The Little Sparrows Read online

  OTHER BOOKS BY AL LACY

  Angel of Mercy series:

  A Promise for Breanna (Book One)

  Faithful Heart (Book Two)

  Captive Set Free (Book Three)

  A Dream Fulfilled (Book Four)

  Suffer the Little Children (Book Five)

  Whither Thou Goest (Book Six)

  Final Justice (Book Seven)

  Not by Might (Book Eight)

  Things Not Seen (Book Nine)

  Far Above Rubies (Book Ten)

  Journeys of the Stranger series:

  Legacy (Book One)

  Silent Abduction (Book Two)

  Blizzard (Book Three)

  Tears of the Sun (Book Four)

  Circle of Fire (Book Five)

  Quiet Thunder (Book Six)

  Snow Ghost (Book Seven)

  Battles of Destiny (Civil War series):

  Beloved Enemy (Battle of First Bull Run)

  A Heart Divided (Battle of Mobile Bay)

  A Promise Unbroken (Battle of Rich Mountain)

  Shadowed Memories (Battle of Shiloh)

  Joy from Ashes (Battle of Fredericksburg)

  Season of Valor (Battle of Gettysburg)

  Wings of the Wind (Battle of Antietam)

  Turn of Glory (Battle of Chancellorsville)

  Hannah of Fort Bridger series (coauthored with JoAnna Lacy):

  Under the Distant Sky (Book One)

  Consider the Lilies (Book Two)

  No Place for Fear (Book Three)

  Pillow of Stone (Book Four)

  The Perfect Gift (Book Five)

  Touch of Compassion (Book Six)

  Beyond the Valley (Book Seven)

  Damascus Journey (Book Eight)

  Mail Order Bride series (coauthored with JoAnna Lacy):

  Secrets of the Heart (Book One)

  A Time to Love (Book Two)

  Tender Flame (Book Three)

  Blessed Are the Merciful (Book Four)

  Ransom of Love (Book Five)

  Until the Daybreak (Book Six)

  Sincerely Yours (Book Seven)

  A Measure of Grace (Book Eight)

  So Little Time (Book Nine)

  Let There Be Light (Book Ten)

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE LITTLE SPARROWS

  published by Multnomah Publishers, Inc.

  © 2002 by ALJO Productions

  Cover design by Kirk Douponce/UDG DesignWorks

  Cover image of boy by Robert Papp/Shannon Associates

  Image of orphans by Getty Images

  Background cover images by Corbis

  Multnomah is a trademark of Multnomah Publishers, Inc., and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  The colophon is a trademark of Multnomah Publishers, Inc.

  Scripture quotations are from: The Holy Bible, King James Version

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission.

  For information:

  MULTNOMAH PUBLISHERS, INC.

  POST OFFICE BOX 1720

  SISTERS, OREGON 97759

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lacy, Al.

  The little sparrows / by Al and JoAnna Lacy.

  p. cm. – (The orphan trains trilogy; bk. 1)

  eISBN: 978-0-307-56467-2

  1. Homeless children–Fiction. 2. New York (N.Y.)–Fiction. 3. Orphan trains–Fiction. 4. Orphans–Fiction. I. Lacy, JoAnna. II. Title.

  PS3562.A256 L58 2003

  813’.54–dc21 2002013130

  v3.1

  This book is affectionately dedicated to

  Gail Messick of Montgomery, Alabama,

  a faithful fan who has shown us much love.

  We love you too, Gail. God bless you!

  1 CORINTHIANS 16:23

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Prologue

  In midnineteenth-century New York City, which had grown by leaps and bounds with immigrants from all over Europe coming by the thousands into the city, the streets were filled with destitute, vagrant children. For the most part, they were anywhere from two years of age up to fifteen or sixteen.

  The city’s politicians termed them “orphans,” though a great number had living parents, or at least one living parent. The city’s newspapers called them orphans, half-orphans, foundlings, street Arabs, waifs, and street urchins. Many of these children begged or stole while a few found jobs selling newspapers; sweeping stores, restaurants, and sidewalks; and peddling apples, oranges, and flowers on the street corners. Others sold matches and toothpicks. Still others shined shoes. A few rummaged through trash cans for rags, boxes, or refuse paper to sell.

  In 1852, New York City’s mayor said there were some 30,000 of these orphans on the city’s streets. Many of the ones who wandered the streets were ill clad, unwashed, and half-starved. Some actually died of starvation. They slept in boxes and trash bins in the alleys during the winter and many froze to death. In warm weather, some slept on park benches or on the grass in Central Park.

  Some of the children were merely turned loose by the parents because the family had grown too large and they could not care for all their children. Many of the street waifs were runaways from parental abuse, parental immorality, and parental drunkenness.

  In 1848, a young man named Charles Loring Brace, a native of Hartford, Connecticut, and graduate of Yale University, had come to New York to study for the ministry at Union Theological Seminary. He was also an author and spent a great deal of time working on his books, which slowed his work at the seminary. He still had not graduated by the spring of 1852 but something else was beginning to occupy his mind. He was horrified both by the vagrant children he saw on the streets daily and by the way the civil authorities treated them. The city’s solution for years had been to sweep the wayfaring children into jails or run-down almshouses.

  Brace believed the children should not be punished for their predicament but should be given a positive environment in which to live and grow up. In January 1853, after finishing the manuscript for a new book and submitting it to his New York publisher, Brace dropped out of seminary and met with a group of concerned pastors, bankers, businessmen, and lawyers—all who professed to be born-again Christians—and began the groundwork to establish an organization that would do something to help New York City’s homeless children.

  Because Brace was clearly a brilliant and dedicated young man, and because he was a rapidly rising literary figure on the New York scene, these
men backed him in his desire. By March 1853, the Children’s Aid Society was established. Brace was its leader, and the men who backed him helped raise funds from many kinds of businesses and people of wealth. This allowed Brace to take over the former Italian Opera House at the corner of Astor Place and Lafayette Street in downtown Manhattan.

  From the beginning, Brace and his colleagues attempted to find homes for individual children, but it was soon evident that the growing numbers of street waifs would have to be placed elsewhere. Brace came upon the idea of taking groups of these orphans in wagons to the rural areas in upstate New York and allowing farmers to simply pick out the ones they wanted for themselves and become their foster parents.

  This plan indeed provided some homes for the street waifs, but not enough to meet the demand. By June 1854, Brace came to the conclusion that the children would have to be taken westward where there were larger rural areas. One of his colleagues in the Children’s Aid Society had friends in Dowagiac, Michigan, who had learned of the Society’s work and wrote to tell him they thought people of their area would be interested in taking some of the children into their homes under the foster plan.

  Hence came the first orphan train. In mid-September 1854, under Charles Brace’s instructions, Dowagiac’s local newspaper carried an ad every day for two weeks, announcing that forty-five homeless boys and girls from the streets of New York City would arrive by train on October 1, and on the morning of October 2 could be seen at the town’s meetinghouse. Bills were posted at the general store, cafés, restaurants, and the railroad station, asking families to provide foster homes for these orphans.

  One of Brace’s paid associates, E. P. Smith, was assigned to take the children on the train to Dowagiac, which is located in southwestern Michigan. Smith’s wife accompanied him to chaperone the girls.

  The meetinghouse was fairly packed as the children stood behind Smith while he spoke to the crowd. He explained the program, saying these unfortunate children were Christ’s “little ones,” who needed a chance in life. He told the crowd that kind men and women who opened their homes to one or more of this ragged regiment would be expected to raise them as they would their own children, providing them with decent food and clothing and a good education. There would be no loss in their charity, Smith assured his audience. The boys would do whatever farm work or other kind that was expected of them, and the girls would do all types of housework.

  As the children stood in line to be inspected, the applicants moved past them slowly, looking them over with care and engaging them in conversation. E. P. Smith and his wife looked at the quality and cleanliness of the prospective foster parents and asked them about their financial condition, property, vocation, and church attendance. If they were satisfied with what they heard, and saw no evidence that they were lying, they let them choose the child or children they desired.

  When the applicants had chosen the children they wanted, thirty-seven had homes. The remaining eight were taken back to New York and placed in already overcrowded orphanages. Charles Brace was so encouraged by the high percentage of the children who had been taken into the homes, that he soon launched into a campaign to take children both from off the streets and from the orphanages, put them on trains, and take them west where there were farms and ranches aplenty.

  When the railroad companies saw what Brace’s Children’s Aid Society was doing, they contacted him and offered generous discounts on tickets, and each railroad company offered special coaches, which would carry only the orphans and their chaperones.

  For the next seventy-five years—until the last orphan train carried the waifs to Texas in 1929—the Children’s Aid Society had placed some 250,000 children in homes in every western state and territory except Arizona. Upon Brace’s death in 1890, his son, Charles Loring Brace Jr., took over the Society.

  In 1910, a survey concluded that 87 percent of the children shipped to the West on the orphan trains up to that time had grown into credible members of western society. Eight percent had been returned to New York City, and 5 percent had either disappeared, were imprisoned for crimes committed, or had died.

  It is to the credit of Charles Loring Brace’s dream, labor, and leadership in the orphan train system that two of the orphans grew up to become state governors, several became mayors, one became a Supreme Court justice, two became congressmen, thirty-five became lawyers, and nineteen became physicians. Others became successful gospel preachers, lawmen, farmers, ranchers, businessmen, wives, and mothers—those who made up a great part of society in the West.

  Until well into the twentieth century, Brace’s influence was felt by virtually every program established to help homeless and needy children. Even today, the philosophical foundations he forged have left him—in the minds of many—the preeminent figure in American child welfare history.

  Chapter One

  It was early April 1874, in southeastern Wyoming on a bright sunny Saturday morning. The prairie was golden with sunlight beneath an azure sky. White clouds rode the high wind, patching the land with drifting shadows. The air was clear and crisp, and from the Circle C ranch where rancher Sam Claiborne and his wife, Emma, stood on the front porch of their two-story white frame house looking westward, their range of vision extended all the way to the majestic Rocky Mountains some fifty miles away. The lofty peaks were still snow packed and filled the horizon. The Claibornes were looking for movement on the prairie, but the only movement in sight was a bald eagle winging its way southward on the airwaves.

  The lanky rancher, who would turn thirty-five on his next birthday, sighed. “Honey, I can’t wait any longer. I’ve got to get into Cheyenne for my appointment with Lyle Wilson. The bank closes at noon on Saturdays and I don’t want to be late.”

  Emma, who was a year younger than her husband, said, “Go ahead and saddle Midnight, dear. I’ll keep watch.”

  Sam nodded. “Okay. Be back shortly.”

  Emma observed her husband’s form as he hurried around the house, then a small frown lined her brow and a shadow flicked across her blue eyes as she looked toward the west once again. She knew how much her child enjoyed riding and racing her bay mare across the prairie, but of late she had found herself ill at ease each time.

  She whispered a prayer toward heaven, asking the Lord to bring both girls back safely. Betty Houston was Jody’s best friend and a fine Christian girl. The girls were excellent riders, but out there on the prairie a lot of things could happen.

  Emma took her eyes off the prairie for a moment to look around the ranch. She and Sam had worked hard over the years to make the Circle C what it was today. And even now, from sunup till sundown, their days were filled with chores and work of various sorts. Sundays always brought a nice break, with church services morning and evening, which invariably were a blessing.

  Emma smiled to herself as she scanned the five hundred acres she could see from the porch, and thought how all the work was worth it. After all, she mused, good hard work never hurt anyone.

  Two weeks ago, she and Sam, along with Jody’s help, had put a fresh coat of paint on the house. Now it stood gleaming in the sunshine. Dark green shutters adorned each open window, making pretty frames for the lace curtains fluttering in the morning breeze. The grass around the house was beginning to put on its spring greenery, and the tulips and the daffodils made a bright-colored border around the front porch.

  I couldn’t ask for more, Emma thought. You’ve been so good to us, Lord.

  Some fifteen minutes after he had headed for the barn, Sam came around the corner of the house, leading his big black stallion. She glanced at him and shook her head. “No sign of them, yet. I hope nothing’s wrong.”

  Sam pulled Midnight to a halt at the porch steps. “I’m sure they’re all right, honey. Sometimes those girls just get wound up while racing each other and forget about the time.”

  “Mm-hmm. I know.”

  Sam flipped the reins over Midnight’s head, looping them over the saddle horn, then moved u
p the porch steps. He took Emma in his arms and kissed her. “I’ll be back by one o’clock or so.” He moved down the steps, took hold of the saddle horn, and lifted his foot to put it in the stirrup.

  “Wait a minute, Sam. Here they come!”

  He dropped the foot to earth and looked westward.

  The Circle C was located some thirteen miles north of Cheyenne on the south bank of the Lodgepole River. Sam’s eyes focused on the two riders as they galloped along the edge of the river toward the ranch, bent forward in their saddles, their long hair flowing in the wind.

  He smiled when he saw that the bay mare carrying the girl with the dark hair was ahead by two lengths. Sam was proud of his twelve-year-old daughter, who had become an expert rider. He flicked a glance at Emma. “Honey, those girls sure love to race each other.”

  “That they do,” she said, descending the porch steps. “Strange, isn’t it? About half the time Jody and Queenie win, and half the time Betty and Millie come out ahead.”

  “Yeah. I think those two mares have a secret pact to make it work like that.”

  Emma laughed. “Know what? I believe you’re right!”

  Soon the bay mare thundered up and skidded to a halt a few seconds before the gray roan. Betty Houston, who was the same age as Jody Claiborne, said jokingly, “You and Queenie cheated, Jody!”

  While the horses snorted, breathing hard from the race, Jody laughed. “And just how did we cheat?”

  “Well, you and Queenie made Millie and me ride closer to the riverbank. The air is thicker close to the water, so it slowed Millie down.”

  Sam and Emma both laughed at Betty’s good-natured reasoning. “She’s right, Jody!” Sam said. “You should’ve been the one riding closest to the river. It’s only fair that you give your best friend the advantage.”

  Jody looked at her best friend. “Thanks Betty! I appreciate your letting Queenie run in the thin, dry air. Next time, it’ll be Millie’s turn.”

  Everybody laughed, and Jody dismounted. “Daddy, I’m sorry if I held you up. We kind of let the time get away from us. But thanks for waiting for me. I sure want to ride to town with you.”

  Sam smiled. “It’s all right, Jody. I thought you girls might be a while getting back, so I went ahead and saddled up Midnight. Soon as Queenie catches her breath, we’ll go.”