It was a case of transferring the urban poor from New York to the plains. Many orphan children were brought out to the plains and adopted. This is the history of those times.

This book tells what life was like for youngsters who lived on the Great Plains in nineteenth-century frontier life. Chapters address a breadth of experiences and perceptions: why families came to the Great Plains and where they decided to settle; how families and communities were organized for education, work, and play; how health care, accidents, and mortality affected childhoods; and what children experienced outside the home.