A musical history lesson

Award-winning playwright Mary Murfitt has written stories and songs about cowgirls, small-town folks and other fictional characters. But her new musical, “Looking for Home: A Story from the Orphan Trains,” is based on a little-known aspect of American history — and a real woman.

With emotional, stirring songs and historic period staging, the play recreates small-town America in the 1920s. Youth Theatre Director Donna Inglima directs the play, which will make its premiere at the Laguna Playhouse on the weekends of Nov. 4-6 and Nov. 11-13. Murfitt wrote the book, lyrics and music for the show.

In 2002, Murfitt — herself adopted and raised in a small Kansas town — met 90-year-old Anna Fuchs, who had come to the same town in the 1920s on an “orphan train.” Fuchs was part of a supervised mass migration of abandoned or orphaned children from New York City and other gritty East Coast towns to the Great Plains.

Orphan trains began in the 1850s, organized by the Children’s Aid Society, and kept on bringing youngsters to help settle the West until the Great Depression ended the practice, according to Murfitt. More than 200,000 children were believed to be relocated under the orphan train program during those years.

Settlers in the West needed as much help as they could get, and the orphans needed homes.

“The orphan trains lasted for 75 years, but with the Depression, there was no longer extra food or extra places at the table,” Murfitt said. “People couldn’t afford to adopt them.”

Few remember the trains, or the trials, tribulations and victories of the young people who were forced to leave the cities where they lived on the streets or in orphanages, who were placed on trains, with few belongings, with the intention of joining families on the prairies who needed an extra hand or wanted a child.

Murfitt’s original musical play, “Orphan Train,” written for adults, has been revamped for the Laguna Playhouse Youth Theatre. The play centers on the character of Anna Hoffman, a strong-willed 11-year-old orphan who is put on a train with her brother and sister in hopes that they will be adopted by a “good Christian family” out west and saved from the mean streets of New York City.

The musical features a cast of about 40, including adults and children as young as 6. In it, Anna looks back on her life with some regrets but mostly gratitude.

“She lived an ordinary, extraordinary life,” Murfitt said.

Anna, in real life and in the play, had a deformed hand, but played organ in church and worked as an adult in an insurance company in the little town where she had been adopted. She never married or had children, according to Murfitt. Fuchs died in 2008.

It wasn’t an easy transition. After arriving on the train, Anna was chosen by a Lutheran family, while her siblings (two sisters in real life, but in Murfitt’s play a brother and sister) were adopted by a Methodist family considered by Anna’s family to be “from the wrong side of the tracks.”

She wasn’t allowed to visit her siblings regularly, but did see them on occasion, Murfitt said. Her sisters moved to California when they grew up, and Anna was able to visit them here.

A poster that Murfitt found speaks volumes about how the children were “marketed” to their prospective new families. “Homes for Children Wanted: A company of homeless children from the East will arrive at Gottland, Friday, December 8,” it proclaims. The poster describes the orphans as “of various ages and of both sexes, having been thrown friendless upon the world.”

When the train arrived, the children would be lined up for viewing and the selection process would begin. Protestant children were placed with Protestant families, and Catholics with Catholic households. The adoptors were required to “treat the children in all respects as members of the family” until they reached 18, the age of emancipation.

Murfitt said the play will appeal to adults and children, and features a local cast of talented singers and actors. Murfitt, who is an actor as well as playwright, lives in upstate New York, and has won acclaim for her off-Broadway musical “Cowgirls,” as well as her work in “Oil City Symphony,” among other productions.

cindy.frazier@latimes.com

Twitter: @CindyFrazier1

If You Go

What: “Looking for Home” (Suitable for children aged five and older)

Where: The Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach

When: Shows at 7 p.m. Friday, and 1 and 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, on the weekends of Nov. 4-6 and Nov. 11-13.

Tickets and information: Call (949) 497-2797 or visit https://www.LagunaPlayhouse.com