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5. Old Age and Death ANY PEOPLE in early America faced the frailtiesof old age. While the mortality rate of infants and children was high, those who lived into adulthood had a good chance of seeing "advanced years." About 15 percent of the transient adults in this studywere fifty years of age or older, compared to 21 percent of all adults in the 1782 census, a difference that underscores the younger age of most transients. Among those older transients were a number who came to the attention of officials at a ripe old age, such as eighty-year-oldJohn Horn, who for many years had worked as a gardener to two Massachusetts governors , and eighty-three-year-old Michael Field, an Irish immigrant whose labor during the SevenYears' War had been as a "waiter" to an officer.1 John Horn and Michael Field would be judged "aged" by virtually any measure used today, but no such label was applied to either man by town officials in the late eighteenthcentury. Nor were any such terms used to describetwo men, one eighty-four and one ninetyyears old,who "took a couple of scythes from some of the hands then mowing, and each mowed a very good handsome swath." In sharp contrast, fifty-something Daniel Collins and Bristol Rhodes (this chapter) both were described as being "in an advanced age." Town records indicate that officials judged elderlinessby mental and physical abilities,and they used such phrases as "old age" to indicatefrailty of mind or body. The problem was primarily physical weakness for Stephen Pain, whose "old age and other bodily infirmities" made it unlikely that he could "get along with his business without some assistance," and for Hannah Broadfoot, who had "become very old and become almost blind and not able to support herself by her labor." The problem was primarily mental weakness for Deacon William Worden, who was "an aged man, & his natural faculties abated, whereby his estate is likely to be squanderedaway," and for John Rhodes,who was "far advanced in years," suffering from "shortness of memory," and "much impaired in his Interlectures [sic],"so that he was "easy to be pre- 156 Chapter 5 vailed upon to dispose of his interest different from what he would if he was in his full strength and understanding, as he had been formerly,"> The care of mentally or physically frail old people generally fellto relatives . Town records abound with instances of aged people being put under the guardianship of younger relatives because they were like Hannah Weaver,who was «far advanced in years and has got very much into her dotage and hardly capable to manage for herself." Guardianship gave another adult full control over the «property and person" of the ward and prevented any "foolish bargains» or "indiscreet management" of worldly goods. Similarly, younger adults made a place in their households for aging relatives who could no longer take care of themselves physically. Exeter man Nathan Codner, for example, supported his aunt and uncle, who were "much advanced in old age and [the uncle] much unable to help himself." In 1783, Joseph Bennett began caring for «his father & mother [who] were far advanced in years, and almost unable to labor any towards their support"; four years later they were "very infirm" and completely«unable to labor towards their support."> The younger generation caring for the older was a common and generally expected arrangement, and one rooted in English poor law, but it did not alwaysoccur voluntarily; Rhode Island found it necessary to pass a law requiring that children and grandchildren-if of ability-support their parents and grandparents. Those who were slow to perform this duty were apt to find themselves prodded along by local authorities, who sometimes publicly admonished those who dallied. The Exeter authorities, for example, once ordered four men to appear at a council meeting and explain why they neglected to care for their widowed mother, who needed poor relief. And the Jamestown officials, after learning that Jack Marsh had «grown old & very decrepit & utterly uncapable of maintaining himself ' so that he was likely to «perish in the winter season," bound out Marsh's "idle" and «dissolute" son Iaphet for a year to procure funds to care for the father because "it is the incumbent duty of all children, to contribute as much as in them lies, toward the support of their aged parents." In what was perhaps the most blatant case of reluctance to support elders, William Allen was abandoned...

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