The Lakeway Arts Committee proudly presents a marvelous production at the Lakeway Activity Center on Sunday, Jan. 25 at 2 p.m. The production is free and open to the community.

“Riders on the Orphan Train is a presentation of extraordinary stories dedicated to providing a contemporary, multi-media format with which to tell the stories of unsung heroes and ordinary people,” said Janet Wright, Arts Committee chairman. “The purpose is to inform, entertain, and move audiences of all ages with a humanities-based program to bring awareness to little-known chapters in history.”
Novelist and Humanities Scholar Alison Moore and singer/songwriter Phil Lancaster have combined audio visual elements, historical fiction and musical ballads into a collaborative performance that brings the Orphan Trains, a largely-unknown chapter in American history, to the public.
The one-hour multi-media presentation, Riders on the Orphan Train, tells the story of the 250,000 orphans and unwanted children who were put on trains in New York between 1854 and 1929 and sent all over the United States to be given away. An estimated 1200 of these children came to Texas. The presentation is comprised of original music, an audio-visual presentation of archival photographs and interviews with surviving orphan train riders (one who came to Mineola) and is followed by a dramatic recitation from a forthcoming historical novel about the Orphan Trains by Alison Moore. The presentation is made possible through a mini-grant provided by Humanities Texas.
Historical Background
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. Originally organized by minister Charles Loring Brace to rid New York of homeless street children and provide them with an opportunity to find new homes in the developing Midwest, this nearly eighty year experiment in child migration is filled with horror stories and happy endings. The last train came to Sulphur Springs, Texas in 1929.
The trains stopped 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. Until the release of a 1993 documentary on PBS’s The American Experience, these children’s stories were largely untold.
Moore 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 Arkansas. She received her MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers in 1990. Currently, she lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Terlingua, Texas, and is completing a novel on the Orphan Trains. She has developed public outreach programs for the Orphan Train Heritage Society of America, Inc., and for ArtsReach, a Native American literacy project in southern Arizona. She is the author of three books, a collection of short stories entitled Small Spaces between Emergencies (Mercury House, 1992) one of the Notable Books of 1993 chosen by the American Library Association, a novel, Synonym for Love (Mercury House, 1995) and her newest, The Middle of Elsewhere.
Alison and her husband, musician Lancaster, have been touring Arkansas, Texas, and Arizona performing a multimedia program about the Orphan Trains with funding from state Humanities Councils.
Professor Strings, a.k.a. Lancaster, will demonstrate the history and versatility of stringed instruments and the varying styles of playing them. His instruments include fiddle, mandolin, mandocello (a rare instrument from the turn of the last century), banjo (including frailing, claw-hammer and bluegrass styles) and guitar (including finger-picking, flat-picking, blues, gospel and country styles). The Professor’s different instruments will be featured in topical songs principally relating to Arkansas history. This educational and entertaining program is geared for both children and adults to improve musical and cultural awareness.