I recently learned that my great-grandfather was an orphan train child.
In the late nineteenth century, urban orphans were put on trains west and offered for adoption or for sale as indentured servants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_Train
(I hadn't known that indentured service existed that late in American history.)
Anyway, this is the story my auntie told me. My auntie, at 88, is still active and her hair is iron-gray, not white. Her mind is sharp. So while I don't know for sure that the story is true, I have no reason to think it is a fantasy.
According to my auntie, her grandpa Charlie was sold. His indenture was not hard. His master gave him the same food that the family ate, better food than he had known before, and a place in the barn to sleep with blankets and a woodstove to keep him warm. He worked on the farm and did not learn to read as a child. I was told that he stayed on after the seven years of the indenture, but that one day when his master hit him, he left. He had only the clothes on his body, but was able to get work, and it developed that he had a useful talent. Somehow he had learned numbers and could do sums and differences in his head. This made him a profitable employee in a world before cash registers.
He never remembered his real surname and did not know how old he was. At some point he adopted or acquired a surname common in several Western European countries, which I will not mention.
He married "above his station" and his wife taught him to read. He became a merchant on his own account, joined the run of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma, and became locally wealthy. That, at least, is the story my auntie told me.
Mother never told that story. Mother often seemed to have neatened up the family history -- to make the family seem more respectable -- and perhaps that's why.
= new reply since forum marked as read
...can get her to talking some more, or even writing things down for you.
