Opelousas, Louisiana

We woke up to another overcast sky.  It was warm sleeping.  We slept with our bedroom windows open.  Our outside thermometer registered 55.  We took local county roads to Opelousas.  The tourist center was located in Le Vieux Village.  The village is a collection of buildings from Opelousas and the parish it is in.   None of the buildings were open.  The city is Louisiana's third oldest city founded about 1720.  For a year during the Civil War, it was the state capital because union forces occupied Baton Rouge.  Jim Bowie lived here and it is the "Zydeco Capital of the World."

As we were walking around the village, we thought this stop might be a bust.  The last stop in the village was Louisiana Orphan Train Museum.  We had read a brochure on it and wanted to find out more about it and we are glad we did.   The museum collects and preserves items that tell the history of three trains that came from New York City in 1907 to Louisiana with "orphans" being placed in the homes of Catholic families.  There were many such trains carrying orphans to states and territories in the U.S. between 1854 and 1929.  During these years over 9,000 came to Illinois.

This is the building that contains the museum.

These are volunteers that work in the museum.  Each one has a relative who rode the train and they told their family member's story.  It made the kids who rode the train come alive.  The man's father was three and a half when he was put on the train.   A note was attached to his clothes containing his name, birthday, and mother's name.  That is the age of Keegan!  It was a 6-7 day ride with stops beginning in New Orleans and ending on Opelousas.  What that little guy must have thought.  The volunteers each shared that their family member never talked about the fact that they rode the train.  They usually found out about this history from a parent or grandparent married to the orphan.

The younger lady shared that when her grandmother died, she found an old trunk that contained her grandmother's clothes she had worn and the number that had been pinned to her clothes.  The family that picked her up had the matching number.  The older lady's mother had ridden the train.  It was very interesting and moving to hear their family member's story.   The museum contained then and now pictures, clothes, and other items telling the stories of  over 160 of the children who rode one of the trains.  The kids ranged in age from newborn to seven years old.  As far as they know, there is one survivor left from the Louisiana trains.

Carol said that it was sad for these kids to leave their parents, never to see them again or know anything about them except a name; but most of them had a much better future and life.  Along with the sadness the mothers must have felt, they had a hope for the kids.

It began to rain as we were at the museum and we drove back to camp in the rain.  We all went to supper at Giovani's,  an Italian restaurant we ate at last year...yum, yum!  We all ate much, much too much.  When will we learn!