The year 1908 was an important one in the lives of the Cooper children—Ethan, Alice, Simon, and Will. As soon as school was out, they moved from Briarlane Christian Children’s Home in Pennsylvania to spend a short time at Hull-House in Chicago, Illinois, where they prepared for their journey west. Then they were put on an Orphan Train for a trip to Nebraska, their destination for a new home.
Twenty-five girls and boys, twelve from Briarlane and thirteen more joining them at Hull-House, traveled west under the care of Matron Daly and Agent Charles Glover. Ranging in age from three to fifteen, the children had very little in common. Some remembered no home but the orphanage. Others couldn’t recall ever having lived in a building. A few remembered a mother or father in the past. Most had no recollection of anyone ever caring for them.
But there was one thing the children did share. As Charles Glover pointed out to Matron, “These children are survivors. If they couldn’t make it almost anywhere, they wouldn’t be here today.”
Still, even the hardiest survivor among them had some anxious thoughts about what lay ahead on this adventure. If a family in a small farming community chose a brother, a sister, or a friend, how would it feel to return to the train to go on to the next town? What if the people who took a boy or girl just wanted another farmhand or a maid rather than a son or daughter?
Every effort was made to place the children in suitable homes, and among the thousands of homeless youngsters who rode the Orphan Trains between 1854 and 1929, remarkably few experienced circumstances worse than the ones they had left. For the most part, midwestern farmers lived up to their reputation as “our most solid and intelligent class; possessed of a peculiar warmheartedness.”
Ethan, his brothers, his sister, and his friends all embarked on new lives that summer in 1908. They knew there would be good times and bad, happiness and sorrow, security and fear—because that’s the way the world is. But God’s grace, love, and mercy would also make the hard times easier and the easy times joyful—because that’s the way God is.