The following article was printed in the Sunday April 30, 2000 edition of the Omaha World Herald, page 22-A. I found it interesting and thought I'd share it with everyone. 'Orphan Train' Riders Gather" Lakewood, CO (AP)-- It is one of the least-remembered of America's migrations to the West. As many as 350,000 orphan children were shipped out of New York on "Orphan Trains" from the 1850's to 1929. The trains stopped in rural areas so that prospective parents could look over the youngsters and decide whether to take in any of them. The process wasn't always successful, recalled Dorothy Sharpley, 81, one of six Orphan Train riders who attended a reunion Saturday in Colorado. Sharpley said she was rejected by her first adoptive family, in Columbus, NE. "I was sent back to New York only to ride the train again and end up in St. Mary's, NE., only 20 miles from Columbus. The trains were the idea of Methodist minister Charles Loring Brace, founder of the Children's Aid Society of New York, intended as a means of moving children out of the alleys and squalor of a city overrun by immigrants and the industrial revolution. "It was a major event in migration to the West, where life revolved around the railroad," said Tom Noel, a University of Colorado historian. Janet Liebl, the author of "Ties That Bind, the Orphan Train Story in Minnesota," said her research indicates the number of orphans who rode the trains is about the same as the number of slaves brought to the United States. "We don't hear about these people because they were assimilated," Liebl said. Fewer than 1,000 of the "riders" are estimated to be still alive. The OR[han Train was a sweet second chance for many and a Dickensian nightmare for others. "We'd stop in these little towns and get out of the trains, and they'd interview us. IT was kind of like a cattle auction. If they liked us they'd take us," said Stanley Cornell. Cornell, then 6, rode the train twice with his brother, victor, who was 5. On their first trop they were taken in by a family in Coffeyville, Kan. "They were kind and we liked them, but after a couple of months they sent us back. I still don't know why. Maybe their other kids didn't like us," said Cornell, now 80. On their second trip, the met a Wellington, Texas man with two daughters. He wanted a son. "He only wanted one boy, but he took us both," Cornell said. His only question "was whether we liked farms or animals," and when they passed that test, he gave them a bag of jelly beans. -- Kristie Krone Searching: KING, WEST, VANCE, MAYER, JONES, DAWSON, BRANT, JACOBS & WILSON Regions: Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Illinois