R-H library hosting ‘Great American Migration’ program

STAFF REPORTS

ORPHAN TRAIN: Program began to help find new lives outside NYC.

Most people don’t know that from 1854 to 1929, an estimated 300,000 orphaned, abandoned, and homeless children were placed throughout the United States and Canada during the Orphan Train Movement.

The Orphan Train Movement, also dubbed the “Great American Migration,” began to help find new lives for the tens of thousands of abandoned children living on the streets of New York City. The children were transported on trains which were eventually labeled “orphan trains.”

Holly Canham of the Orleans County Genealogical Society will be at the Royalton Hartland Community Library at 7 p.m. Wednesday to present a program about the Orphan Train Movement and to share more real history about the lives it impacted. She will also be discussing the educational reenactment of an Orphan Train that took place in April 2004 onboard moving locomotives.

All ages are invited to attend this free historical program. It will take place in the upstairs meeting room at the library. Refreshments will be served courtesy of the Friends of the Library.

For more information about the Orphan Train program, call the library at 7353281 or go to the library’s website at www.RoyHart-CommunityLibrary.com.

It is estimated that nearly 300,000 abandoned children were transported from New York City to new homes in the United States and Canada on the “Orphan Trains” over a 75 year period.

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO