10/20/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1KE4odH1SA/
In 1907, a train pulled into Opelousas, Louisiana, carrying children who had traveled more than a thousand miles from New York. Many were wearing numbered identification tags. They had no idea what their new lives would look like or which families would be waiting for them. 🚂
Some were orphans. Others had living parents who, because of poverty or difficult circumstances, could no longer care for them.
And for many, Louisiana would become home.
This was part of America's Orphan Train Movement, which began in the 1850s and continued into the twentieth century. Thousands of children were sent from crowded Eastern cities to communities across the country, where they were placed with families willing to take them in.
In Louisiana, the story began in 1907, when children from the New York Foundling Hospital arrived in Opelousas.
Imagine standing on a railway platform as a small child, surrounded by strangers, holding everything you owned. You might have been told you were going somewhere better, but you couldn't possibly know what waited at the end of the journey.
The numbered tags helped identify the children and match them with the families who had arranged to receive them.
Some found loving homes, stability, and opportunities they might never have had otherwise. Others faced difficult circumstances, separation, or treatment that fell far short of what they had been promised.
The experiences were not all the same.
Over the following decades, more than 2,000 children were brought to Louisiana through the orphan train movement. Many settled in Acadiana, growing up in communities where they eventually married, raised families, and became part of Louisiana's history.
Some descendants grew up knowing their grandparents had arrived on an orphan train. Others discovered the connection only after researching old family records.
Today, the Louisiana Orphan Train Museum in Opelousas helps preserve the photographs, documents, and personal stories of these children.
And behind every numbered tag was a child with a name, a past, and a future that had not yet been written.
⚜️Did you know children were sent from New York to Louisiana on orphan trains?Have you ever heard that a grandparent or great-grandparent in your family arrived this way?
I'd especially love to hear from families in Opelousas, Lafayette, Eunice, and the surrounding Acadiana communities.
