Between 1853 and 1929, through both the American Civil War and World War I, the Orphan Train Movement shipped over a quarter of a million parentless children to the Midwestern states from overcrowded metropolises on the Eastern seaboard. Initiated by Calvinist minister Charles Loring Brace and his Children's Aid Society, these trains full of children and babies preceded the institutionalized foster care program by decades. You may never have heard of these Orphan Trains - they were new to my ears when Olympia Family Theater announced its season last year - but they're woven into the fabric of modern families. The present-day descendants of these children number upwards of two million.

History isn't the story of a solid mass of people drifting around the country like an ant colony. It's a quarter of a million individual stories, 12 of which are told in OFT's current production.

Read Christian Carvajal's full review of Orphan Train in the Music & Culture section.

ORPHAN TRAIN, 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 1 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, through April 20, Washington Center, 512 Washington St. SE, Olympia, $10-$16, 360.753.8586