There is a large print that hangs in the Zoe’s House conference room.  It’s similar to the one posted here, featuring the Kansas City skyline behind our iconic Union Station.

We hung it there because we love our city, but also because of what the photo represents. The building was erected in 1901, or about midway through the Orphan Train movement.  Between the mid 1850’s and 1929, trainloads of orphans were relocated from the crowded eastern seaboard of the United States.  Some estimates say 200,000 were gathered and transported to the midwest, were people would meet the train at the depot and do a sort of on-the-spot adoption.

Some of the adoptive families were good hearted people, but just as many were looking for farm or home laborers that they would not need to pay.  They came looking for what amounted to endentured servants in the form of children.  In 2015, we would call it child trafficking.

One orphan train survivor, Hazelle Latimer, was quoted in a PBS documentary as saying: 

“That was an ordeal that no child should go through. They pulled us and pushed us and shoved us. And this old man– I had never seen anything like anybody chewing tobacco. I knew nothing about it. This old man came up and his mouth was all stained brown and I thought, well, he’d been eating chocolate candy or something. Then he said, “Open your mouth.” I looked at him and he– “I want to see about your teeth.” I opened my mouth and he stuck his finger in my mouth and just– and rubbed over my teeth. And his old dirty hands just– I wanted to bite, but I didn’t.”

As the trains would progress across the midwest, they would gradually empty out with people choosing children to adopt.  Some attempt was made by the placement agencies to match the children with good homes, but with communication hard and distances so vast, it was impossible to tell how it all worked out.

What did happen, however, was that the healthiest, most sought after children were chosen quickly while the sick, the weak, the small – the children nobody wanted – continued on down the tracks.  With every stop, the train got roomier and the children grew more aware that they were not being chosen for a reason.

Kansas City – specifically, the building in the photo – became the end of the line for many unwanted children.

That photo hangs on our wall to remind us of our commitment to children.  It serves as a testimony to our vow that here, at the the end of the line, we will find a place for them.  We cannot change the fact that this happened to children in our country, but we can make a vow – never again.

Kansas City may have been the end of the line at one time, but we are going to make it a place of new beginnings. 

If you would like to help us keep adoption affordable and care for expectant mothers in a way that honors everyone involved, please consider a one time or monthly financial gift to Zoe’s House.