Sunday, February 19, 2012
2pm
Pierce Art and History Center
20 East Downer Place Aurora, IL 60505
Please park across the street in the free parking deck at Stolp and Downer. Use Stolp Avenue entrance (now best accessed from Benton which is 2-way traffic). Be sure we stamp your ticket in our gift shop.
$5.00 (members $3.00)

The Orphan Train movement was a social experiment during the period 1854-1929, when the rural life was romanticized and Americans thought that orphaned, abandoned or homeless children from the city streets of the East should be taken away to start a new life and help settle the country in wholesome, religious homes in the Midwest. More than 200,000 children rode an “Orphan Train” to new lives. Today the Orphan Train movement is seen as the forerunner of modern-day foster care.

For more information, go to the National Orphan Train Complex (www.orphantraindepot.com).

Our speaker, Carol Chandler, a retired nurse and grandmother of 5, has researched 231 children who came to the 16 northwestern counties of Illinois and has assisted members of her audiences in tracing their own histories. She is on the board of the Lee County Genealogical Society.