Description:
The first public orphanage in America, the Charleston Orphan House saw to the welfare and education of thousands of children from poor white families in the urban South. From wealthy benefactors to the families who sought its assistance to the artisans and merchants who relied on its charges as apprentices, the Orphan House was a critical component of the city's social fabric. By bringing together white citizens from all levels of society, it also played a powerful political role in maintaining the prevailing social order. John E. Murray tells the story of the Charleston Orphan House for the first time through the words of those who lived there or had family members who did. Through their letters and petitions, the book follows the families from the events and decisions that led them to the Charleston Orphan House through the children's time spent there to, in a few cases, their later adult lives. What these accounts reveal are families struggling to maintain ties after catastrophic loss and to preserve bonds with children who no longer lived under their roofs. An intimate glimpse into the lives of the white poor in early American history, The Charleston Orphan House is moreover an illuminating look at social welfare provision in the antebellum South.
Brief description:
John E. Murray is the J. R. Hyde III Professor of Political Economy at Rhodes College and the author of Origins of American Health Insurance.
Review Quotes: "In The Charleston Orphan House, distinguished economic historian John E. Murray uncovers a world about which previous generations of scholars knew next to nothing: the world of orphaned children in early national and antebellum America. Employing a unique cache of records, Murray offers a sensitive and sympathetic account of the history of the institution--the first public orphan house in the US--while at the same time making it clear that Charleston's beneficence toward white orphans was inextricably linked to the racial ideology of the city's leaders. In Murray's hands, the voices of poor white families in early America are heard as never before. At once vivid, poignant, and analytically rigorous, The Charleston Orphan House makes major contributions to a half dozen different fields of history."
--Peter A. Coclanis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill