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Prior to the establishment of the Charleston Orphan House, orphaned and destitute children in the city of Charleston in South Carolina were supported through two Anglican parishes, St. Philip's, founded in 1683, and daughter congregation St. Michael's, whose history dates back to 1761. Both agencies collected poor rates and distributed them as relief. The City Council, convinced that centralized care of orphans would reduce costs, passed an ordinance in 1790 that led to the opening of the Charleston Orphan House. A Board of Commissioners was formed to exercise authority over the orphanage, which became a destination for children of poor families with no immediate or extended family members. This chapter examines how the city of Charleston managed care of orphaned, abandoned, and poor children and provides the context that led to the establishment of the Charleston Orphan House.

The Charleston Orphan House became an attractive destination not only for full orphans, but also for half orphans and other children who could not be raised by their parents. Because so many children of poor families wanted to enter the orphanage, an admissions protocol for prospective residents was created in which poverty was the standard requirement. Any widowed parent or guardian who hoped to leave a child at the institution must send a letter to the commissioners explaining the child's circumstances. To discourage parents who might exaggerate their burden, the orphanage conducted an official visit to their household, in many cases interviewing neighbors, landlord, employer, or clergy. Of the foster mothers initiating contact with the Orphan House, most were widows.

Children who were admitted to the Charleston Orphan House came from families with little experience of formal education. The orphanage not only took care of children until they were old enough to get out of the institution, it also offered them education and training in hopes of making their adult life easier than that of their parents. This chapter examines the expectations of parents and guardians for the education of their children living at the Charleston Orphan House, as well as the learning experiences of the children themselves. In particular, it looks at how the Orphan House school taught children basic literacy skills, what the children learned and when, and how the commissioners evaluated children to answer those questions. It concludes by considering two documents written by Orphan House insiders on the evolution of the school and how its expectations for educated children were dampened.

One of the problems faced by the Charleston Orphan House and its residents was health. Situated on the northern edge of a city characterized by unhealthful conditions, the orphanage witnessed the children suffer diseases such as cholera and whooping cough. These were the same diseases that plagued the other children in Charleston regardless of color or ethnicity. Stricken children received medical care derived from contemporary ideas on etiology and therapeutics, including vaccination against smallpox. This chapter focuses on the history of health and medicine in the Charleston Orphan House and how it reflects and illuminates the state of both in the country in general and the city in particular. It also examines the conflict between the Orphan House and the Poor House in connection with the health of entering children.

Based on the ordinance by the City Council, the organizational structure of the Charleston Orphan House required commissioners to be at the top and ladies to the side, officers such as the steward and matron in the middle, nurses below them, and children at the bottom. This simple scheme was misleading, as commissioners and officers did not always agree on a number of issues. Moreover, any institution that houses dozens of children will experience chaos. The grand Orphan House structure officially opened on October 18, 1794, which coincided with the orphanage's fourth anniversary. The building was intended to protect helpless children of the white poor and working class families, as well as provide them education and training. This chapter examines daily life within the Charleston Orphan House, with particular focus on the tension that arose between the commissioners, who sought to control the pace and content of daily activities, and those who actually lived in the institution, who had the ability to do more or less as they pleased.

Between 1790 and 1860, more than 2,000 children lived in the Charleston Orphan House. Of those who became apprentices, most worked and learned their trades, fed, sheltered, and trained uneventfully by their masters. In the case of children who left the orphanage to return to their families, family members often sponsored them for apprenticeships. This chapter examines the ways Orphan House children managed (or failed to manage) their transition into life away from their natal families, the institution, and apprenticeship. It focuses on a group of biographies to reconstruct the later lives of these young people and to follow their transition into adulthood, marriage, family, and career. Among these biographies were those of William Tucker, Mary Erhard, James Nelson, Richard Leonard, Catherine Shefton Miot, Sarah Adams, Albert Spalding, Louisa Gardner Swain, and Thomas Gedney.

The most common outcome for children in the Charleston Orphan House was apprenticeship. During the antebellum period, the orphanage sent approximately 1,100 children out into the Charleston labor market as apprentices. Of the more 2,000 children who came through the Orphan House before the Civil War, almost three-fifths left to enter a master's house. The demand for Orphan House children as apprentices, especially in the case of boys, stemmed in large part from the pace and type of Charleston's economic activities. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, Charleston's economy was mostly downward relative to the South and other cities in America. By the time the Orphan House was established in 1790, Charleston was already the nation's most prosperous city. Finding a fruitful match between children and masters was a complex one, in part due to the distance of the prospective master from Charleston.

A child may eventually leave the Charleston Orphan House for one reason or another. In some cases, children returned to their birth families. In other cases, they re-entered their nuclear or extended families. Over the first half of the nineteenth century, families showed more willingness or ability, or both, to recover their children. Of the children who escaped, boys far outnumbered girls. For these escapees, life outside the orphanage proved to be a harsh one yet offered new opportunities. While the runaway orphans often returned to a parent, there are instances when they either were kidnapped or they colluded with the putative kidnappers. Some children who left the Orphan House were adopted. The process of adoption at the Orphan House offers a glimpse into the history of the institution. This chapter examines the next steps of children at the orphanage who did not enter an apprenticeship, focusing on runaways, adoptees, and those who returned to the custody of a family member.

Between 1790 and 1860, the Charleston Orphan House offered protection, care, and education to some 2,000 children of poor families. The institution bound together all strata of white society in Charleston, its charity sought by distressed parents and guardians. It provided an avenue for commissioners from the wealthy elite to show their magnanimity and supplied the necessary labor for masters from the artisanal classes. Most importantly, it offered some degree of compassion for the destitute children who hardly appear anywhere else in Charleston's rich history. The orphanage celebrated its twentieth anniversary on October 18, 1810, with the Rev. Christopher E. Gadsden, the prominent Episcopal clergyman, delivering a peroration. In his speech, Gadsden acknowledged the Orphan House's role in making the city of Charleston a moral example to the nation. After April 1861, the institution remained a destination for abandoned, orphaned, and impoverished children into the twentieth century.

Situated in the city of Charleston, South Carolina, the Charleston Orphan House is the first public orphanage in the United States. It offered protection to Charleston's white poor population by acting as an early social safety net and bringing abandoned and distressed children of poor families under one roof. Established by an ordinance in 1790, the orphanage became a symbol of generosity and fear, love and violence, learning and ignorance. It attracted not only the poor, but also the artisanal and mercantile classes who wanted the children living in the orphanage to work as apprentices, as well as the wealthy elite who oversaw those efforts to care for young people. It performed both political and social welfare functions. This book documents the stories of the poor whites of Charleston based on letters and oral testimonies delivered by parents, their relatives and neighbors, their employers, and occasionally their children. It describes the place of the Orphan House and the mechanics of its operations, but is more about the experiences of the families that relied on the Orphan House.