They are, or were, the Baptist and Lutheran orphanages. Both appeared on the Salem scene in the early 1890s and have played a significant role in the town's development ever since. They're no longer called orphanages; their names and purposes have changed, but they're still serving children and their families in a myriad of ways.

They came to Salem at a time when accidents and dread diseases -- like tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid, and malaria robbed thousands of children of their parents. In those post Civil War years, according to one report, the number of orphans grew to "unthinkable levels," and: "Across Virginia, frightened children roamed the streets and countryside begging for handouts and mercy."

Ministers in numerous denominations called for action. Salem's two orphanages came as a result.

First in Salem was the Baptist Orphanage of Virginia, approved by the Virginia Baptist General Association in 1889 and the Virginia General Assembly a year later. It opened its doors in Salem on July 2, 1892, to its first two children, a brother and sister from Vinton, and placed them in its first building, a three-story "cottage" named for Salem merchant John M. Evans. Evans had donated 16 acres as the home's original site, and, although enlarged, it remains the site today.

Four years later, in May of 1896, the Lutheran Orphan Home of the South moved to Salem, into a two-story brick home at the southeast corner of Florida Street and the Boulevard. The children's home has moved several times within Salem since then, but the brick house still stands at Florida and Boulevard in front of Kiwanis Stadium where it houses the Florida Street Center of the City Department of Recreation and Parks. .

In their more than a century of service, according to combined estimates from the two homes, they have served ten to fifteen thousand troubled Virginia children.

Opening the Baptist home in Salem came after much discussion. The Baptist Association considered offers from Fork Union, Glade Spring, Chatham and Liberty (Bedford), before selecting Salem. Once opened, however, it developed rapidly under the leadership of its first superintendent, the Rev. George J. Hobday. New buildings began appearing with regularity on the crescent shaped campus at the northern edge of town. A gift in 1897 of 87 more acres enabled the home to expand into full-scale farming.

When it came to Salem, the Lutheran Home actually was older than the Baptist. It started in 1888 when its founder, the Rev. W. S. McClanahan, at his own expense, took several orphans into his own home near Hollins. In 1893, the home moved to the David Trout property east of Salem for a three-year stint, then to the Florida Street address in Salem. That move assuredly was related to the fact that Dr. F. V. N. Painter, professor of modern languages at Roanoke College, was non-resident superintendent at the time..

It didn't stay on Florida Street long. Under the leadership of the Rev. Benjamin W. Cronk, who succeeded Painter in 1897, the Lutherans in 1899-90 bought and moved into a very elegant five-story building, formerly the Hotel Salem, on College Avenue at Fifth Street. The new building on the site of today's Andrew Lewis Middle School -- was to serve the orphanage until 1927.

Hence, by the turn of the Twentieth century, both orphanages were going full swing, occupying prominent places in the town, both physically and spiritually. Children in both homes marched in Salem's Centennial parade on June 4, 1902. Children at both orphanages participated in the ministries of the respective churches, Salem Baptist and College Lutheran. Baptists and Lutherans from distant churches made regular visitations to the orphanages. And, as years passed, alumni or "old kids" as the Baptists called them -- came back to visit their old institutions, and they still do.

The two homes became Salem landmarks. The Lutheran home thrived in the old Hotel Salem an imposing, 80-room, red-brick structure, almost castle-like in appearance, with its tower, turrets, dormers and arched windows.

A year later, the Baptists built a new administration building that, architecturally, was at least as impressive. It also had tower, turret, dormers and arched windows, and inside there were the executive offices, an assembly hall, a dining hall for 250, a kitchen to feed them, bakery, chapel, library, recreation room, and a half dozen classrooms and rooms. When it opened in 1901 on the crescent shaped campus, on each side was a string of other new buildings: an infirmary, superintendent's home, industrial shop, and another sturdy "cottage" (this one with slate roof). A new barn sat nearby, built because a gift of 87 acres in 1897 had enabled the home to expand into a full-scale farming and dairy operation.

Both homes developed strong financial bases. Salem institutions and individuals contributed generously toward their upkeep. A concerted fund drive by the Lutheran United Synod liquidated that home's building debt by 1907. The Baptist General Association and Salem churches and citizens, as well as supporters throughout the state, kept the Baptist home affluent.

Both paid heavy attention to their children's education. The Lutheran home operated a school on premises to offer the "necessary branches of learning," along with manual training for both girls and boys. The Baptist home, where children dressed in uniform-like attire, also provided formal instruction for the children. Early in their history, the two homes home began a long and difficult process of integration of the children into Salem's public schools. The professional staffs as well as their respective churches provided religious instruction in both homes.

Both homes opened job printing shops as part of their manual training, where boys helped do the institutional printing and learned a trade at the same time. Boys also did farm and garden work, while girls learned household skills and performed household chores. The homes got new fangled telephones and electric lights to replace their dangerous oil lamps.

In 1904, the Rev. John T. Crabtree, Confederate veteran, former Salem High School principal and Roanoke College professor (he had become an orphan himself at age 8), succeeded Cronk as superintendent of the Lutheran home. During his tenure, until 1922, the home housed more than 100 children and still had to turn away applicants. When Hobday's tenure as Baptist superintendent ended in 1906, the home housed 154 children, and it grew to nearly 200 by the 1920s.

There were problems. Hobday reported eight boys who ran away six on one occasion and two others who stayed away fifteen days but all were returned. The Baptist home was quarantined in 1905 when 15 cases of varioloid, a milder form of smallpox, developed among the residents, but the epidemic was brought under control. In 1910, three children died when an epidemic of amoebic dysentery broke out in the Baptist home. In the terrible Spanish flu epidemic that broke out nationally in September 1918, the Baptist Orphanage had over 60 cases; was under strict quarantine, and Mary Denton, a nurse, died Oct. 3 as a result of flu complicated by pneumonia.

The Lutherans bought a 22-acre farm in 1916 and acquired 61 more acres in 1918, land that would enable them to go into large scale farming operations. Meanwhile, they were outgrowing even their palatial hotel building on College Avenue. With strong support from the church and community, they built up $32,000 in endowments and $36,000 toward the building fund and began thinking of bigger quarters.

A tragic happenstance changed the Lutheran home's history in 1921 when fire destroyed Elizabeth College, never to reopen. The board of the Lutheran home bought the college's campus site in 1923 for $31,500. With subscriptions of over $170,000 raised by southern synods, cornerstone for new home was laid in 1925 and dedicated in 1926, and a new campus was begun.

The Lutherans built an administration building and two cottages among the stately oaks of the former Burwell-Logan plantation, known as "Sherwood," just off the Lynchburg Turnpike. The buildings were occupied Nov 4, 1926, and dedicated 5 days later. "Sherwood," a manor house on the campus that had been used for college classes, was demolished in August 1925 to make way for the orphanage facilities. This had been home of Martha Digges Burwell Logan and James T. Logan and their son, Robert Logan, and the scene of many social functions for the young and old of Salem.

By 1930, the Lutherans, still prospering, had about 126 children. With a new dairy barn and herd of cattle, they moved into big time farm work, and even that was profitable. In 1932, they added a new superintendent's home.

During these years before and after World War II, the Lutherans redesigned their living quarters to make them more like a "real" home. Open dormitory style living, with beds and footlockers in a row, gave way to cottages with double rooms, furniture, closet space and shared baths. Boys were allowed to go to the barber shop for their haircuts individually, rather than being marched down as a group after hours to a barbershop where haircuts were given GI style for 50 cents a head. In the public schools, the home children were allowed to go through the cafeteria lines individually instead of being sent through as a group.

The Baptists, too, continued to do well. When Raymond Franklin Hough Sr. was elected superintendent in 1928, he directed a plant of more than thirty buildings, barns and other structures. (His tenure continued until 1957 when he was succeeded by his son, Franklin Hough Jr., who then served until 1985.) With physical plant needs now largely met, Hough Sr. turned to programmatic matters: he eliminated the last vestiges of children's uniforms. It was a major achievement when he persuaded local school officials to accept the home's children more than 200 of them -- into Salem's public schools a process fraught with complications. He also instituted a policy and the financial structure to send qualified home children on to colleges and universities after high school graduation. And despite the Depression, he kept the home sound financially, even increasing its endowment.

Farm and dairy operations at the Baptist home were at peak levels during his tenure. (In April, 1930, responding to a special drive, Virginia Baptists around the state contributed 2,500 grown chickens to the home flooding the campus with white leghorns; the following month, the poultry yard produced 4,600 dozen fresh eggs.)

In another activity, the Baptist Orphanage's press became so well established that it was used temporarily in 1931 to print the Salem Times-Register and Sentinel when the newspaper plant was destroyed in a fire.

After World War II, the two homes experienced modest growth for a decade or more, with signs that they might continue to develop as in the past. The Lutheran home installed three walk-in refrigerators and a deep freeze in 1950 and cottaged its largest population ever -- 140 children -- in the 1950s. The Baptist Home fielded its own athletic teams with full schedules in football, basketball and baseball (mainly, some said, for boys who couldn't make the team at high school). And Hough Jr. led an aggressive program to replace a number of its old and outdated buildings.

But it was during this period that both came to grips with a new fact: orphans had largely disappeared. More and more, they found themselves dealing not with orphans, but neglected or abused children, children of broken homes and a new term "dysfunctional families." The diseases that had created orphans in the earlier years had largely been controlled. "Orphans" those lovable, innocent parentless waifs like Little Orphan Annie  were getting hard to find. For some time, the homes had accepted "half-orphans," children with only one parent, and increasing numbers of non-orphans. Leonard G. Muse said when he joined the Baptist home's board in1926, "80% of the children were orphans and 20% were non-orphans." When he retired 52 years later, the ratio was 20% orphans, 80% non-orphans. By the end of the 1980s, the ratio was closer to 98% - 2%.

There were still troubled children in the post-war era more than ever but they did not need new roofs over their heads and substitutes for their mothers and dads. To the contrary, they needed families and the strengths and support families can give, and it was the families that needed help. The job at hand was to unite and strengthen the children's families and make them more supportive, not to remove the children from them and provide a substitute for them.

An early but clear sign of the change came when both homes removed references to "orphans" from their names. The Lutheran home, named the "South View Orphan Home" in 1887 and renamed the "Lutheran Orphan Home of the South" in 1894, became the "Lutheran Children's Home of the South" in 1947. The Baptist home, known as the "Baptist Orphanage of Virginia" since 1890, became the "Virginia Baptist Children's Home" in 1953. Even those names did not last.

Both homes began moving away from general on-campus residential care for children to more specialized social services for them and their families, wherever they were located. The Baptist Home retained its campus but changed its programs offered on it, while the Lutherans moved away entirely from the concept of institutional residential care.

As part of their decentralization program, the Lutherans began getting rid of their physical property. In 1960, they sold their dairy herd at public auction and virtually ended their farm program. Three years later, they sold 73 acres of land across Texas Street for the Salem Civic Center, earmarking much of the money for their newly evolving ministry. In 1985, they sold 78 acres from the old Elizabeth College campus to Roanoke College, retaining only 10 acres along Idaho Street and Lynchburg Turnpike in the northwest corner of the property. They finally sold that to Hotel Roanoke in the early 1990s.

Meanwhile, the Lutherans moved aggressively to extend their program elsewhere in the state. In 1983, following extensive self-studies, the Lutheran board created the Lutheran Family Services of Virginia, an umbrella organization to administer the new group homes and services that were being created to replace the Children's Home. By the early 1990s, the agency ministered to children and their families with professionally supervised children's services in Harrisonburg, Tazewell, Wytheville, Marion, Bedford, Richmond, Portsmouth, Newport News, Roanoke and Salem. The services included a foster care program for children removed from their homes due to neglect or abuse.

In 1984, they opened two new youth homes as part of a long-range plan to decentralize and diversify the home's services, under direction of Lutheran Family Services of Virginia.

Unlike the Lutherans, the Baptist home held onto its land (reflecting the changing times, they began calling it "real estate," not "farm land"). Today, they have 70 acres on the main Salem campus and another 500 on Fort Lewis Mountain behind.

The Baptist Home also moved toward strengthening and making major revisions to the programs on the Salem campus. Whereas many children spent their entire childhood at the home in earlier years, their average stay grew shorter, and the average age of the children increased, as the home admitted more troubled teen-agers and young adults. Services offered in Salem went far beyond the traditional care of children in the home: to training of foster parents, family counseling, pregnancy counseling, adoption services, financial aid, The Baptists also moved toward more specifically directed programs at the home: separate programs for 9- to 16-year-olds; for girls who had been sexually abused; for boys needing more structured life, for older youths needing to learn independent living, and a program for adult men mentally unable to care for themselves. They also instituted an Emergency Care program providing instant responses to children's crises; many children admitted for emergency care go on later into the home's regular programs, Hough reports.

Like the Lutherans, the Baptists spread their services statewide. Beginning in 1979, the Baptist Home opened regional offices in Northern Virginia, Richmond and Newport News where trained staffs still minister the programs to children and families in their own homes. The services include foster family care programs, maternity foster care programs, and adoption services. The home also provides a "Wilderness Outdoor Opportunity and Discovery School" as a year-round wilderness-based school for boys ages 9-17 in Craig County; a "Bridge Program" in Northern Virginia for young women wishing to live independently; and a special Developmental Disabilities Ministry, with five homes around the state, for the retarded.

In 1967, Hough Jr. reported about half of the children ministered to by the home were in :"boarding homes, adoption, family aid and in training above the high school level."

Children no longer live at the Lutheran Home off the Lynchburg Turnpike, but the Lutheran presence is still there. As part of their statewide program, the Lutherans operate the Minnick Education Center, a day school for Roanoke Valley children who cannot succeed in the public schools, in a brick buildings leased back from Roanoke College.

The Baptist Home still houses 45-60 young people on its Salem campus -- most from abusive or neglectful families. They're involved in programs of emergency care, a program for severely abused and emotionally disturbed adolescents, and the traditional residential care program involving counseling, guidance and support.

The names of the two institutions continue to change. In 1985, the Baptist Home became "The Virginia Baptist Children's Home and Family Services." And the Lutheran Children's Home of the South, although still a legal entity, is now largely replaced by its creation, Lutheran Family Services of Virginia.

Thanks to the Salem Museum Historical Society for this Article.