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George Meason
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.   The Orphan Train Elaine Nall Bay ©2013 If you find any of Grayson County TXGenWeb links inoperable, please send me a message. |
