986), 95-102; and Leslie Wheeler, Orphan 
Trains, American History Illustrated (Dec. 1983), 
10-23. The author thanks Anne Hines, Clarion, for her 
help in newspaper research.
150 THE PALIMPSEST


The Orphan Train Comes to Clarion

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Iowa Pioneers Find a Lost Child: A Dan De Quille Memoir