Alice Marion Ham knows little about her origins. She only knows that police found her and her brother, Robert, who was only a toddler at the time, abandoned on a New York City street in 1926. The two children were subsequently bundled by orphanage workers onto a train that carried them from the city to a new life in the rural Midwest. Alice wound up moving from one abusive home to another, while Robert was taken in by a family that treated him like royalty. Alice and several other riders of New York's so-called Orphan Trains got together recently to share memories of being orphaned or abandoned in New York and being sent off to new families in the Midwest. They said the reunion helped them build a sense of identity and common heritage.

The Orphan Train movement ran from 1854 until 1929, r…