From 1854-1929, the greatest children's migration in United States history carried orphaned and impoverished children from overcrowded eastern cities to midwestern farmlands. Charles Loring Brace and the Children's Aid Society of New York City pioneered the placing out movement, seeking to place deserving, healthy orphans in nurturing farm homes where they would be housed, fed, clothed, educated, and given religious training in a proper moral setting. Clarinda and dozens of other Iowa towns shared dramatically in these events, known as the Orphan Trains, and nearly 10,000 children found new homes in Iowa before the Depression and changing laws ended the migration. Little is known about the first Society placing out in the area, but Willie "The Kid" Moran arrived in Clarinda in March 1881 at age 12, was placed with G. A. Miller and worked on the farm for several years, then traveled in the far West, returned in 1897, and spent the next seven years in the State Hospital before disappearing from the record. Sarah Hunt, an Orphan Train rider to Sidney, Iowa, in 1904, later became the wife of Hal Maxwell, stepmother of actress Marilyn Maxwell, and a Western Union telegrapher in Clarinda for 19 years. On December 15, 1922, a Children's Aid Society orphan train arrived in Clarinda with 12 sleepy children led by the Society's Iowa agent, Miss Clara Comstock, and the children were taken to the Methodist Church to be introduced to an eager crowd. Asked why he came, one little boy answered, "To find a mamma." Arthur Fields went to the Worley Smith home on North Twelfth Street north of Clarinda, where he found a new brother, Cecil, and was later adopted. The Colowski brothers also found homes: Alexander was adopted by the Harry Douthit family as Alexander Douthit, and Walter was adopted by the Roy Beavers family as Harold R. Beavers, later became an army captain, and was killed in Korea. Other placements were temporary and are less well known: Howard Blizzard and Ethel Blizzard went to the Armstrong home near Blanchard, Byron Stevens to the Schoonover home near Clearfield, Mary and Anna Brodie to the Hoyt home in Clarinda, James Leroy Smith to the Scroggs home in Clarinda, Carrie Adams to Roy Baker's home west of Clarinda, and Isabel and Harry Adams to the Swanson home east of Stanton. In 1987, Mary Ellen Johnson established the Orphan Train Heritage Society of America, Inc., to gather and preserve the stories of orphan train riders nationwide.