By By JOHN EBY / Niles Daily Star
DOWAGIAC – Janie Lynn Panagopoulos still struggles to find her way around town, but after six years of research, the Illinois historian and author of "A Faraway Home: An Orphan Train Story," believes she solved the mystery of why it first came to Dowagiac from New York City.
"Had this first train trip to your community not worked well" in 1854, she said Thursday night at Patrick Hamilton Middle School, "the children who were to follow between 1854 and 1928, 250,000 lives would be lost. You all set in motion a great thing. The Children's Aid Society (CAS) still exists in New York City, but it probably wouldn't if that first train hadn't been successful."
The "Orphan Train" brought 45 desperate, homeless children enduring squalid conditions on the streets or in filthy tenements – more often abandoned than without parents – to start new lives with loving farm families in America's heartland.
"What sold me on writing the book," she said, "was the final check of the children" by CAS in 1917.
Those quarter of a million lives were salvaged to become: a governor of a state; a governor of a territory; two members of Congress; two district attorneys; two sheriffs; two mayors; a Supreme Court justice; four judges; two college professors; an insurance company cashier; 24 clergy; seven high school principals; two school superintendents; a state auditor general; nine state legislators; two artists; a Senate clerk; six railroad officials; 18 journalists; 34 bankers; 19 physicians; 35 lawyers; 12 postmasters; three contractors; 97 teachers; four civil engineers; eight businessmen and professional men and women; clerks, mechanics, farmers and their wives; "and others who have acquired property and filled positions of honor and trust."
"Nor would the roll call be complete without the mention of four Army officers and 7,000 soldiers – the majority of them fighting in the Civil War," Panagopoulos said. "Those are the 'disposable' people Charles Loring Brace saved with the help of the people of Dowagiac. That's why it's significant, because one person made a difference in the lives of 250,000 people. That's why it was important to me to write this book."
No one family could afford to take two brothers, but rather than separate them, they were placed at adjacent farms. A German Jewish boy was taken in by a doctor. An affluent farm family adopted "Sweet Meg."
The Rev. Edwin P. Smith chaperoned them on their journey.
Smith's journal alludes to a "Rev. O," who made arrangements to print off fliers and conduct the placements.
Panagopoulos recently returned to a thick volume of Cass County history and came across the name of the Rev. Clark Olmsted, a Cassopolis pastor who served as treasurer of the county Bible society.
"He was very active in this period of time," she theorizes. "I kept thinking, 'Why do I know the name Olmsted?' Charles Loring Brace's three best friends in Connecticut, that was their last name. I did genealogy research on Clark Olmsted and found out that man was from the same town in Connecticut as Charles Loring Brace. I think it was an uncle and these three boys. One boy was engaged to his sister. He was a minister in Cass County and Dowagiac was the train stop in Cass County. It only makes sense that they came here. I'm not exactly positive, but I think this is the man who helped bring the Orphan Train to your community."
"I've been to your community about four times now," she said, "and every time I come I get lost. You had the town laid out facing one direction, then trains came and everything was turned around to face another direction," which is why residences line the Main Street boulevard and the central business district is on Front Street. "That's why your streets go in different directions."
Principal Lin Mallory, whose Patrick Hamilton Middle School students spent March 8 with Panagopoulos prior to her evening Parent Fair program, said, "They were extremely interested because it's about their home. It's been a really wonderful experience for all of us."
Three groups of students dramatized scenes from "A Faraway Place" before she started her first PowerPoint presentation.
Garbage piled so high in New York that children were lucky to see sunshine.
"Every horse deposits 20 to 25 pounds of manure a day," Panagopoulos said, "and they had 150,000 horses in a five-mile stretch of New York City. That's 3.75 million pounds of manure daily, and no way to get rid of it. People walked through it and lived in it. It was a mess."
New York's population had been 60,000 in 1800. The Erie Canal's 1825 completion stoked growth. From 1846 to 1853, mass immigration followed Ireland's potato famine and there were half a million inhabitants by 1850 and more than 800,000 by 1855.
In 1851, there were 4,000 inmates younger than 21 locked up in adult prisons; 800, ages 10-14; and 175 ages 4-9 "committing murder trying to steal food to survive. At 4, a child could be cast out on the street and not be taken care of because they could crawl in the trash and look for food on their own." The police chief estimated there were 40,000 homeless children subsisting on the streets.
"They were walking rag bundles, scabbed over and dirty. Layer after layer of crust which took three or four scrubbing baths before they got down to their skin," the author said.
Brace, who grew up in Connecticut, was horrified by New York, "an immense vat of misery, crime and filth."
He introduced the idea of removing urban orphans to healthier rural lifestyles after investigating European practices.
The CAS annual report for 1854 acknowledges placements of 164 boys and 43 girls – of whom 20 had been removed from prison.
Michigan was the first destination state of the Orphan Train because Brace regarded farmers as "our most solid and intelligent class. 'Westerners' possess a particular warm heartedness and sense of equality that ennobles them."
"Let's get with farm communities. Let's get with solid people with their feet on the ground and let's stick these kids in communities that are like that," she paraphrased Brace.
"He listed Michigan as Republican. Another advantage was that it was strongly anti-slavery. It was highly populated by immigrants from New York state. And citizens often observed religious traditions, and that was important to a minister."
Michigan was "on the grow." Its population surged from 200,000 in 1840 to 400,000 in 1850 and 750,000 in 1860.
Dowagiac was platted in 1848 and incorporated as a village in 1858.
Cass County's population had grown from 919 in the 1830s to 12,411 in 1854. The town "proper" had 300 residents – which doubled to 608 in two years.
Panagopoulos traced the train's first trip, with 37 leaving New York, joined by nine in Albany. John, also known as "Smack," was taken off the street in Albany to get to 47. Two were placed in Albany, one with a man who approached and said, "That's a good-looking little girl. Can I have her? I'm still mortified, but that's how it worked."
The 45 ages 6 to 15 continued on to Buffalo. Trains traveled at an average speed of 18 mph. A steamship carried them from Buffalo across Lake Erie to Detroit, where they boarded a Michigan Central Railroad train to Dowagiac, arriving at 3 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 1, 1854.
Fifteen children were placed the first day. "Smack's" hair was so matted and tangled, his head was shaved, but he found a home with a Cassopolis Quaker family.
Nine children traveled on to Chicago without placement. "They were considered too young to be good (farm) laborers," she explained. From Chicago, they were put on a train to Iowa by themselves.
She indicated that the fortitude of the urchins renewed her faith in America, and Brace affirmed the positive power one determined person can bear on changing the world.
A Michigan native, she now lives an hour northwest of Chicago.
"When I write history I don't try to polish or give propaganda," she said. "Real people who work and strive and survive from one generation to the next are much more fascinating. Our ancestors worked very hard so our children could be the beneficiaries of good educations and opportunities. Kids today live in a time when America is the best on record – not falling apart. If you really do know history, you know that's not the truth. Our kids have more advantages and opportunities. There were no 'good old days.' "
"What I'd like to see happen," she says, "is to put a picnic together for Orphan Train descendants in the state of Michigan and have them come here to your community. There's a connect there. The Orphan Train Society thinks it's a good idea, it's just going to take a lot of organizing. My publisher is interested, so we'll see. Maybe in a year or two."