Historical documents detail life of poor in 1820s Clark County

Locals used indentured servitude in tough times

Virginia Weygandt of the Heritage Center of Clark County looks through the ledger in which the legal filings for indentured servants in Clark County were recorded in the 1820s and 1830s.

Staff photo by Bill Lackey Virginia Weygandt of the Heritage Center of Clark County looks through the ledger in which the legal filings for indentured servants in Clark County were recorded in the 1820s and 1830s.

ENLARGE PHOTO

Dayton gets boost from committee for UAV testing
5/24/12
Patrol searches Springfield dealership for stolen cards
5/24/12
Police headlines: Two accused of child endangering
5/24/12
Ad calls Brown career politician
5/24/12
Local Focus: Clark County for May 25
5/24/12
> More headlines

By Tom Stafford, Staff Writer 8:27 AM Monday, January 23, 2012

How will we care for poor children?

How will we prepare them not to become burdens to society but productive members of the next generation?

And how do we do so without breaking a drum tight government budget?

For Clark County residents of the 1820s and 1830s, the answer was neither orphanages nor foster care.

Given that there was little industry, it wasn’t through an industrial school, either.

Their answer was indentured servitude, a system in which a parent legally gave over care of a child to someone else in exchange for the promise that the child would be properly cared for and taught a trade or skill to make a living as an adult.

For many girls, this meant training in “the art of housewifery.”

For many boys, it meant living and learning at the side of a blacksmith, miller, leather worker or carpenter and house joiner.

The collection at the Clark County Historical Society holds the stories of 54 indenture apprenticeships in a ledger called “Records of Apprentice Indentures for Clark County, Volume 1, 1825-35.”

Dirt poor in Ohio

In the Historical Society’s March-April 2010 newsletter, Virginia Weygandt, the historical society’s director of collections, said the 1787 act of Congress that established the Northwest Territory created a Board of Township Trustees to handle local governance.

Trustees were authorized, among other things, “to furnish poor relief or support to paupers legally residing within the township boundaries,” Weygandt wrote.

To do so, they were empowered to bind out “any orphan or the child of any poor person as a servant or apprentice,” she said. “Children who were ‘bound out’ ceased to be a ‘charge’ (financial burden) on the township.”

It was a duty trustees eventually delegated to a committee of the “Overseers of the Poor.”

Weygandt said in an interview that “most of the time,” the indentures “seemed to be widowed women who did not have any means of support” for their children.

“To help their children — and it was really considered a help,” she emphasized — the parents gave them up so they could “get them into a trade where they could make their own way in the world.”

Terms of indenture

The Jan. 24, 1827, indenture of 10-year-old Sally Greenwood to Israel Bailis of Springfield covers some of the typical terms of the indentures.

Sally was bound to the Bailises until age 18 on condition that she be “learnt the art of housewifery agreeably to the custom of the county.”

In exchange, “said Israel and Anna, his wife” also promised to provide Sally with “meat, drink, washing, lodging and afford both linen and woolen (clothing) and all other necessities.”

When Sally turned 18, they agreed to provide her with items she needed to begin a new life: “One good Bible, good wearing clothes, one decent suit of Sunday clothing ... one extra frock (and) also one good bed and bedding fit for comfortable winter lodging.”

When 8-year-old pauper child Mary Ann Farnsworth was bound to Henry Neer, either Mary Ann’s parents drove a harder bargain or the tender-hearted Neer agreed to provide more.

In addition to meat, drink, clothing and lodging, he would “give to said maid servant one year’s schooling” and when she turned 18 provide her with “one good milk cow, one good feather bed and the necessary furniture that is commonly worn on beds.”

(A different indenture specifies the master provide “at least 30 pounds of new geese feathers” in the bed covering.)

Young Miss Farnsworth’s departing gifts were also to include “two good new ... frocks, two linen shirts, two pair woolen stockings, two pair shoes, one of which shall be calf skin,” plus “two calico dresses, one pair cotton hose, one silk bonnet ... one common Bible and one cotton shawl.”

Yoda-speak

If food, lodging, Bible and some education were common elements of the indenture, those came in exchange of a promise for good behavior on the part of the indentured servant.

In the case of 12-year-old John Beamer, identified as “the son of a woman named Kate who was (a) slave,” there was a long list of particulars, written in a voice reminiscent of Yoda, the Jedi master from Star Wars.

“Hurt to his said master he shall not do, nor willfully suffer it to be done by others ... the goods of his said master he shall not embezzle or waste.”

“At cards, dice or any other unlawful games, he shall not play, taverns or alehouses he shall not frequent; fornication he shall not commit; matrimony he shall not contract (and) from the services of his master he shall not at any time separate or absent himself without his said master’s leave.”

His master agreed to care for John, train him and at indenture’s end “deliver unto the said John a horse saddle and bridle which, including his clothing, shall be worth $100.”

At the end of the 11 years Daniel Coffin served John Truitt, Truitt was to have trained him as a carpenter and house joiner and sent him into the world with adequate clothing, a Bible and “one complete set of framing tools, one ... saw, one set of sash planes and one set of bench planes.”

1 | 2 next page »

Share this article