I have enjoyed traveling thru small towns and discovering little museums and points of interest.  When I got to Concordia KS, I saw a sign for a museum for the Orphan trains in this country.  I had no idea what it was about so stopped and learned some incredible facts I had never known.  Between 1854 and 1920 more than 250,000 orphan children from New York were sent on trains across America to be adopted or simply taken by individuals and families.  These children were the result of parents who died or abandoned by families who could no longer care for them.  They were children of immigrants who got to New York, could not find work, and who lived in poverty in tenaments not meant for fit for humans.  I was told that in the 1850s New York was approximately the size Wichita is today and had 10,000 families PER WEEK coming to New York.  Amazing.

This Society is now headquartered in Concordia and serves to connect those persons and their offspring with their families from which they were separated.