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CROSSROADS
Orphar Train Heritage Society
of America
Summer 1988
Route 4, Box 565 • Springdale, Arkansas 72764 • (501) 751-7830
Volume 4
OTHSA To Assist National TV Series
David Vasser, C.M.P. Productions, Hollywood, met with Mary Ellen Johnson, executive director of the Orphan Train Heritage Society of America, Inc., to discuss filming scenes and interviewing orphan train riders for a program or programs to be aired later this year on the NBC television series “Unsolved Mysteries.”
Johnson, asked to be field director, will accompany film crew and director, Vasser, while they are on location in northwest Arkansas.
Scenes will be re-created using antique rail cars available in both Springdale and in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Antique automobiles will be used, as well as horses and buggies.
A mini-story or vignettes will portray the orphan train story and placement of the children. Documents and photographs of living riders who are still searching for family members will be shown.
The whereabouts of many sisters and brothers who traveled together by orphan train and never saw one another again remain a mystery. These and stories like these are the ones “Unsolved Mysteries” will address.
If you have documentation or photographs that could be used to trace possible surviving members of an orphan train rider’s family and will permit their use to be aired on this series, contact OTHSA, INC. in Springdale, Arkansas. These are the kinds of stories that will most interest the C.M.P. Productions staff.
Mary Ellen Johnson can be reached Monday through Friday (office hours) at (501) 756-2780 or evenings and weekends at (501) 751-7830. If you reach the answering machine at either number, please leave your name and number.
Information Please, Can You Help?
Upcoming issues of Crossroads will feature a listing of Orphan Train Riders by birthname or “adopted” names. This list will be made up of riders about whom little is known. If you can supply any information, please write to OTHSA, “Information Please,” Rt. 4, Box 565, Springdale, AR 72764. The state name is where the orphan was believed to have been placed. (Note: b. means bom.)
Berry, Elizabeth, b. 1881, IL Bums, Catherine, b. Oct. 27,1855, IL Calandar or Calonder, boy, NY Cardwell, Mary, b. May 7,1889, TX Casey, Henry, b. Mar. 13,1887, TX Collins, Mary Jane, b. 1911, NE Conlan, Elizabeth, b. Oct. 29,1894, MO Crawford, John, b. Nov. 25,1891, MO Dell, Geo. Wash., b. Jan 1,1899 Donlan, Alfred, b. 1906, KS Ernst, Julie, b. 1902, KS Francis, Mike, b. 1909, TX Hoffman, Edith, b. 1897, OH Katz, Anna and Augusta, MO Kern, Rose, b. Feb. 14,1907, LA Mantanan, Martha, b. July 29,1905, LA Meehan, Harry, b. Oct. 16,1868 Michel, Ed. Paul, b. Dec. 4,1902 Panzer, Ed. Joseph, came to NE 1922 Romano, Mary Clara, b. July 22,1904 Schuchardt, Anna, b. 1907, KS Shaw Almeda, Charles, William, IN Shoffner, Hazel, b. Nov. 10,1910, MO Sorgenfrei, Johanna, b. Jan. 21,1903, KS Sullivan, Katherine, b. Jan. 15,1905, LA Sweeten, Herbert Wm., 1907, PA Van Ginault, Anna, b. Nov. 17,1911, TX
If you have a name to add to this list for a future issue of Crossroads, please send the information to OTHSA.
Orphan Train Heritage Society 1