Frank Carlson Library

Discusses the placement of over 200,000 orphaned or abandoned children in homes throughout the Midwest from 1854 to 1929 by recounting the story of one boy and his brothers.

In the late 1800s, Marianne travels westward on the Orphan Train in hopes of being placed with a caring family.

Nineteen-year-old Frances Mary Kelly, herself an orphan train rider six years before, returns to New York and agrees to escort a group of orphans west to find new homes.

A twelve-year-old Polish American girl is boarded onto an orphan train in Chicago with fears about traveling to the West and a life of unpaid slavery.

This book tells the true story of Mabel Gummersell at age 4 and her toy elephant Elky and their ride on the Orphan Train in 1901.

Describes the orphan train movement through the eyes of one small child who yearns to know her "real" mother, survives a tortured childhood, when she encountered whippings and sexual abuse, and ultimately, as an adult, comes to terms with her past, her faith, and herself.

Based on real orphan trains which resettled children in the Midwest at the turn of the century. Billy, a streetwise kid from New York, is sent to Nebraska and is taken in by a Swedish farm family.

Presents a young reader's version of a story in which Molly, close to aging out of the foster care system, takes a position helping an elderly woman named Vivian and discovers that they are more alike than different as she helps Vivian solve a mystery from her past.

"Riders on the Orphan Train is a novel about a little-known piece of American history. Bewteen 1854 and 1929, over 250,000 orphans and 'surrendered' children were 'placed out' across the country. They started their journey in New York and were given away in train stations in every state in the continental United States. This is the story of two children from very different backgrounds, Ezra Duval and Elizabeth Farrell, who find themselves on the same...

Countless perils menaced the early settlers of the Wild West -- and not the least of them was the lack of medical care. Dr. Dane Logan, a former street waif who has been adopted by a doctor's family in Cheyenne, puts his lifelong dream to work filling this need. His renown as a surgeon spreads throughout the frontier, even while his love grows for the beautiful Tharyn, an orphan he lost contact with when he left New York City as a child. Will happiness...