Riders on the Orphan Train Program Comes to the Anadarko Community Library
The Oklahoma Humanities Council has funded free public presentations in four libraries in the state. The program will come to the Anadarko Community Library, 215 W Broadway, OK, 73005, on October 27 at 5:00 PM. The program is the official outreach program of the National Orphan Train Complex Museum and Research Center based in Concordia, KS. Their mission is to raise awareness and preserve stories about the orphan train movement.
Few people today know much about the largest child migration in history. 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. Children were sent to every state in the continental United States; the last train went to Sulphur Springs, Texas in 1929. At least five hundred children came to our state in the early 1900’s to find new homes in Enid, Tulsa, McAlester, Sand Springs, Sayre, Shawnee, Tahlequah (Fort Gibson), Guthrie, Broken Arrow, and Oklahoma City.
This “placing out” system was originally organized by Methodist minister Charles Loring Brace and the Children’s Aid Society of New York. His mission was to rid the streets and overcrowded orphanages of orphaned and abandoned children, and provide them with an opportunity to find new homes. Many of the children were not orphans but “surrendered” by parents too impoverished to provide for them. The New York Foundling Hospital, a Catholic organization, also sent out children to be placed in Catholic homes. This seventy-five year experiment in child relocation is filled with the entire spectrum of human emotion, from heartbreak to happy endings and reveals a great deal about the successes and failures of the American Dream.
The one-hour multi- media program combines live music by Phillip Lancaster and Alison Moore, video montage with archival photographs and interviews of survivors, and a dramatic reading of the 2012 novel “Riders on the Orphan Train” by award-winning author Alison Moore. Although the program is about children, it is designed to engage audiences of all ages and to inform, inspire and raise awareness about this little-known part of our history.
Local relatives and acquaintances of Orphan Train Riders are especially invited to attend and share their stories with the audience.
Presenters of “Riders on the Orphan Train”
Alison Moore, MFA, is a former Assistant Professor of English/Creative Writing in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Arizona and a current Humanities Scholar in Texas. She lives in Austin and completed the historical novel “Riders on the Orphan Train” with a fiction fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a grant from the Texas Institute of Letters and the Dobie/Paisano Foundation of the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of three other books, a collection of short stories entitled “The Middle of Elsewhere” (Phoenix International/University of Arkansas Press 2006), a novel, “Synonym for Love” (Penguin/Plume, 1996) and the short fiction collection “Small Spaces between Emergencies” (Mercury House, 1992), one of the Notable Books of 1993 chosen by The American Library Association. In 2004 she received the Katherine Ann Porter Prize for Fiction. In 2012 she received the Charles Loring Brace Award for helping to preserve the stories of Orphan Train Riders.
Phil Lancaster was born in Texarkana and studied art and music at L’Ecole De Beaux Arts in Angers, France. He became a member of a bluegrass band that traveled and played throughout France and produced an album entitled “Bluegrass Oldies Ltd./Traveling Show.” He also worked as a stage theatre technician for La Coursive Theatre Nationale in La Rochelle, France. After returning to the U.S. he met three Arkansas musicians and the acoustic quartet “Still on the Hill” was formed in Fayetteville. They released their first CD in 1997, the second in 2000. The group performed at national and international festivals. In 2002 he co-produced the documentary film, “Gospel, Biscuits & Gravy” about Ozark gospel singer Ernestine Gulledge Sheperd. In 2007 he received an Arkansas Arts Council fellowship for Music Composition. He currently lives in Austin and is a co-presenter of “Riders on the Orphan Train.”
In 2012 he received the Charles Loring Brace Award for helping to preserve the stories of Orphan Train Riders.
“…the program far exceeded any expectations I may have had, as did the community’s response…this was by far the most well-attended program the library has ever offered….everyone who attended was moved, educated and entertained…your program truly made an impact on our community.”
–Cecilia Hurt Barham, Decatur Public Library, Decatur, TX