Based on a true story

Would you ever run off to join the army, leaving your family behind? That's what nine-year-old John Lincoln Clem does in 1861. Determined to fight for his country, Johnny sneaks onto a train filled with men from the 3rd Ohio Union Regiment. Taken in by the older soldiers, Johnny becomes a drummer boy, and later, takes up his own musket. As the war rages on, Johnny experiences the brutalities of battle as well as the rampant illness and gnawing hunger...

Twin sisters Nettie and Nellie Crook are taken away from their disfunctional parents in 1910 when they are only five years old, and placed in an orphanage--at six they are put on the orphan train by the Children's Aid Society and moved from New York City to Kansas, ending up in a household where they are treated more as servants than children.