Charles Loring Brace


Charles Loring Brace was an American philanthropist who contributed to the field of social reform. He is considered a father of the modern foster care movement and was most renowned for starting the Orphan Train movement of the mid-19th century, and for founding Children's Aid Society.

Early life

Brace was born on June 19, 1826 in Litchfield, Connecticut. He was named after his uncle, the lawyer Charles Greeley Loring, defender of fugitive slave Thomas Sims, His mother died when he was 14, and he was raised by his father, a history teacher.

Education

He graduated from Yale College in 1846. He pursued divinity and theology graduate studies at Yale, but left to study at Union Theological Seminary, from which he received his graduate degree in 1849. He was drawn to New York because it was viewed as the center of American Protestantism and social activity. His best friend and classmate at Yale, Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect, also lived in New York.

Career

In 1852, at the age of 26, Brace, who had been raised as a Calvinist, was serving as a minister to the poor of Blackwell's Island and to the poor of the Five Points Mission, when he decided he wanted to pursue his humanitarian efforts in the streets rather than in church. Brace was aware of the impoverished lives of the children in New York City and for this reason he concentrated on improving children's situations and their future. In 1853, Brace established the Children's Aid Society.
In 1854, the Society opened the first of its "newsboys' lodging-houses", which would become one of Brace's most successful projects. These houses provided basic room and board at low prices to homeless children who hawked newspapers on the streets of American cities. Though Brace viewed the newsboys as children in need of the services provided by the houses, they also inspired several of Horatio Alger's stories in which the newsboys' independence and pluck is rewarded with great wealth.
Brace believed that poor, Catholic immigrants were genetically inferior, deeming them “stupid, foreign criminal class” and the “scum and refuse of ill-formed civilization". Some of the children of immigrants had been in trouble with the law. Such was the severity of child poverty in 1854 that the number of homeless children in New York City was estimated as high as 34,000. The police referred to these children as “street rats”.
According to an essay written by Brace in 1872, one crime and poverty ridden area around Tenth Avenue was referred to as “Misery Row”. Misery Row was considered to be a main breeding ground of crime and poverty, and an inevitable "fever nest” where disease spread easily. Many of the children he deemed orphans were not orphaned at all, and when families of origin tried to keep their children, they were rebuffed.
Orphan asylums and almshouses were the only "social services" available for poor and homeless children. Brace did not believe that these were worthwhile institutions because they merely served the purpose of feeding the poor and providing handouts. He felt that such institutions only deepened the dependence of the poor on charity. Brace was also influenced by the writings of Edward Livingstone, a pioneer in prison reform who believed that the best way to deal with crime and poverty was to prevent it. Brace focused on finding jobs and training for poor and destitute children so they could help themselves. His initial efforts in social reform included free kindergartens, free dental clinics, job placement, training programs, reading rooms, and lodging houses for boys. However, Catholic and Jewish religious leaders feared that Brace was trying to "rescue" children from Catholic and Jewish faith.

Fostering and the "Orphan Trains"

Brace forcefully separated immigrant children from their families and sent them into farm families of northern New York State, the Midwest and, after the American Civil War, some southern and a few western states. From 1853 to 1864, 384 children were sent each year to families in New England states, the North Atlantic states and East North Central states. Nearly 1,000 children per year were sent from 1865 to 1874 to Michigan, Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri through Brace's "Emigration Plan”, now known as "The Orphan Trains". "In every American community, especially in a western one, there are many spare places at the table of life," Brace wrote. "They have enough for themselves and the stranger too." The children were treated like chattel, and many of the host families harbored strong prejudices against ethnic groups.
The arrangements for placing orphan children varied. Sometimes they were pre-ordered by couples; at other times a local screening committee tried to make sure the children would be given to good parents; at other times the scene was more random. At a Conference of Charities in 1893, an official from one of the receiving states, North Carolina, charged that, at the end of their journey, the children became virtual prisoners. "Their slaves set free, these men needing labor take these boys and treat them as slaves," he charged.
Brace received special discounts on fares for the orphan children from the railroads. Whole coaches were sometimes filled with these kids. Prior to departure, they were bathed, given new clothes, a coat, often a Bible, and reminded of good manners. The trains transported children from lodging houses, orphanages, private homes or the street, bringing them to towns where local organizers had created interest in the program. Notices were posted around town and in newspapers, informing locals when the children would arrive and of the viewing location. The Children's Aid Society made arrangements with train companies for the children to travel in regular passenger coaches, not in wooden box cars as is sometimes depicted in novels. At towns along the route, the children assembled at the train station or were brought to opera houses, schools, or town halls for the community to meet and interview.

Emigration Plan

Brace's Emigration Plan was also an anti-eugenic movement because Brace believed that one's "gemmules" did not predetermine one's future. Brace was deeply moved by Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, having read it thirteen times. Brace was also an outspoken abolitionist. In a bold move, Brace did away with the centuries-old custom of indenture so that the "placed" children were allowed to leave a home if they were uncomfortable with the placement. Brace's vision of migrating children to live with the western Christian farming families was widely supported by wealthy New York families – the first $50 was given by Mrs. John Astor in 1853.
The Children's Aid Society, the best-known organization finding homes for children, made efforts to screen the host families and follow up on the welfare of placed children. By 1909, at the first White House Conference on Dependent Children, the country's top social reformers praised the CAS' emigration movement, but argued that children should either be kept with their natal families or, if they were removed as a result of parental neglect or abuse, every effort should be made to place the child in a foster home nearby. In a report in 1910, the Children's Aid Society estimated that 87 percent of children placed by the Orphan Train program had done well. While there was occasional abuse, most people agreed that overall, the children were generally better off than on the streets of big cities without proper food, clothing, and shelter.
By 1920, the CAS and approximately 1500 other agencies and institutions had placed approximately 150,000 children in the largest migration or resettlement of children in American history. The CAS' Orphan Train movement ended in 1929, 75 years after it had begun as a social experiment.
While some honor Brace for his compassionate work with the street children of New York City, others believe he was a racist bigot whose destruction of families led to the creation of a racist, classist foster care system that exists today.
Brace served as an executive secretary of Children's Aid Society for 37 years, overseeing the program. He died in 1890 from Bright's disease. After his death, the Brace Memorial Farm was created for street children to learn farm skills, manners, and personal social skills to help prepare them for life on their own. His memoirs were published in 1872 under the title "The Dangerous Classes of New York and Twenty Years’ Work Among Them".

Personal life

On August 21, 1854 he married Letitia Neill in Belfast, Ireland, who proved to be a great support to her husband's social reform efforts. Letitia's father, Robert Neill, was an avid abolitionist and he opened his home to some of the world's most famous anti-slavery orators, including Frederick Douglass. He died at Campfer, Tirol, on August 11, 1890.
Family includes son, Charles Loring Brace Jr. and CAS board secretary, grandson, Gerald Warner Brace American writer, educator, sailor and boat builder, and great-grandson, C. Loring Brace IV, American biological anthropologist and educator.

Legacy

wrote in quoting from Brace's Gesta Christ:

There was an appalling amount of misery and injustice throughout the regions where the expansion of Christianity was most rapid....The stage of that era was often highly indecent. "The exhibition of licentious shows and immoral plays, says C. L. Brace, "had a profound influence. The extremes to which they were carried cannot ever be explained in modern writings. In fact, few classical scholars who have not waded through the disgusting mire of a large part of Roman literature can have even an idea of the depth of obscenity and immorality which it reached."

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