Frank Carlson Library

Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children whose fates would be determined by luck and chance. This is the story of one such child. As a young Irish immigrant, Vivian Daly was sent by rail from New York City to an uncertain future a world away. Returning east later in life, Vivian leads a quiet, peaceful existence on the coast...

"Sophie Newmann has been taking care of two children, trying to keep th em away from the orphanages of 1850s New York City. After witnessing a crime, Sophie flees the state, taking her tow young charges and joining an orphan train heading west. But now she faces the agonizing possibility that the orphans will be placed in new homes. Sophie finds unexpected help in the form of Reinhold Weiss, who now owns a farm. Reinhold has mounting debs, a harvest...

Deeply unhappy about the separation of her family because of poverty, twelve-year-old Megan gradually finds contentment and purpose in her new home on the Kansas prairie with a kind and loving adopted family.

In 1860, having traveled with his young sister from New York to a foster home on a farm near St. Joseph, Missouri, ten-year-old Danny plots to get his newly-widowed foster father to send for and marry his mother.

In 1860, when their widowed mother can no longer support them, six siblings are sent on the orphan train by the Children's Aid Society of New York City to live with farm families in Missouri.

In 1861, while living with his foster parents at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, twelve-year-old Mike Kelly and his best friend Todd Blakely join the Union army as drummer boys but their dreams of glory end when they experience the full horrors of war at the Battle of Wilson's Creek in Missouri.

In 1863, eleven-year-old Peg Kelly is drawn into the dangerous activities of a mysterious young woman who takes refuge with the Kelly family in Missouri after fleeing the attack on Lawrence, Kansas, by William Quantrill and his Confederate raiders.

A Bundle of ComplicationsGroomed for high society, Rebecca Sterling now has a new mission - to help the orphans coming to Evans Grove. Yet just before she's due to return to New York, she faces two unexpected challenges. There's the tiny infant abandoned on her orphanage steps - and the big, gruff cowboy who found him. Colton Hayes knows nothing about babies and even less about pampered socialites. But as he and Rebecca work together to watch over...

"Lily Chalmers wanted only two things from life -- a farm of her own, and to find the sisters she hadn't seen since they were all little girls heading West on the orphan train ... She certainly had no desire for a husband. Yet proud, innocent Lily had no idea what desire meant until she met Major Caleb Halliday, a man who could ignite her very being with a touch ... a glance ... a whisper. Sheltered in his arms, Lily rode the crest of a wild, helpless...

Holding her lovely head high, Wyoming schoolmistress Caroline Chalmers did what no lady should: she marched right into the local saloon to see the dashing and reckless Guthrie Hayes. Worse still, she went to ask him for help. She needed the former Confederate raider to plan a jailbreak to rescue her fiancé, Seaton Flynn, from the hangman's noose. An orphan by spinster sisters, Caroline was prepared do almost anything to save her beloved Seaton. So...