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    Orphan Train Rider: One Boy's True Story
    Orphan Train Rider: One Boy's True Story
    Orphan Train Rider: One Boy's True Story
    Ebook76 pages56 minutes

    Orphan Train Rider: One Boy's True Story

    By Andrea Warren

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Between 1854 and 1930, more than 200,000 orphaned or abandoned children were sent west on orphan trains to find new homes. Some were adopted by loving families; others were not as fortunate. In recent years, some of the riders have begun to share their stories. Andrea Warren alternates chapters about the history of the orphan trains with the story of Lee Nailling, who in 1926 rode an orphan train.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAndrea Warren
    Release dateApr 2, 2013
    ISBN9781301029020
    Orphan Train Rider: One Boy's True Story
    Author

    Andrea Warren

    Andrea Warren says, "I'm always looking behind facts and dates in search of how extraordinary times impact ordinary people. I think the most engaging way to study history is by seeing it through the eyes of participants. Each of us wants to know, If that had been me at that time, in that place, what would I have done? What would have happened to me?" Among Warren's honors are the prestigious Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Orphan Train Rider: One Boy's True Story, which was also selected as an ALA Notable Book. She won the Midland Authors Award for Pioneer Girl. Growing Up on the Prairie. A former teacher and journalist, Warren writes from her home in the Kansas City suburb of Prairie Village, Kansas.

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    Reviews for Orphan Train Rider

    4/5

    43 ratings7 reviews

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    • 5/5
      An amazing American event that is almost never shared in school.Aimed at children in grades 4-8, this book is brief but powerful. The story told here is gut-wrenching at times but ends on a positive note. Highly recommended for any age.
    • 4/5
      A short and informative true story about a child's experience as an Orphan Train Rider. While it was interesting, it doesn't go into much depth. I do think it's worth the read and is an important story. I'd also encourage others who want more detail to read Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline. It is a very touching piece of historical fiction that deals with the same subject matter over the span of a girl's life.
    • 5/5
      The orphan train riders is a fascinating part of our nation's history that I was unaware of. This shares the story of one child's experience of being an orphan and an orphan train rider. Fortunately, this specific orphan train rider eventually found a happy ending, however, this was not always the result for all orphan train riders. I was very surprised at the treatment children experienced during the 19th and early 20th century. I was aware children were treated poorly and like mini adults, but this book provided me with an insight. Also, I had no idea orphans were almost an epidemic situation as there were thousands of homeless children during this era.
    • 5/5
      This book is about the life of a young boy whose mother dies and his father is too grief stricken to take care of the children. After being put in an orphanage he is sent on an orphan train with his two younger brothers to find a new family out west. Unfortunately, the boys are separated which makes the boy, Lee very unhappy. I thought this book was written quite well by switching chapters to refer to the history of the time and then back to Lee's specific story. I never even knew this was something that had happened until reading this book. It was a very sad story with a happy ending. The history in the story really makes you reflect on your own family.Classroom extension: I would the have the students do a research project to find other orphan train riders and write a short essay about the person they found.I would also have them do a writing exercise where they would write a short story describing something significant in their life.
    • 5/5
      It was a movement in the united states History that I did not know about and I am a Language teacher. IT was interesting and informational!!!!!!!
    • 4/5
      This book focuses on the life of 9 year old Lee whose father, unable to cope with his seven children after their mother's death, gave some of his children to the Children's Aid Society in NY while sending the older ones out into the world. Lee finds himself in an orphanage where he feels alone and angry at being separated from his siblings and father. Eventually Lee is picked to ride the orphan train, and after a few false starts, finds himself being placed in the care of benevolent and caring Ben and Ollie Nailling, with whom he finds a true home. And eventually reunites with his family who are still living. It portrays the lives of unwanted, abandoned, and homeless children who were supposed to get a second chance at life through the orphan trains. Many did find good homes but others were not as fortunate, finding themselves physically and sexually abused instead. I though Orphan Train Rider was a great read about a little known period in history. The book switched back and forth with each chapter from Lee's story in a narrative style to the history of the Orphan Trains. The pictures were a great addition to the story. I would definitely use this book in a middle school classroom as part of American History. Also, I could use this to talk about adoption since the Orphan Train was the beginning of adoption in the United States.
    • 4/5
      Andrea Warren has found a great way to explain the Orphan Trains to readers. She follows the story of one boy as he goes on his journey. As she points out in the books, many riders do not like to discuss this time period, so we are lucky to be reading this account. Following one person through this time period definitely makes the story more engaging and easy to follow. My only issue is that I felt like the story ended so suddenly. Lee was lucky to find a loving home and have his story wrapped up so well, but I wish readers could have been exposed to at least one depth story of a rider who did not find that happy ending. We get some brief asides about this, but nothing too thorough. The index and bibliography are useful, but brief. Warren is nice enough to point out which resources that she used are for younger readers.

    Book preview

    Orphan Train Rider - Andrea Warren

    ORPHAN TRAIN RIDER: ONE BOY’S TRUE STORY

    By

    Andrea Warren

    ORPHAN TRAIN RIDER: ONE BOY’S TRUE STORY

    Andrea Warren

    Smashwords Edition

    Copyright  1996 by Andrea Warren

    Hardback and paperback editions of this book published by Houghton Mifflin Publishing Company, New York, New York.

    E-book: copyright 2013 by Andrea Warren

    All rights reserved.

    No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo copying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author.

    By Andrea Warren

    http://andreawarren.com

    Print: ISBN-13: 978-0-395-91362-8

    EPUB ISBN-13: 978-1-301-02902-0

    Ebook and Cover engineered by Mike Lance Mike@theLances.info

    Introduction

    tmp_840833c9277309b70ed11a6cf148ea1e_OwvUbd_html_1e882e8e.jpg

    More than 250,000 children rode orphan trains in this country between 1854 and 1930. They were part of a placing out program created to find homes for children who were orphans or whose parents could not take care of them.

    Most of the riders came from New York or other large cities in the East. The trains brought groups of them to other parts of the country where they were lined up in front of crowds of curious onlookers. Interested families could then choose the child they wanted. Within a week a child could go from living in an orphanage or on city streets to living in a Midwestern farmhouse or village. Many children found parents who loved them and took care of them; others never felt at home with their new families. Some were mistreated.

    There is not much time left for orphan train riders to tell their stories. Those still alive are elderly. Some have never shared their experiences because they felt the shame of being a train kid, or they did not find a happy home at the end of their ride. Others, like Lee Nailling, whose story you are about to read, believe that it is important for Americans to know about the orphan trains and the children who rode them.

    Chapter One

     Lee Loses His Mother

    tmp_840833c9277309b70ed11a6cf148ea1e_OwvUbd_html_m36d12cf1.jpg

    Lee Nailling was seven years old when his mother died. He cannot remember her, nor the details of her death. His younger brother Leo, then four, remembers their mother’s funeral and being lifted up by a neighbor so he could see her in her coffin, but Lee does not.

    I guess blocking everything out of my mind is how I got through it, Lee says. The only photo I’ve ever seen of her showed her as a child. Her name was Julia. She was thirty-five when she died of complications after the birth of my youngest brother. I could see in that photo how beautiful she was. She had dark brown eyes and thick, wavy black hair.

    In 1924, the year his mother died, Lee’s name was Alton Lou Clement. He was the middle of seven children and had two older brothers, Ross and Fred, an older sister, Evelyn, and three younger brothers, Leo, Gerald, and the new baby, George. Another brother and sister had died as infants.

    From what Lee can piece together about that time, his mother’s death caused his father to be overcome with grief. For a few months he tried to care for his seven children. Then, perhaps because of his sorrow, or because he made too little money from their small farm in upstate New York, or because of some weakness in his own character, he gave up.

    He told his three oldest children that they would have to leave home and take care of themselves. He gave the baby to family friends. Somebody else took Gerald, then a year old. Although Lee is now a great-grandfather, he has never forgotten what happened to him and Leo.

    "Someone—probably our father—took us to an orphanage and left us there. It was the Jefferson County Orphan Asylum in Watertown, New York. We had no idea what was happening to us. We just wanted to be with our family. Instead, we were suddenly in this strange, unfriendly place where no one ever spoke kindly to us. We slept

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