REMEMBERING ORPHAN TRAINS

From 1854 until 1929, an estimated 150,000 orphaned and half-orphaned children were shipped by train from Eastern metropolises to farm communities in the Midwest. Some 6,000 of the so-called Orphan Train Riders wound up in Missouri, where they were taken in by childless families or those just looking for help on the farm.

Many of the now-few surviving riders describe traumatic separations from brothers and sisters and scenes in which they were lined up like cattle to be picked or rejected by the local citizenry. But generally their lives seem to have been improved by moving away from New York's horrors.

The arrival of orphan trains was a big event in small Midwestern communities. The townsfolk turned out at a church or meeting hall where the boys' muscles and the girls' looks were evaluated before the selections were made. In some cases, the children were simply adopted and became part of the family. In others they because informally indentured servants.

Not much effort was made to keep brothers and sisters together, although sometimes they were placed in neighboring communities.

Thirty-second Circuit Judge William Syler's grandfather and his three sisters arrived in the Midwest aboard an orphan train. Two of the sisters got off the train in Ohio, while Syler's grandfather and the other sister were deposited in Powersville, Mo., near Kirksville.

There, two brothers named Pollock each took one of them. "He was raised as a son," Syler said of his grandfather, but was allowed to keep the Syler family name.

Syler was not yet born when his grandfather died, and said the story of how he came to Missouri "wasn't a big thing" in the family.

But he has collected orphan-train articles that appeared in the New York Times and Smithsonian Magazine, and videotaped an A&E documentary about the trains.

The last provided him with "one of those spooky moments" when it displayed a photograph of a group of boys. "The camera panned right to left and when it hit one particular kid it reminded me of pictures I'd seen of my grandfather," he said.

His grandfather eventually married a local doctor's daughter. Syler himself grew up in St. Louis and came to Cape Girardeau to attend Southeast Missouri State University.

For many years, the Sylers attended Pollock family reunions, held in alternate years in Norman, Okla., and Columbia, on the occasion of the Oklahoma-Missouri football game.

A reunion of Missouri's surviving orphan-train riders, friends and descendants will be held June 8 in Trenton, located in the north central region of the state. A registration fee of $15 includes lunch. For information, contact Evelyn Trickel at (816) 359-6910.

Trickel helped organize the first reunion of Missouri orphan-train riders in 1985. She said many descendants are trying to trace their family origins, which can be difficult. "Sometimes names have been changed, sometimes records have been destroyed," she said.

Mary Ellen Johnson, an Arkansas woman who founded the Orphan Train Heritage Society of America Inc. has set up a database tracking more than 4,000 of the orphan-train riders. She has no record of an orphan train coming to Southeast Missouri. Two brothers, Fred and Ray Shoas, did arrive in Farmington in 1911.

She said many siblings who were separated were never reunited. For some, being an orphan carried a stigma -- some were shunned and called bastards -- that learning about the orphan trains has helped erase.

One woman told Johnson she'd always felt bad about being an orphan until she learned about the orphan trains and realized her experience made her special.

Johnson's organization hosts national reunions for orphan train riders every October in Arkansas. Usually about 150 people come, most of them descendants.

Johnson first ran across the orphan trains while helping compile a county history book.

The second story she received was about a girl who came on an orphan train with her two brothers. "Later on they got separated, and she told about the trauma of her holding onto her brother's leg," Johnson said.

"...Only an orphan train rider knows what it felt like."

To begin her own research, she interviewed four of the riders. "They were the most wonderful people I believe I'd ever met," she said. "They had a great spirit that they could overcome anything."

More information about Orphan Train Riders is available by writing the Orphan Train Heritage Society of America Inc., P.O. Box 6760, Springdale, Ark., 72762-6760.