Orphan Train Ancestors

By Family Tree Editors Premium
Black and white "WANTED: Homes for Children" poster from 1910 seeking homes for orphans arriving in Troy, MO on February 25th. Meeting at the Opera House at 1:30 p.m. on the same date.
Orphan train flyer, 1910 (Wikimedia Commons)

Clark Kidder, author of Orphan Trains and Their Precious Cargo: The Life’s Work of Rev. H.D. Clarke (Heritage Books, $24.95), knows a thing or two about researching children who were adopted via 19th- and 20th-century orphan trains: His grandmother was one of those adoptees. The following PDF contains the resources and repositories Kidder recommends for finding those orphans’ records.

Download the resource sheet (pdf, 134k)

Learn 11 tips for tracing orphaned and adopted ancestors in the February 2007 Family Tree Magazine.

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