The Gladney Center for Adoption

Masonic Widows and Orphans Home

 I have volunteered for over a decade at a local crisis pregnancy center and for our monthly training session we toured The Gladney Center for Adoption. The interesting history of the Center is shown at the Visitor's Center along with artifacts that once belonged to Edna Gladney and clothes from the children who once lived at The Texas Children's Home which later became the Edna Gladney Home.












Long gone are the days when children were put on orphan trains in New York and traveled west where they stopped at various towns and were put on a platform for people to adopt them. This is where the phrase "put up for adoption" comes from. Fort Worth was the end of the line for these children and in the early 1900s a Methodist minister took in the children and found homes for them.

Edna Gladney was the superintendent of the Texas Children's Home for over 30 years and worked tirelessly for reform. As a result of her efforts, the word illegitimate is no longer written on birth certificates of children born to unwed mothers.




In 1941 Greer Garson portrayed Edna Gladney in Blossoms in the Dust. Edna Gladney assisted in placing over 10,000 children for adoption during her career.