34 DECEMBER 2011/JANUARY 2012 | www.ACADiANApRofilE.CoM

Next Stop: opelousas

THE ORPHAN TRAIN CHANGED LIVES – AND SOCIAL AWARENESS

W R I T T E N A N D P H O T O G R A P H E D b y f R A N k D I C E S A R E

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A Childhood of ChAllenges

Foster parents who brought Orphan

Train children into their homes had to

promise the Foundling Hospital to give

their new children at least a sixth grade

education. When most orphans were not

in school, however, they worked in their

foster homes as indentured servants.

Bernard, who came to Opelousas in 1919

at the age of 2, was one of the few Orphan

Train riders who went from being an

indentured servant to a legally adopted

member of the family. With a laugh, she

recalls having to clean the house every

morning before she left for school, which

invariably made her late for class.

Despite their indentured status in

their foster homes, the orphans were

not without advocates. Each year either

a nun from the Sisters of Charity or

an agent appointed by the Foundling

Hospital paid a visit to the foster homes

to check in on the orphans, a practice

that continued until the orphan was

between 13 and 21 years old.

“Before the Orphan Train system,

orphaned children were never checked

on,” says Harold Dupre, president of the

Louisiana Orphan Train Society and son

of Orphan Train rider George Thompson.

“If you did well, good for you; if you

didn’t, that was too bad. There were

three trains that dropped children off

here in Opelousas in 1907, and the last

brought two of those children back to the

Foundling Hospital because the agents

believed they were not being treated

properly by their foster parents.”

Bernard remembers these visits well.

“Every year until I was legally adopted,

there was a woman, a social worker, who

would come to the house to check on

me to see how I was doing,” she recalls.

“This was in the 1920s when they wore

long dresses. She would make like she was

going to take me away, and I would hold

onto my adoptive mother’s dress. I was

about 9 years old. I didn’t want to leave.”

In Louisiana, many orphans found it

difficult to adjust to Acadiana’s French-

speaking culture and rural setting. At first,

none of them understood the language,

and few, if any, had ever been on a farm.

An air of reverence surrounds Alice Bernard as she enters the Louisiana Orphan Train

Museum in Opelousas. Escorted by her daughter, Connie, and son, Ryan, she walks slowly

and gracefully into the building’s reception area where a small crowd gathers to greet her. She

looks up and smiles, her eyes twinkling. In that moment, arms are extended and kisses are

exchanged. It’s as if Lady Liberty herself has entered the building, and in many ways she has.

More than 90 guests from around Acadiana have converged on the museum for its annual

reunion of Orphan Train rider descendants. In the hours ahead, the guests will pay tribute

to their parents, grandparents and extended family members who came to Louisiana as

orphans from the New York Foundling Hospital, some more than a century ago. Bernard is

their guest of honor – and for good reason, too. At 95 she is believed to be the last surviving

Orphan Train rider, our country’s final link to thousands of children who made the 1,400-

mile railroad journey that many believe was the birth of adoption in America.

“My adoptive mother was strict, very strict,” Bernard recalls. “I was taken in as a

servant until I was 14, and then my daddy, who was very loving, adopted me. If my

adoptive parents had died before I was 14, I don’t know what would’ve happened to me.”

From 1873 to 1929 the Foundling Hospital’s administrators, the Sisters of Charity and the

Children’s Aid Society brought orphaned

children from New York City by train to

Louisiana and beyond where they would

be placed with Catholic foster parents who

were married. Most Orphan Train riders

were between 3 and 6 years old and typically

the children of European immigrants; few

ever knew their birthparents.

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Some orphans were frightened by the

farm animals.

But the challenges the orphans faced at

home were minor compared to those they

met in the schoolyard. Margaret Briley,

daughter of Orphan Train rider John Brown,

says being an adopted child in early-20th-

century Louisiana was “a hush-hush deal.”

“Being from New York was a big

stigma in those years,” Briley says.

“When the orphaned children from New

York went to school, they were laughed

at. They were told: ‘Your mother gave

you away like a cat or a dog. Y’all from

New York, and we can’t play with you

Yankees.’ Some of the Orphan Train

riders had rough lives; some had good

lives – not that they were mistreated

by their foster parents, but things were

tough for them at times.”

The BiTTersweeT seArCh for idenTiTy

For many Orphan Train riders, the

tough times did not end in childhood.

Most of them entered adulthood with

unanswered questions about their own

identities and the primal need to discover

information about their birthparents.

Left: Alice Bernard, believed to be the last surviving Orphan Train rider, came to Opelousas in 1919 at the age of 2.

Right: Descendants of Orphan Train riders are proud of their parents’ legacies. Seen

here are, from left, Florella Inhern, secretary, treasurer and archivist of the Louisiana Orphan Train Society, whose father-in-

law, Aloysius Inhern, was an Orphan Train rider; Lucien Lipari, a board member of

the Louisiana Orphan Train Society, whose father, Frank Lipari, rode the Orphan Train to Opelousas in 1907 at the age of 2; Margaret

Briley, whose father, John Brown, was an Orphan Train rider; and Harold Dupre,

president of the Louisiana Orphan Train Society, whose father, George Thompson,

was an Orphan Train Rider.

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Many orphans wrote to the Foundling

Hospital to get their birth records, but

their requests were often rejected. Instead,

hospital officials in effect told their former

orphans to forget about their pasts and to

be happy with the lives they were given.

Still, many orphans persisted in

tracking down their birthparents; some

even succeeded. In 1962, the Foundling

Hospital sent John Brown his birth

certificate and baptismal certificate, which

contained the name of his mother, Mary

Brown, and his father, Nicholas Schmidt.

It was a rare stroke of luck. Most Orphan

Train riders went to their graves knowing

little to nothing about who they were.

Florella Inhern, secretary, treasurer and

archivist of the Louisiana Orphan Train

Society, says her father-in-law, Aloysius

Inhern Sr., wrote to the Foundling Hospital

many times in his adulthood to inquire if

he was a United States citizen and to get

the names of his birthparents. None of

his letters was answered. He did not know

the name of his birth mother until the day

before he died at the age of 82.

“My father-in-law was in a coma,”

Florella Inhern recalls. “They say the

hearing is the last thing you lose before

you die. His daughter was living at the

time, and she received the document

that had the name of his birth mother,

Margaret Brown. When she told him, the

tears ran down his cheek. So he went to

heaven knowing the name of his mother.”

At the time of his arrival in Louisiana,

Aloysius Inhern’s foster parents, Mark and

Elena Vidrine, had been married for 10 years

with no children. After they took young

Aloysius into their home, they had five sons.

MeMBers of ACAdiAnA soCieTy

The challenges the Orphan Train riders

faced throughout their lives were many.

Most of the orphans overcame them. Like

all successful people, they put the past

behind them and carried on, often in

extraordinary ways.

Frank Lipari was the quintessential self-

made man. An Orphan Train rider who

came to Opelousas in 1907 at the age of 2,

Lipari quit school in the sixth grade, got a

job as a newsboy and never looked back.

“My father was a go-getter,” says Lucien

Lipari, a board member of the Louisiana

Orphan Train Society. “He didn’t speak

pretty English and all that. But he got to

know people, and they got to know him.”

After working jobs as a delivery boy

at the Railway Express Agency and then

as a candy-maker, Lipari got a job as an

insurance salesman for Metropolitan

Life Insurance Co. in Opelousas and

remained with the firm for 42 years.

Lipari worked his own hours; made many

important friends and contacts; and used

his spare time to organize Opelousas’

first Cub Scout Troop, its first Sea Scout

Troop (a boating arm of the Boy Scouts)

and the town’s first softball league.

A devout Catholic, Lipari also raised

money to build a chapel hospital at St.

Landry’s Church in Opelousas and became

the town’s first Italian-American to be

admitted to its Knights of Columbus

Council. Lipari spent 10 years as the

council’s treasurer after which he was

appointed grand knight. Soon thereafter,

his fellow knights appointed him district

deputy, a role that enabled him to establish

local Knights of Columbus councils around

Acadiana. For his efforts, Lipari was named

state council secretary of the Knights of

Columbus. In 1953, Pope Pius the XII

appointed Lipari a knight of St. Gregory.

The Orphan Train system ended in

1929 after a federal law was passed

prohibiting the interstate placement of

children in foster homes. By that time, a

more modern form of adoption had taken

root in America. Dupre says the orphans

who were adopted in the years following

the demise of the Orphan Train system

probably fared better, too.

“An estimated 300,000 children were

sent out West,” Dupre says. “In fact,

every state in the nation received some

orphans. You won’t find anything about

these orphans in the history books. It’s not

there; it’s a lost part of history.”

Members of the Louisiana Orphan Train

Society can get guidance in obtaining

records and information from the New

York Foundling (www.nyfoundling.org).

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