Every June, we honor the fathers and father figures in our lives. This Father's Day, we remember a different kind of father whose vision laid the foundation for foster care as we know it.
His name was Charles Loring Brace. Today, children across America, including the nearly 9,000 in Tennessee's foster care system, live in communities shaped by his ideas.
A Young Man Who Refused to Look Away
Charles Loring Brace was born on Father’s Day, June 19, 1826, in Litchfield, Connecticut.
In the mid-1800s, thousands of children lived without shelter, without family, and without any system in place to catch them. Orphanages were overcrowded and underfunded, relying on harsh discipline rather than individual care. The conditions deeply disturbed Brace.
In 1853, at age 27, Brace founded the Children's Aid Society in New York City, which operated lodging houses, fresh-air programs, and industrial schools to support an estimated 30,000 poor and orphaned children living on the city’s streets. His new approach to helping at-risk children became the foundation for the child welfare system we have today.
The Orphan Train and a Radical Idea
Brace’s most ambitious project was the Orphan Train, a program that moved orphaned and homeless children from crowded cities to rural families out West who could give them a home. By 1920, the Children's Aid Society and about 1,500 other agencies had placed around 150,000 children using this model. Like many new ideas, it was imperfect. But it was based on a belief that was bold for its time and still essential to this day: children belong in families, not institutions.
Brace's commitment to family settings and respect for every child led to several child welfare forms, including the establishment of foster care services. Today’s foster care system continues to carry out his vision of family homes for all children in need.
At his death, a leading sociologist estimated that Brace's influence had aided more than 300,000 children.
His Legacy Lives On - Especially in Tennessee
More than 170 years after Brace founded the Children's Aid Society, the need he identified has not disappeared. In 2023, just over 5,000 children entered foster care in Tennessee — a rate of 3.2 children per 1,000, well above the national average, giving Tennessee the tenth-highest entry rate in the country.
Brace helped shift the nation’s response toward vulnerable children, and today, the responsibility to protect their dignity belongs to all of us.
Carrying the Vision Forward
At My Bag My Story, we are doing exactly that. Brace saw children not as problems to be managed but as human beings who deserved dignity and a place to belong. We share that belief. And we know that restoring dignity does not always require grand gestures. Sometimes it starts with something as simple as making sure a child does not have to carry their belongings in a trash bag.
This Father's Day, we honor Charles Loring Brace, the man who saw a broken system and chose to build something better. We invite you to help carry his legacy forward with us.
Take action today: donate or partner with us at mybagmystory.com to empower foster youth.