based (I think) in 1900 New England. I remember the cover was solid blue and I thought the title was just Phoebe. Read it when I was 12 or 13 .. chapter book. I believe the girl was an orphan and went on a train to live with a relative.
Stump the Bookseller
New format, same book stumper solving.
Look at PHOEBE DEANE, by Grace Livingston Hill. Trains were new and are mentioned, but the heroine doesn’t travel on one. The book is set in a New York country village about 1835.
Could it be “Understood Betsy” by Dorothy Canfield? Betsy goes by train to live with relatives in Vermont. It was published in 1916, and there have been editions with blue covers over the years.
The text is available at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5347/5347-h/5347-h.htm
Maybe the book Phoebe Snow by Elizabeth Hall? I don’t remember if she is an orphan, but it’s about a girl named Lucy Snow who dresses up as the Phoebe Snow in the train ads (“Phoebe Snow, dressed in white, rides the train with anthracite” or something like that) to get a free train ride to the St Louis Exposition.
Possibly ‘Phoebe Snow’ by Elizabeth Hall (1968)?
From the Kirkus Review: Lucy Snow has her heart set on the Louisiana Purchase Centennial in St. Louis (1904) but rumors of rowdies make her parents renege and substitute Clarksville Aunt Amy instead. In between the decision and her departure, Lucy snags more of mother’s possessions to carry out a greater imposture: she’ll go to St. Louis as Phoebe Snow, the Lackawanna railroad’s white-dressed advertisement for clean coal (“”Phoebe Snow, dressed in white,/ Rides the Road of Anthracite””). She’s imaginative for fourteen but she can’t foresee all the potential slip-ups, and the fun is watching her improvise. She gets some help from a hustling lemonade and peanut seller (who periodically empties the free water cooler to boost his sales) but mostly she’s on her own: eating non-drop meals while the train is in motion; delivering a few polite words to an audience hastily arranged at one stop; greeting an even larger reception in St. Louis by delicately tripping across the platform–and into a mud puddle. By then her RR-employed relatives have figured out her plan and meet her in St. Louis, and she does get scolded before they go to the fair grounds. A Snow job to remember with a grin.
I know of two books set in that time period about girls named Phoebe. One was Phoebe Snow, by Elizabeth Hall, published in 1968. The book takes place in the early 1900s and is about Lucy who stows aboard a train to go to the World’s Fair. The second and third books are Louisa May Alcott’s Eight Cousins (1875) and Rose in Bloom (1876) which has a servant girl named Phoebe who marries into a wealthy family.
Possibly Eleanor Gates: Phoebe.
Possibly Phebe Fairchild: Her Book by Lois Lenski. Set in 1830, about her girl whose parents leave her with relatives while they are traveling.
This is probably a stretch, but _8 Cousins_ by Louisa May Alcott has an orphan named Phoebe. She is a companion and maid to the main character, Rose.
Hi-there’s no chance you could be vaguely remembering the book by Louisa May Alcott called Eight Cousins about a girl called Rose who goes to live with her uncle in i believe as you said, early 1900’s & on east coast & becomes good friends with Phoebe her uncle’s housemaid? Then after Eight Cousins, Alcott wrote Rose in Bloom-again with Phoebe as main character….