Research and Rough Drafts?

My morning is late, and yet I ache with hope for my writing.

I have only a little more time, and I've come to a crossroads, a new scene, a new place, and I worry (doubt) that I haven't done enough research for the setting and the time. My characters are entering an early orphanage. Visions of Oliver dance through my head, and yet, I don't want this place to be that grim. Am I re-writing history? Were there any good orphanages in Europe in the 18th century?

Should I set my novel, True Love's Gifts, in a another time period? Another place? A fantastical setting that I can make up as I go?

These questions plague me, and yet I feel this need to write the story anyway, to get the characters, and their hopes, dreams and passions onto the page a little bit at a time.

How important is research to a rough draft?

Maybe I should ask my neice who went to an orphanage in Kenya recently, and re-set my story to a modern time? Except I'm not sure how any of it would work . . . with partridges, pears, turtledoves, and blackbirds . . . it seems I have to have a European or American setting . . . aaagh!