The train trip from New York City to
Texas took three days in 1920 and he'd been
clinging to his brother since the coach
pulled out of Brooklyn.
That had been almost 72 hours before
and little George Lahn was tired and
confused as the engine began to slow. For
the greater part of the last three days he'd
been watching an alien countryside roll by
his window, periodically eating peanut
butter and red jelly sandwiches and sleeping
curled in the double seat with his brother,
Julius.
Today, March 23, was his birthday.
He was 6 years old.
He hadn't cried when he left the
orphanage. George had long since acquired an
acceptance of uncertainty. His origin was
forgotten and his future was beyond
comprehension. Home, or what he knew of the
word had always been some institution, first
the Brooklyn Orphan Asylum, then the Brace
Farm for Orphan Boys, then The Children's
Aid Society. His family consisted of three
sisters he rarely saw and Julius, three
years his senior.
Just now his attention was on the
Whitewright train station. A crowd had
gathered on the platform as the train rolled
in to the small town northeast of Dallas.
Adult hands helped him from the seat, they
brushed and spruced him up. They wiped away
the peanut butter and jelly smudges and
whisked the crumbs from his blue sailor
suit. They attached a name tag to his lapel
and handed him a Bible. Then they ushered
him toward the aisle, where, still clutching
Julius' hand, he stepped from the train.
Then, something was wrong. Julius
was being held back and a stern-looking
young woman and a stocky, middle-aged man
with a limp were approaching him. He turned
back for Julius, but Julius was being pulled away. He lunged for
Julius, but a forearm restrained him. He
strained against the arm, but Julius was
back on the train.
Finally, George Lahn cried, "Don't
take my brother. Please don't take him," he
howled as the train pulled away with Julius,
and the woman grimly dragged him off the
platform.
"I want to stay with my brother," he
said, and the woman struck him. She struck
him several more times as the train rolled
out of Whitewright and George Lahn grew
quiet.
George had not known it at the time,
but he had stepped on the passenger coach in
New York to become part of a large and now
largely forgotten migration in America. He
was soon to become George Meason and his
life as a ward of the City of New York was
about to change. He was about to become one
of the last of an army of little pilgrims
who were spread across this country over a
period of more than 76 years, all riders of
the Orphan Trains.
It was a movement that began in
1854, when Charles Loring Brace, a clergyman
and humanitarian, was appalled at the sight
of thousands of homeless orphans in the
streets of New York. Immigrants had been
pouring into the city and, without extended
families to fall back on, many had become
destitute or died and their children were
left to fend for themselves. It was
estimated there were 10,000 homeless boys
and girls in the city at the time.
Brace had started an orphanage, but
he believed children could benefit far more
from growing up in a stable home. He then
started "The Children's Aid Society" and
began "placing out" his charges. The "West"
(then any area west of New England) was
regarded as an idyllic place and ready home
for New York's surplus waifs.
Brace's idea caught on. Organization
in other Eastern cities, also overrun with
the poor, began "placing out," and groups of
children, from as few as 10 to several
hundred were ushered onto trains headed for
the frontier. By 1910 The Children's Aid
Society of New York alone had sent more than
1,300 children to Texas and more than 6,000
to Missouri.
The process was similar with all the
"placing out" groups. In a few instances
children were matched with a specific couple
before being sent West. More often, however,
a newspaper announcement would be placed
prior to a group's arrival in a town and
prospective parents could apply. They would
be "screened" by a committee, usually some
already -seated group such as county
commissioners. Those who wanted a child
would then select one from the party that
arrived on the train. The Children's Aid
Society of New York sent caseworkers to make
periodic checks on the conditions in the homes, although
some other groups seemingly did not.
Between 1854 and 1929, approximately
200,000 youngsters --- some orphans, many
abandoned --- were moved from the East to
America's growing frontier. Some were
adopted, some were indentured and others
were simply taken in. Many found loving
homes with people who accepted them as their
own. Some moved from one home to another
before they found a berth. Some, like George
Meason, came to call themselves "the white
slaves of America."
Meason's path from New York to East
Texas was sadly common for the time. He was
the youngest child of Julius and Ida Lahn,
born March 23, 1914, in Brooklyn. He father
was a laborer and his mother had no job. By
the time he was a little more than a year
old his mother had died of a gastric ulcer,
his sisters were in an institution for girls
and he and his brother were on the Brace
Farm.
Their father kept up steepened
payments for his children for about three
years after his wife's death. Then, those
payments ceased and the children became
wards of The Children's Aid Society.
The sisters left first, bound for
homes in East Texas. Shortly afterward,
George and his brother boarded the train.
Today George Meason is 79, a lanky,
retired grocer in Odessa. A Texas drawl has
long replaced any trace of a Brooklyn
accent. High cheekbones and an arched nose
hit at Semitic roots, but he can never be
sure how deep they run. He has little or no
recollection of the orphanages he lived in.
His mother lies in a New York cemetery, Her
face a long-faded memory. His father's fate
is a mystery.
