The last of the train riders

She and some 2,000 other children sent to south Louisiana had been left at the New York Foundling Hospital operated by Mother Elizabeth Seton's Sisters of Charity.

They were part of an adoption program that between 1854 and 1929 sent more than 150,000 children to new homes in rural communities across the nation.

Flo Inhern, a prime mover in establishing an orphan train museum in Opelousas, thinks about 60 children were aboard the first train that arrived in Opelousas in April 1907. Alice came to New Iberia in 1919. She was adopted by Auguste Geoffroy and Constance Melanson Geoffroy of Delcambre.  

She was an infant when she was left at the Foundling Hospital and was only three when sent to Louisiana, but, her obituary notes, she retained all of her life an image of "rows of iron beds with white sheets" in the dormitories where the orphans slept in New York.

A small item in the St. Martinville Messenger in May 1908 tells of the arrival there of a typical orphan train.

"A carload of orphan babies . . . passed through here Thursday" the report said. "Six or seven of them were given away here. … As each baby was brought forward and given over to the adoptive parents, everyone crooked their necks to catch a glimpse of the wee one. The scene was a pathetic one and … as the train pulled out the little children stood against the window glasses and some waved at the disappearing crowd who had gathered to see them."

The scene had not changed very much by the time Alice's train headed south a dozen years later. 

The orphanage in New York provided little more than room and board, but it was the only home most of the children had ever known. 

Alice, like the other little ones sent away, was confused and scared as she rode to an unknown place and unknown people, identified only by a numbered piece of paper pinned to her dress.

According to her son, Ryan Bernard, hers was a difficult childhood. To begin with, she had to learn French to speak to adoptive parents who spoke little English. She told Ryan that she'd never really felt accepted in her new home, said that she was often treated more like a servant than a daughter.

But her life changed in 1942, when she met Reuben Joseph Bernard at a dance in Youngsville. She married him that year and began a life in rural Vermilion Parish that involved raising sugar cane, cattle, and seven children. 

Ryan said his mother wanted lots of children "to fill the hole" left in her life because she had no brothers or sisters.

In later years, she and Reuben became inveterate travelers, crisscrossing North America in their RV, and visiting the capitals of Europe.

Alice was already one of the last of the surviving train riders when the Orphan Train Museum opened in 2009, and she became a "living exhibit" of sorts.

Inhern remembered her as "very shy and reserved at first," but said her shyness disappeared over the years as she found so many people interested in her story.

"Being an orphan train rider was a source of shame to her as a child," according to her son, but her association with the museum changed her outlook. "It became a source of pride in her life. All of a sudden, she was a celebrity," he said.

The dress, bonnet, and shoes she wore to Louisiana are on display at the museum, but, even more important, she was able to give the museum her memories — those images of a sterile dormitory and the long and scary ride to a new life that included more trauma as a child, but also memories of a life that included 60 years of happy marriage,and, finally, a feeling of belonging, acceptance, and pride.

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You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.