I am interested in knowing when The Children's Home in Brown County was established. I searched the 1850 and 1860 (page by page) census of Brown and Clermont counties and did not find an orphanage, or a large group of unrelated children enumerated together. If the Children's Home was in operation in the 1850s, can someone tell me which township it was in? I guess I missed it. It might provide me with a link to where Jacob Berst of first Campbell County, KY and later Clermont County, OH might have placed Catherine Berst before she was indentured to the Braun/Brown family in the Village of Arnheim (ca. 1850s). In "Child Placing in Ohio," which was published by the Division of Charities, Dept. of Public Welfare in Columbus Ohio in 1928, I read: p. 42: "BROWN COUNTY, POPULATION 22,621 "Brown County, a rural county of about 22,000 population, stretching along the Ohio River, with the county seat at Georgetown, was the first county to take advantage of the foregoing law in the abandonment of the Children's Home. This institution, a large rambling brick structure, built many decades ago, was in such bad condition that the commissioners were faced with abandonment and rebuilding a new institution or adopting the other plan of appointing a Child Welfare Board which would proceed to care for the children in family homes. "The latter was done after the old institution was legally abandoned and closed in 1922. A placing agent was secured and home finding became an active concern of the board and placing agent. One family licensed to board as many as six children has served for the past few years as the receiving home where children first come and stay temporarily until they are placed in other foster homes. "Since the Child Welfare Board has taken charge of the work in 1922, they have had 71 wards who have been cared for in this manner." And on p. 10,: CHILDREN IN INFIRMARIES, JAILS AND REFORM SCHOOLS "In 1853 township trustees, overseers of the poor, and certain public officers were given legal rights to "bind out" orphan children to any orphan asylum incorporated under the laws of the state, the children to remain in said orphan asylum until the trustees should find suitable homes for them when they might be indentured at service. Thus the dependent, neglected child was either "bound out" to the few private orphan asylums then existing with the possibility of placement by the trustees of the asylum; was indentured to a private family directly by the township trustees or overseers of the poor, or was sent to the jail, infirmary, or an overcrowded reform school. For years thereafter and until the County Children's Home system got under way, most of the dependent children were tragic objects of humanity, swarming the infirmaries that housed the dregs of adult and senile society. There were 2273 children under 16 years of age under care in the infirmaries during the year 1877 (Annual Report of Ohio Board State Charities, 1876, p. 103) ." On p. 6, "That placing dependent children in the care of private families was early practiced by Ohio institutions and agencies was brought to light time and again by the old Ohio Board of State Charities after its creation in 1867, with general inspectional powers to ascertain the conditions in all charitable institutions. It was not, however, until 1913 that the care and protection of the dependent children of the State became an active and specialized function of the state government." Thanks to anyone who even reads all this! Buffy