Ruth Wallis Herndon

Markets For Children In Early America: A Political Economy Of Pauper Apprenticeship

After beginning as a kind of outdoor poor relief, long-term indenture of poor children evolved into a specialized form of craft apprenticeship. Analysis of indenture terms indicates that relationships between end payments (“freedom dues†) and education and training clauses varied by region. In Boston, education and training clauses were associated negatively with freedom-dues clauses, but in Rhode Island and Charleston the relationship was positive. Variation in freedom dues to suit the needs of the master or overseer of the poor, without reference to the worker-childs own interests, resulted from the childs lack of advocacy during contract formation.

Mapping the Boston Poor: Inmates of the Boston Almshouse, 1795–1801

Documentary and geographical evidence about Boston from 1795 to 1801 reveals distinct patterns in poor peoples use of the Boston Almshouse and in their areas of residence within the city. A much higher percentage of Almshouse inmates came from Bostons densely populated North End than from less urban areas with lower population densities. They clustered in distinctive ways—immigrants tending to come from districts close to commercial and shipping areas, and women and families from the outskirts of town. Recurrent users of the almshouse were highly mobile, likely to have changed their ward of residence at least once from 1795 to 1801. This geographical mobility on the part of the poor continuously recreated the city and challenged the contours of class and tradition.

Women as Symbols of Disorder in Early Rhode Island

King Philip’s War is generally acknowledged to have precipitated the decline of Indians in southeastern New England. With the massacre of defenseless Narragansett non-combatants at the Great Swamp in 1675 and the subsequent selling into slavery of captured Narragansett warriors, European conquest of the region seemed complete. Over the following century, many native people migrated to western land less settled by whites, and those who stayed “behind the frontier” found their options severely limited. Some tried to eke out an existence on the ever-shrinking reserved lands set aside for the Narragansett in 1709 in the heart of their ancestral territory. Others abandoned both the reservation and traditional ways, conforming to Anglo-American expectations by living as bound servants in white households (often victims of debt peonage) or as free neighbors who conducted their own native households along patriarchal lines. Still others moved back and forth between Indian and white worlds, periodically living among whites but not living like them. Most of these were women, whose daily, weekly, or seasonal labor in Anglo-American households brought them into official view long enough to be scrutinized, discussed, and subjected to harassment by town authorities. These women are the focus of this study.