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chapter five Bound Out from the Almshouse Community Networks in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1800–1860 monique bourque In 1804,four of Mary Derborough’s five children were bound out by the Trustees of the Poor at different times after their ailing mother entered the Chester County, Pennsylvania, almshouse; the youngest child temporarily remained with Mary. The five children’s fates were decided separately by the trustees, who considered the children’s capabilities, the mother’s needs, and the potential masters’ suitability.1 In 1856, N. Linton, a Chester County inhabitant, wrote to almshouse steward Thomas Baker about a “little colored girl” whom Linton and his wife were considering taking on as an apprentice. Baker responded that the girl “has not been raised as I could wish” but asserted that he had “a very good opinion of her working capacities as also of her conduct toward children” and added that he and his wife judged the girl “not vicious and can be reclaimed.”2 The girl’s placement involved Linton’s request, the girl’s family history, and Baker’s judgment of the suitability of the girl and the master for each other. Placement of the Derborough children and the Lintons’ unnamed apprentice required knowledge and connections, and almshouse officials had both. These two incidents illustrate how binding out poor children remained a central activity of the almshouse over time and also how the practice retained its carefully managed character, with overseers considering multiple factors when placing children into an official master/servant relationship. This essay examines pauper apprenticeship as mediated by the Trustees of the Chester County Almshouse—just west of Philadelphia proper—in the first half of the nineteenth century. It draws on 320 indentures of children bound out from the almshouse between 1800 and 1825. The original indentures have not 72 children bound to labor survived, but a few contracts were transcribed directly into meeting minutes , and an “Index of Apprentices” contains particulars of all indentures enacted during the period.3 Reconstructing the stories of individual children (and their families) and the institutional practice of pauper apprenticeship in this locality requires scrutiny of an additional body of documents: admission and discharge records, almshouse stewards’ correspondence, annual reports, and trustee meeting minutes. Considered together, these records show that binding out from the Chester County almshouse was a labor transaction that provided a child who would perform work for a master—but it was also an act of local governance, the administration of poor relief, the giving of charity, and a matter of neighborly observation and concern. Binding a child to a local master required a community network of diverse social and economic relationships. Between 1790 and 1830, virtually all of Philadelphia’s satellite counties moved from a traditional system of “outdoor”relief—cash or kind payments to the poor or their guardians—to a system of government-funded county poorhouses . Advocates of the change hoped that the new system would prove more economical, efficient, and effective, thus easing the pressure on local taxpayers suffering from declining household production, decreasing agricultural jobs, financial panics, and high rates of migration to Philadelphia from neighboring counties.4 The goal was to provide for community members in distress without establishing a permanent class of dependent poor or creating a haven for indigent newcomers. Oversight of the poor remained the province of local officials—now called “Directors of the Poor” or “Trustees of the Poor”— who carried on their work in institutions rather than in their own homes or at town meetings. This strategy appears to have been successful. The relief rates in Philadelphia’s satellite counties did not increase dramatically in the first half of the nineteenth century—as doomsayers had predicted—and the administration of relief did not take on an increasingly punitive quality, as it did in urban centers like Philadelphia.5 Some historians have argued that this shift to institutionalized relief isolated the poor from their neighbors.6 However,strong evidence exists to indicate that almshouses remained economically and socially integrated into their communities .7 Almshouses purchased local goods and produce, employed local labor to operate the institution, and supplied labor to local residents by contracting the work of adult inmates and by binding out poor children as pauper apprentices. Binding out did not isolate the poor; through almshouse trustees, poor children and their parents became connected to county officials first and then to masters and their neighbors. The practice depended upon preexisting community networks...

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