Stuck in the Poorhouse

When Americans think of welfare before the twentieth century, we usually think of the poorhouse. Poorhouses were expensive investments, though, rising and falling in popularity throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This chapter focuses on the generation of Americans most affected by poorhouses through the life of William Fales, an articulate, devout Christian who suffered from severe rheumatism. Voters’ great hopes for poorhouses were that they would save towns’ money in the long run, and provide more humane care. Fales’s experience shows what these poorhouses were actually like. While Fales does not stand in for every poorhouse inmate, his life shows how isolating and dangerous poorhouses could be, and what opportunities for fellowship inside a poorhouse could be. His life also shows how private philanthropy could complement poor relief.

Overseer of the Poor

The year George Washington was finishing his first term as president, 1792, William Larned was beginning his first term as overseer of the poor for Providence, Rhode Island. Larned would be reelected for another thirty-five one-year terms and arguably exercised more authority over locals than any president could. Larned’s long career in this little-known but powerful local government position illustrates several aspects of early American poor laws. Overseers of the poor could be lifesavers to locals in need. They could also upend lives, forcing families out of town. They controlled the largest portion of local tax dollars, which dwarfed state and federal tax levies from the individual taxpayer’s perspective. Overseers used these tax dollars to provide food, housing, healthcare, and other necessaries to people in need. An ancillary benefit was that these dollars also buoyed the incomes of local government relief contractors.

Healthcare for the Poor

Early American poor relief included extensive healthcare. Doctors’ visits, nurses’ care, and medicine could all be covered by poor relief. One nurse, called “One-Eyed” Sarah, healed poor residents of Providence, Rhode Island, in the very early nineteenth century. One of thousands of women, nationwide, who did the hard work of physically tending to their needy neighbors, Sarah’s work was highlighted in newspaper articles in 1811. Sarah was “Indian,” and her impoverished patients requested her by name. While her actual identity remains mysterious, this chapter explores what we can learn about a Native woman who nursed the poor back to health, while being paid by poor relief funds. Sarah’s life shows evidence of being controlled by overseers of the poor, as Cuff Roberts’s was. It also shows how she could use her experience to find income from overseers of the poor like William Larned.

Warned Out

The freeborn son of an enslaved father and a free mother, Cuff Roberts’s life would be changed forever by the Revolutionary War. He served a five-year tour as part of the Continental Army, including at the Battle of Yorktown. As a veteran returning to Rhode Island, however, Roberts was not free to move around the country he helped make free. American poor laws, dating back to the seventeenth century, empowered Overseer of the Poor William Larned to repeatedly banish Roberts back to the town of Roberts’s birth. Roberts’s life would be shaped in powerful ways by American poor laws. Roberts helped local overseers by housing a needy neighbor, but came into conflict with other overseers over where he could live. After qualifying for a veterans’ pension, Roberts tried to make the life he wanted for his family in spite of the poor laws.

Epilogue

Much has happened in the history of welfare since 1850. The epilogue surveys these events, highlighting when they mark changes or continuities with the themes in the five chapters. Some innovations, such as increased involvement of state and federal governments in poor relief, were real changes in how poor relief was financed and governed. Other aspects of recent welfare will sound familiar to readers of the five chapters: debates over how to give humane, fair, and yet inexpensive aid, or efforts at governing families and unwed mothers. We still debate how welfare is best provided, and we do the important work of helping those in need. Knowing the ideas of those who debated welfare in the past, along with those who experienced it and those who made it happen, can give us perspective and courage for the work that still needs to be done.

Hard-Working Single Mother

Poor law officials had tremendous authority over families, children, and unwed mothers. Lydia Bates was separated from her own parents as a child, when they became too poor to support her. Overseers of the poor in her small town moved her to other families’ houses. As she grew older, overseers likely treated Bates like an unpaid temporary worker. She lived, temporarily, in houses where her work could help the houseowners, including an elderly couple who might have needed poor relief without Bates’s help. When Bates became pregnant with baby Rhoda, overseers became even more involved. They used the court system to hold Rhoda’s father financially responsible. They also had the authority to decide whether Rhoda could remain with her mother or, like her mother, would have to live in neighbors’ homes. This chapter focuses on how poor laws governed sexuality and families.

Introduction

These five stories tell how poor relief shaped Americans’ lives in the early United States. Although the five subjects were unique individuals, living in the local contexts of Rhode Island towns, their stories teach much about welfare around the country at the time. This is because nearly every American state inherited colonial laws based on the Elizabethan Poor Law of England. How Welfare Worked in the Early United States focuses on several aspects of how these laws were implemented. Some aspects are rarely discussed in other histories: the difficulty of financing this safety net, the prominence of healthcare in poor relief, the use of paupers as temporary workers, and the isolation of poorhouse inmates. Other aspects, described well in other histories, are carefully illustrated in these narrative-style biographies: the benevolent effects of poor relief, the economic stimulus of poor relief spending, and the racialized application of the poor laws.