The Facts and Fictions of the Orphan Train

There have been movies such as Orphan Train starring Glenn Close, and books such as Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline, but what is the REAL story of the orphan train? Since the book and the movie are fiction, how truthful are the stories they tell? Curator Heather Bigwood of the National Orphan Train Complex, a museum in Concordia, Kansas that specializes in researching and preserving the national history of the orphan train, will tell all. She will help the audience tell fact from fiction. She will guide the audience through the ideals of the Orphan Train Movement as well as its pitfalls, sharing vignettes of real Orphan Train Riders’ lives. She will address common misconceptions about the orphan train and how those assumptions came to be formed. A question-and-answer session will be held at the end of the presentation.

This presentation will be livestreamed from Kansas via Zoom, allowing you to participate from home or at the Library.