Special to the Leesville Leader

Few people today know much about the largest child migration in history. Between 1854 and 1929 more than 250,000 orphans and unwanted children were sent from New York City by train to find new homes in every state in the continental United States. About 5,000 children sent by the Sisters of Charity of the New York Foundling Hospital found new homes in Louisiana. Locations include Opelousas, Eunice, Lafayette, New Orleans, Mansura, Baton Rouge, Avoyelles Parish, Houma, St. Landry Parish, New Iberia, Waterford and Cottonport, among others.

The program is the official outreach program of the National Orphan Train Complex Museum and Research Center based in Concordia, Kan. Their mission is to raise awareness and preserve stories about the orphan train movement. The Louisiana Orphan Train Museum in Opelousas provided local research.

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.

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 75-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.

Local relatives and acquaintances of Orphan Train Riders are invited to attend and share their stories with the audience.

Call the Vernon Parish Library at 337-239-2027 or 800-737-2231, come by the main branch at 1401 Nolan Trace in Leesville, LA, or visit www.vernonparishlibrary.org and www.facebook.com/vernonparishlib.