The Orphan Train rides into Stillwater tonight

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Largely unknown chapter of American history

Musician Phil Lancaster and author Alison Moore will provide details of the 250,000 homeless and unwanted children given away on “Orphan Trains” across the U.S.

Between 1854 and 1929 over 250,000 orphans and unwanted children were taken out of New York City and given away at train stations across America. Novelist and humanities scholar Alison Moore and singer/songwriter Phil Lancaster will bring the story of this largely unknown chapter of American history to the Stillwater Public Library on Monday, July 15, at 7 p.m.

“The orphan trains were originally organized by Minister Charles Loring Brace to rid New York of homeless street children and to provide them an opportunity to find new homes in the developing Midwest,” said Moore. “This experiment in child migration is filled with both horror stories and happy endings.”

According to Moore, the trains would stop in pre-selected towns where people interested in taking a child would assemble. The children were lined up on the platform or a meeting hall stage, encouraged to perform or sing to endear them to prospective takers and were inspected, often prodded and poked to determine whether or not they would be good workers on farms or local businesses. Children not chosen were put back on the train and many were shuttled from family to family and town to town.

Moore and Lancaster are performing “Riders on the Orphan Train” across the nation this summer as an outreach program for the National Orphan Train Complex Museum and Research Center in Concordia, KS. The program combines original music and an audio-visual presentation of archival photographs and interviews with surviving orphan train riders. It is followed by a dramatic recitation from Moore’s historical novel about the Orphan Trains.

After the presentation, Moore and Lancaster will lead an information discussion about the origin and demise of the largest child migration in history and the part it played in the formation of the American Dream.

“The human struggle to belong, to define one's self in the place we call home is exemplified in the stories of these children,” said Moore. “They reveal a great deal about the successes and failures of the American Dream.

Moore is a former Assistant Professor of English/Creative Writing in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Arizona. She lives in Austin and has just published the historical novel "Riders on the Orphan Train." She is the author of three previous books, including a collection of short stories entitled “Small Spaces between Emergencies” which was an American Library Association “Notable Book.” She received the Katherine Ann Porter Prize for Fiction in 2004.

Lancaster studied art and music at L’Ecole De Beaux Arts in Angers, France. He has been a member of several music acts, releasing CDs in both France and the U.S. In 2007, he received an Arkansas Arts Council Fellowship in Music Composition.

“Riders of the Orphan Train” is free and open to the public. It is suitable for all ages.

For more information, visit the library at http://library.stillwater.org or on Facebook and Twitter.

The Stillwater Public Library is located at 1107 S. Duck St. Library hours are Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Sunday 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.