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2. All applications
after being read at a meeting of the Board, shall be
referred to the Visiting Commissioner
of that week, who shall inquire into and report
thereon, in writing, at the next meeting of the
Board. 3. Applicants for the
admission of children shall attend in person with
the children upon the meeting to which the Visiting
Commissioner makes his report, unless excused from
attending by said Commissioner. a.
Inmates to be
retained until bound out or given up to parents or
friends. 4. Children once
admitted shall remain in the care of the Institution
until they are of suitable age to be bound out to
some useful trade, calling or employment, unless
previously given up to their relatives, who may be
able to support them, and otherwise approved, or to
some other suitable person, who shall be responsible
for their nurture, maintenance and education. “No child shall be admitted into the Orphan
House until the Board [of Commissioners] have enquired
into and determined as to the propriety of their
admission; where the children have parents or
guardians, on their admission they shall be bound to
the Commissioners for the time being, the girls until
they have attained the ages of eighteen years and the
boys until they have attained that of twenty one
years. As the Girls attain the age of thirteen, and
the boys fourteen years (unless their capacities may
enable them sooner) their indentures shall be
transferred to such mistresses or masters as shall
teach them such profession, trade or occupation as may
be suited to their genius and inclination.” Reference:
Minutes, Commissioners’ Meetings, Charleston
Orphan House Collection, South Carolina Room,
Charleston County Public Library, vol. 1, p. 38 5. With
one
exception noted below, the criteria for propriety in
admission were rather practical. Inmates were to be
residents of Charleston, roughly between the ages of 3
and 14. It was Charleston residents’ taxes that paid
for the institution, so applications from
out-of-towners were generally rejected and referred to
the overseers of the poor of the applicant’s town or
county. Younger
children required more attention than the steward
(manager) and nurses of the Orphan House could provide
and so were supported by outdoor relief or kept with
their mother in the Poor House. Older
children could be bound out directly as apprentices
with no need for “the bounty of the institution.” Families, if
they existed, were to be poor. The ordinance that
established the Orphan House specified that its
purpose was to support and educate “poor orphan
children and those of poor, distressed and disabled
parents who are unable to support and maintain them.”
(Minutes, Commissioners’ Meetings, Oct 1790) Especially
if the house was crowded, the visiting commissioner
might investigate the family’s circumstances more
closely to determine whether they were truly needy.
Usually they were. Reference:
Murray, J. E. (2004). Literacy Acquisition in
an Orphanage: A Historical-Longitudinal Case Study.
American Journal Of Education, 110(2), 174. 6. The
exception
to practicality, which was so obvious to the
commissioners that Orphan House records hardly mention
it, was race. By far the majority of black children in
Charleston were enslaved, and orphans among them were
the responsibility of the master. Reference:
Murray, J. E. (2004). Literacy Acquisition in
an Orphanage: A Historical-Longitudinal Case Study.
American Journal Of Education, 110(2), 174. 7. As
was
common among antebellum orphanages, the children were
bound into the Orphan House with a legally binding
contract called an indenture (Hacsi 1997, p. 105). By
endorsing the indenture, the adult who had brought the
child to the Orphan House yielded all legal claims to
the child. Contact
between family members outside the house, especially
mothers, and children within it often continued in a
frequent and meaningful way (Murray 2002). By the
nature of the indenture this occurred at the
sufferance of the commissioners, who nearly always
granted permission for the mother to visit or for the
child to go to his or her extended family for holidays
and the like. The child himself also signed the
indenture, which obligated him to remain in the
Orphan House until he became old enough to be bound
out to a master, to whom the indentures would be
transferred at that time. Reference:
Murray, J. E. (2004). Literacy Acquisition in
an Orphanage: A Historical-Longitudinal Case Study.
American Journal Of Education, 110(2), 175. a.
The indenture was a single document
composed of two halves. In the top half, the child,
with the consent of a parent or guardian, agreed to
enter the Orphan House and remain there until reaching
a suitable age to be bound out as an apprentice to a
master. Here the indenture was signed or marked by
both the child and the parent or guardian. On average,
a child spent just over five years in the institution
before being bound out or returning to the parent,
when it was time to complete the rest of the
indenture. b.
Because the bottom half concerned the
master’s responsibilities to feed, shelter, and train
the child, he (or in about one-fifth of the cases,
she) also endorsed the agreement by a signature or
mark. Possibly
because Orphan House policy was to bind children to
particular masters or mistresses only if the child was
willing, the child also signed or marked a second time
at the bottom. Reference:
Murray, J. E. (2004). Literacy Acquisition in
an Orphanage: A Historical-Longitudinal Case Study.
American Journal Of Education, 110(2), 176. |