Categotry Archives: Demography

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Poor Relief in 18th and 19th Century Bucks County

Categories: Archives, Art, Buckingham, Bucks County, Death, Demography, Doylestown, Graves, New Hope, Painting, Photography, Solebury, Tinicum, Warminster, Wrightstown

View of Almshouse. Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches, c.1900. James A. Michener Art Museum. Doylestown, PA.

This lecture was given before the Solebury Township Historical Society on March 5th, 2017.

Synopsis

From the colonial era until the rise of the modern welfare state, the poor residents of Bucks County relied on a social safety net that was administered at the local level. Township officials called Overseers of the Poor were tasked with levying a poor tax and doling out financial support or in-kind relief to residents who were unable to provide for themselves. This system became more centralized following the opening of the county almshouse in 1810. Also known as the poorhouse, poor farm, and later the Bucks County Home, the almshouse took in people who faced financial hardship for a wide variety of reasons. This ranged from farm laborers who couldn’t find work in the winter to the elderly, sick, mentally disabled, and even pregnant women, who would come to the almshouse to give birth and then remain there during their postpartum “lying-in” period.

While the poor relief system was designed to save people from abject poverty, some of the methods employed would be considered inhumane by modern standards. Almshouse residents were considered inmates, and they frequently ran away. The psychiatric care was particularly problematic, and before the establishment of state-run psychiatric hospitals, individuals considered dangerously insane lived in chains at the county almshouse. Until the state’s anti-miscegenation law was abolished in 1780, the Overseers of the Poor were also tasked with binding out mixed-race children as indentured servants, another example of how a system that was established to help the most vulnerable members of society sometimes inflicted harm instead.

Selected Bibliography

Images

Craven, Linford R. Bucks County Almshouse and Bucks County Hospital. Albumen print, c.1900. Visual collection (SC-29-01, 09-H-002). Mercer Museum Library. Doylestown, PA. (Reproduced in W.W.H. Davis’ The History of Bucks County, vol. 2. available on Google Books)

View of Almshouse. Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches, c.1900. James A. Michener Art Museum. Doylestown, PA. (Via Google Arts & Culture)

Unpublished Works:

Bucks County Almshouse Records. Bucks County Archives (RG 4:3). Mercer Museum Library. Doylestown, PA.

Bucks County Commissioners Records. Microfilm. Mercer Museum Library. Doylestown, PA.

Bucks County Daily Intelligencer Clippings Files (SC-39). Mercer Museum Library. Doylestown, PA.

Bucks County Directors of the Poor Minute Book, 1807-1853. Bound Manuscript Collection (BM-A-057). Mercer Museum Library, Doylestown, PA.

Documents Relating to the Poor in Bucks County (MSC 163, fol. 98). Mercer Museum Library. Doylestown, PA.

Indenture of John Clauson to Aaron Paxson, 1771. Aaron and John K. Paxson Collection (MSC 105, fol. 1). Mercer Museum Library. Doylestown, PA.

Records of the Proceedings of Middletown Township Relating to the Poor, Strays & Settlements of Supervisors Accounts, 1791. Bound Manuscript Collection (BM-B-462). Mercer Museum Library. Doylestown, PA.

Report of Cholera at the Almshouse, 1849 (MSC 163, fol. 98). Mercer Museum Library. Doylestown, PA.

Solebury Township Overseers of the Poor Records, 1792-1809. John Ruckman Papers (MSC 162, fol. 10-12). Mercer Museum Library, Doylestown, PA.

Warminster Poor Book, 1757-1810. Bound Manuscript Collection (BM-B-038). Mercer Museum Library. Doylestown, PA

Wrightstown Poor Book, 1765-1809. Bound Manuscript Collection (BM-A-074). Mercer Museum Library, Doylestown, PA.

Published Works:

Bucks County Court of Quarter Sessions and Common Pleas. Records of the Courts of Quarter Sessions and Common Pleas of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, 1684-1700. Meadville, PA: The Colonial Society of Pennsylvania, 1943. (Available on Archive.org)

Forbes, W. S. “History of the Anatomy Act of Pennsylvania.” Philadelphia: The Philadelphia Medical Publishing Company, 1898. (Available from Thomas Jefferson University)

Frankel, Emil. Poor Relief in Pennsylvania. Bulletin 20. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Welfare, 1925. (Available on Archive.org)

Heffner, William Clinton. History of Poor Relief Legislation in Pennsylvania, 1682-1913. Cleona, PA: Holzapfel Publishing Company, 1913. (Available on Google Books)

Hitchcock, Tim, Adam Crymble, and Louise Falcini. “Loose, Idle and Disorderly: Vagrant Removal in Eighteenth-Century Middlesex.” Lecture, British History in the Long 18th Century from the University of London School of Advanced Study, London, United Kingdom,  May 29, 2013. (Available as a podcast)

Innes, Joanna. “Pitt and the Poor Laws: Government and the Politics of Social Policy in the 1790s.” Lecture, British History in the Long 18th Century from the University of London School of Advanced Study, London, United Kingdom,  January 19, 2011. (Available as a podcast)

Pagan, John Ruston. Anne Orthwood’s Bastard: Sex and Law in Early Virginia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Salinger, Sharon V. To Serve Well and Faithfully: Labor and Indentured Servants in Pennsylvania, 1682-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Siegfried, Simeon, ed. Minutes of the Alms-House Visitation: Containing the Charges Against the Directors and Steward of the Institution, As Laid Before the Visitors Appointed by the Court. And the Testimony of the Several Witnesses Examined In the Course of the Investigation. Doylestown, PA: Simeon Siegfried, 1819. (Available at the Mercer Museum Library, SC-14.1390)

Tadmore, Naomi. “Cultures of Settlement, 1660-1780.” Lecture, British History in the Long 18th Century from the University of London School of Advanced Study, London, United Kingdom,  February 3, 2016. (Available as a podcast)

Wrightson, Keith. English Society, 1580-1680. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1982.

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The Official Mistress

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Categories: Demography, New Hope, Tags: , ,

Another interesting find in the 1880 New Hope census:

Relationship Status: Mistress

Elias Wood was a 55-year-old black laborer born in Maryland. Hannah Peterson was a 29-year-old mulatto woman born in New Jersey. They were both illiterate. There is little question of the children’s parentage, as the census indicates their father was born in Maryland and their mother in New Jersey (click on the image for an expanded view).

Given that their eldest daughter is 13 years old, it appears that their relationship began at least thirteen years and nine months earlier in the autumn of 1866, when Elias was a lecherous old bachelor in his forties and Hannah was a young girl of 15 or 16. Perhaps these circumstances explain why they never married.

Interestingly, Hannah is listed as a “House Keeper.” Women who work in their own home are listed as “Keeping House” in the census, while women working as servants in other peoples homes are sometimes listed as “House Keeper.”

As a further insult, the census enumerator John Pidcock listed their relationship status as “single” to drive home the point that the government does NOT recognize their relationship. John may have had some inside information since he lived down Mechanics Street from them:

Mr. Pidcock the Nosey Enumerator

Fifty-nine years old and boarding in another guy’s house? Unemployed for a third of the year? Maybe John should have refrained from name-calling.

Note: The possibly illegitimate children living in a boarding house in my previous post share the surname Wood, but beyond their name I’ve found no connection.

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New Hope Boarding House, 1880

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Categories: Demography, New Hope, Tags: , , ,

For the last couple weeks I’ve been wading through New Hope census records conducting demographic research. Today I found this gem in the 1880 New Hope census:

It appears to be a boarding house on Main Street in New Hope with an interesting list of tenants.

  • Eliza Kitchen, 74, incapacitated by apoplexy and attended to by her unmarried 38-year-old daughter Mary Ann.
  • Ana Maria Peaker, 42, a black domestic servant with her five daughters. Her children have the surname Wood and her relationship status is not filled out. Are the illegitimate?
  • Charles B. Knowles, 76, a retired merchant boarding with his wife Margarett, 75, listed as insane due to “Softening of the Brain.”
  • Ruth Ann Parry, 85, a spinster.

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Springdale, Huffnagle, Rosenthal… Darkey Town?

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Categories: Black History, Demography, Maps, New Hope, Racism, Solebury

Segregated housing or unfortunate surname?

Today while poring over J.D. Scott’s Combination Atlas Map of Bucks County (1876), I discovered this detail in the map of New Hope Borough. The row of houses on Stoney Hill Road above Joshua Whiteley’s cotton mill (now the Inn at the Ruins) is labelled Darkey Town.

At different times the larger hamlet was known as Springdale, Huffnagle, and Rosenthal, but none of the sources I’ve checked make any mention of Darkey Town. MacReynolds’ Place Names in Bucks County provides some details about the development of the hamlet. Robert Heath built Solebury’s first grist mill here in 1707, and the William Maris moved here in 1812 and built the cotton mill (owned by Whiteley on this map) and the mansion known as Springdale.  When the railroad line was put in, Springdale became first stop southwest of New Hope. Maris sold the property to the Huffnagle family (Dr. John Huffnagle appears on this map). The hamlet was then called Huffnagle until it was renamed for artist Albert Rosenthal who purchased the ruined mansion in 1928 and set up a studio. The houses on Mechanics St. and Stoney Hill probably belonged to the skilled and unskilled laborers that worked at the mills.

I hate to jump to conclusions, but of course I’m wondering if the name Darkey Town is being used in the pejorative sense to label a section of New Hope Borough where black families resided. There are two bits of evidence that reinforce this idea. First off, one of the residents is listed only as “Old Bob.” Every other resident I’ve found in this atlas is listed by surname or at very least by first and last initial (compare this to J. Huffnagle, M.D. a few houses to the west). Why was Old Bob not afforded the same respect and formality given to every other resident and landowner? More importantly, the building labelled “M.E. Ch.” may be a Methodist Episcopalian Church. This might be related to the Mount Gilead African Methodist Episcopalian Church, founded by former slaves on Buckingham Mountain in 1835.

Of course, this hypothesis is discordant with the standard narrative of race relations in Bucks County. You always read that the area was remarkably tolerant thanks to the salutary influence of the Quakers. It’s conceivable that some less educated mill workers in this industrial valley had a different stance on race relations than the Quaker farmers.

My biggest question is why this name doesn’t appear elsewhere. George MacReynolds was the librarian of the Bucks County Historical Society, so he must have seen this atlas. Did he omit this place name on purpose? This map was published in 1876, when minstrel shows were a popular source of entertainment and played a significant role in exporting the stereotypes of Southern racism to the rest of the country. A quick Google search reveals that the term “Darkey Town” was used in the South to describe black neighborhoods, such as this one on the outskirts of Lebanon, Virginia. By the time MacReynolds published Place Names in 1942 the name would have been downright offensive. Likewise, MacReynolds may have purposefully omitted it because the Darkey Town label was a spurious editorial flourish by the mapmaker rather than a name that locals actually used to describe that area.

The next time I’m at the Spruance Library I’ll see what else I can find.

For a modern view:

If you enter Google Street View there are a few images of the ruins.