Abandoned: The Untold Story of the Orphan Trains

by Michael Keene

In 1848 famine gripped Ireland. Nearly a million people would die of starvation and typhoid fever. A million more Irish would abandon their homeland and come to America. Many settled in the area of Lower Manhattan called Five Points, infamous for its squalor, gang violence and disease. By the end of the Civil War, an estimated 30,000 homeless children roamed the streets of New York. They slept in alleyways, under bridges, in packing boxes and even in sewers. They survived by resorting to petty crime, prostitution, and by selling newspapers for a penny a piece. In response to this crisis, the age of orphan asylums began, culminating in one of the most improbably and audacious episodes in American history. Called the Orphan Train Movement, it endeavored to save these children lost to the streets by heroes who fought for their liberation. This is their story...

206 pages, Paperback

Published April 29, 2017

Reviews

[Lauren]

Very important subject matter. But… it seems like most of this is a restatement of the Orphan Asylums book, except for the small part focusing on the actual riders. I would have liked more of that, and less of the prefatory material. It is something we should all know about, but maybe both books could have been two parts of the same book.

[Stacey Dobis]

I was disappointed as I thought the book would really be about orphan trains. It was a lot of history that lead to it, but my grandfather road the orphan train and I wanted to learn more about his life at that point. This book was a lot about asylums and what lead to the use of orphan trains, not really untold stories, so it’s misleading from my point of view.