![]() The intent of the program was not adoption as it’s now known but foster care. ![]() ![]() Would she like to be their little girl? Williams consented, and in that moment, she acquired loving parents. A music professor and his wife saw what happened and began talking gently to her. Terrified, Williams refused to go with him. ''My wife is sick, and I need someone to wash the dishes.'' An old man with a white beard approached the small, fair-haired Williams and pointed a bony finger at her. When Williams’ train reached Kirksville, Mo., the children were taken to a crowded local church and told to sit in chairs on the stage. They had no idea that they were on an ''orphan train'' or that they had become participants in the largest children’s migration in history.īetween 18, an estimated 200,000 American children-some orphaned, others abandoned, all in need of families-traveled west by rail in search of new homes in a novel ''placing out'' movement. The children were not told where they were going or why. In 1926, Williams and 13 other orphans were scrubbed, dressed in new clothes and put aboard a westbound train at Grand Central Station. Williams still remembers the stern caretakers at the orphanage, her thin clothes and constant hunger. As an adult, Winefred Lorraine Williams learned that she was placed in a New York City orphanage soon after her birth in 1922 because her unmarried mother feared the wrath of her prominent family if they discovered that she had a baby.
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