THE ORPHAN TRAINS: Replenishing America’s Workforce. New York City. Seneca Village. Croton Aqueduct.

Howdy ya’ll. Today is a big moment. I’d like to take a definitive look at the concept of orphan trains, inherited and empty cities, loss of labor, indentured servitude, as well as more concrete subjects such as Seneca Village, Central Park, The Croton Aqueduct and Reservoir of New York, as well as the key players, two best friends from Yale, Frederick Law Olmsted and Charles Loring Brace. Essentially, many of us wonder what exactly warranted the Orphan Trains. We ask, how did over 250,000 make their way to various cities around America? Today I’d like to link some ties between the subjects of historical illness, the first census for which included the label “insane”, and how that label was used by the American government to construct (some say inherit) massive Asylums. In the North, in the 1850’s, we see a disproportionate number of people being placed in asylums, and we see a growing orphan population, particularly in New York. With slavery abolished, we see a growing need for new workers.