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chapter three “Proper” Magistrates and Masters Binding Out Poor Children in Southern New England, 1720–1820 ruth wallis herndon Records of binding out in eighteenth-century Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island show that magistrates and masters cooperatively worked out the terms under which the least powerful members of the community were put to work and prepared for adulthood. Although theoretically on opposite sides of a bargaining table,magistrates and masters shared common assumptions about the proper place of poor children in a hierarchically organized society. To perpetuate that organization and maintain community stability, magistrates and masters joined forces in pauper apprenticeship, placing at-risk children into households that would train them to take up their place in society. Benevolence was not entirely lacking; some magistrates and masters certainly were moved by the plight of poor children and desired to alleviate their distress. But in their disposition of such children through binding out, magistrates and masters served themselves by maintaining the social status quo—in effect,preserving their own social and economic dominance as they preserved community peace and order. In the business of raising pauper apprentices, masters functioned as substitute magistrates, carrying out the aims of good town government within their own households. To describe pauper apprenticeship in southern New England between 1720 and 1820, this essay draws on 2,114 indentures of poor children and related I gratefully acknowledge research support for this project in the form of a major grant from the Spencer Foundation and short-term fellowships from the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium and the John Nicholas Brown Center for American Civilization. 40 children bound to labor documents—public records of town and magistrate meetings and official correspondence relating to binding out.1 At first glance, it may seem unwieldy to combine data from ten different communities in three different New England colonies/states in an analysis of binding out, an institution that reflected local concerns to a high degree. While these ten New England communities developed in distinctive ways over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they nevertheless shared the common ground of town government, through which pauper apprenticeship was administered. Boston, New Haven, New London, and Providence—the most populous towns in the study—all began as seventeenth-century seaports that swelled over the following century with the arrival of shiploads of free, indentured, and enslaved people from around the Atlantic basin. Many inhabitants moved past the seaports to Wethersfield, Bolton, and Tolland, Connecticut; and Westerly, Glocester, and South Kingstown ,Rhode Island—the agrarian towns in this study. And wherever they lived, some of these New Englanders fell on hard times,bringing themselves and their families under the scrutiny of officials who did not hesitate to bind out children who might become a social or economic problem to the community. Comparing and contrasting the ways pauper apprenticeship was administered in these ten communities provides a singular opportunity to see local variations within the same region.2 The statistical story of binding out in these New England towns follows the general picture presented in chapter 2. The practice waxed in the eighteenth century and waned in the nineteenth century, with the heaviest activity between 1750 and 1800. Gender and race mattered. Boys were bound more often than girls, for longer periods of time, and for greater rewards in the form of literacy education, skill training, and freedom dues. Children of color were bound out in disproportionately large numbers, for longer periods of time, and for fewer rewards. Family background did not matter. The child’s situation— orphan, illegitimate, or simply “poor”—did not translate into meaningful differences in placement,education,or benefits. Overall,the descriptive statistics of the children bound out in New England look very similar to those elsewhere in North America. What distinguishes pauper apprenticeship in New England is the effective cooperation of magistrates and masters in pursuit of community stability. Singular features of binding out between 1720 and 1820 demonstrate how important this partnership was and how the system was shaped to keep the partnership functioning. From the outset, binding out was designed principally to ensure a stable society. The capital laws of Connecticut (1642) mandated that parents should educate their children in the “principles of religion”and in some “honest, lawful calling” deemed “profittable for themselves and the common wealth”; if improperly raised children became “rude, stubborn, and unruly,” then magistrates would bind them out to masters who would “force them to [3.19.56.45...

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