Child Care in Black and White: Working Parents and the History of Orphanages

Appendix B: Biographical Comparison of HCC and UPOH Founding Managers

Appendix B Biographical Comparison of HCC and UPOH Founding Managers These were the original, or charter, members of the managing boards, who founded the orphanages in 1878 and 1880. A substantial majority of each founding board was identified through multiple sources, including U.S. federal census schedules (Allegheny and Pittsburgh, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920), social and business directories, meeting minutes, letters, and other orphanage documents. As a necessarily rough barometer of class, the occupations of heads-of-households (husbands or fathers) were used to assign the women to four categories: entrepreneurs (merchant, dealer, contractor); white-collar professionals (teacher, salesman, insurance agent, postmaster); skilled labor (headwaiter, porter, carpenter, glass presser, painter, cooper, roller, tinsmith); and unskilled labor (janitor, elevator operator). Members of the clergy, who would have been “white-collar professionals” for the purposes of class analysis, were also tracked. The UPOH column does not total to 100 percent, because one husband’s occupation was not known. African American and women’s historians have rightly pointed out the difficulty in using men’s employment as a sole determinant of class: where possible, class distinctions were corroborated with other evidence, such as ownership of real estate, location and size of homes, presence and number of live-in servants, and occupations of adult children still living at home. Many of these founding managers served for decades and brought in daughters to join the work, thus this demographic profile changed little over the course of the institutions’ first fifty years. Ramey_Child text.indd 207 2/15/12 10:12 AM Table A.1 HCC UPOH Total number founding managers 39 17 Number identified with sources 28 (72%) 15 (88%) Age Age range 26–70 23–69 Median age 40 40 Race White 92% 100% Black 8% 0% Place of birth Pennsylvania 71% 60% North (OH, MA, IN) 7% 20% South (KS, KY, VA, NC) 14% 0% Foreign born (England, Scotland, Ireland) 7% 20% Marital status Married 79% 80% Widowed 4% 13% Single 18% 7% Children Percent with children at home 71% 73% Median number 3 4 Age range of children 1–26 4m–28 Husband/father occupation Entrepreneur 29% 47% Clergy 21% 20% White collar professional 21% 0% Skilled labor 14% 27% Unskilled labor 4% 0% Others in home Relatives 29% 7% Boarders 4% 7% Boarding with others 4% 7% Live-in domestic servants 57% 67% 208 appendix b Ramey_Child text.indd 208 2/15/12 10:12 AM ...