Iowa Orphan Trains

 

Stephen Bush Cogswell

Above is a picture of my 3rd great grandfather Stephen Bush Cogswell. It is the only known picture of him that I possess and is a scan of a newspaper clipping that is pasted in my 2nd great grandmother's memory book that I inherited many years ago. I have written about my photo project of all my 3rd great grandparents on down, and as part of that, I decided to look for a better image and/or simply to source this newspaper clipping. I was successful in sourcing the newspaper clipping which turned out to be the Rockford Register published in Rockford, Floyd county, Iowa on 1 Nov 1906 on page two. Unfortunately, the commercially scanned image on the website is much worse than this scan that I made personally from the clipping my 2nd great grandmother saved.

While looking for the picture, I came across a couple articles showing that my 3rd great grandfather Cogswell was involved in the Iowa orphan trains from New York. I have seen a presentation on them several years ago presented to a local history group but had never known one of my ancestors was involved until this recent discovery. 

For those unfamiliar, orphans in New York were evidently becoming quite the issue in the mid to late 1800's. Due to the huge influx of immigrants, the streets were flooded with orphans from deceased parents, a deceased parent with a remaining parent who couldn't take care of them, or perhaps poverty stricken parents who couldn't take care of them. Although rarely mentioned, some theorize that children from loving parents who could take care of them were caught up in the dragnets too and shipped off to Midwest parents clamoring for an adopted child, leaving a stain on this chapter in time.

The orphan train idea was dreamt up by a Protestant minister named Charles Brace who thought these orphaned children would thrive if shipped out west to loving farm families. He founded the Children's Aid Society to raise money to gather up these kids and ship them by train to Iowa towns and all told, somewhere close to 10,000 children were rehomed over the next 79 years. They would arrive at a train station stop in Iowa and be walked to a nearby church and cleaned up for presentation. Iowa families would then file in and pick out kids to take home with them. As one might expect, many were treated more as laborers than children of the adoptive parents and often siblings were split up as most adoptive families only wanted one child.

The first article I stumbled across was the above one where my 3rd great grandfather was named as a committee member to ensure these children went out to good homes and ensuring they were still in good homes as the years went by and the the adoptive families reported back twice a year as stipulated by the published rules in the article. I hope my 3rd great grandfather is thus one of the good guys in this era and really did care but without any proof of that, he may have just been someone who winked and looked the other way. 

The second article below is the one that really caught my attention. My 3rd great grandfather Stephen Cogswell adopted one of three brothers back when he first lived in Illinois. Willie Taylor shows up in the 1880 Census as a 10 year old boy in the Cogswell household with the occupation of "apprentice." An 1885 Iowa Census lists his occupation as "laborer." The 1890 Census was destroyed by fire and by the 1900 Census, Willie was no longer around. I had just written it off as a passing through child of another family and had no idea that he had been adopted by my 3rd great grandfather. 

Another thing that caught my attention was the name of the multi-millionaire who left Willie her fortune, Ida A. Flagler. After Stephen's first wife and my 3rd great grandmother Frances M. Hubbard Cogswell died, he remarried about four years later to a widow lady by the name of Anna Flagler. Because she isn't a blood ancestor, I hadn't researched her at all other than to determine her former husband's name of Allen Stueben. Note that in the article below, Tom Steuben adopted one of Willie's other brothers. I suspect, Allen and Tom were brothers too. 

All of this makes me ponder what happened to old Willie Taylor? I'm also curious as to the story of Mrs. Ida A. Flagler and how she came to be wealthy. Was her husband related to Stephen Cogswell's second wife Anna Flagler? Inquiring minds want to know!