“Sir— Mr.— tells me I had better write to you now. I have a chance, so I will try. I have grown very much since I have been here...I like my place very much, and think farming agrees with me; I went to school this winter two months, I learnt to read and write, and ciphered as far as compound subtraction. I am going to get some willow to make some baskets, so as I shall not lose the art. Mr. — says he will give me time. I wish you would please to see how my mother is, and if you write please to tell me how she is. She is in the Alms House; please tell her if you see her, I am well and hearty...
Children’s education was bound up in the disputes about the social reform of delinquent or at risk youth in the early 19th century. The above quote was published in the third annual report of the House of Refuge, a facility founded in the late 1820s designed to divert poor and delinquent children away from imprisonment and to exert social control over them. The boy (no. 102) entered the House of Refuge in 1829 and was indentured to farmer a little over a year after. This was not unusual, written into the founding documents of the House of Refuge was an intent to indenture both boys and girls to people who applied, especially those that lived far away from Philadelphia and its perceived detrimental effects on these children’s behavior.
As the managers of the House of Refuge wrote, “[g]reat criminals are rarely found among those who have enjoyed the advantages of early education and virtuous intercourse.” [8] It is no wonder then, that training and education were essential componentes of reform at the House of Refuge. reformers who opposed other systems of reform, such as imprisonment, especially for children.[4] The annual reports of the House of Refuge reveal that the founders perceived prison as dangerous and that children should be protected from the “dangers of such an institution”. They also viewed education, including in the form of indentured servitude, as essential to the “enlargement of a virtuous society”. [An address, 12] Consequently, the House of Refuge managers had an active indenturing program with a committee that increased from 3 to 5 people by the second annual report. Of the children who ended up at the House of Refuge, who were almost exclusively white, around 30% percent were in indentured servant situations by the fifth annual report in 1833.
Beyond the House of Refuge pamphlets, the APS has many collections that include material on the history of early nineteenth-century childhood. During the summer of 2021, Lauren Kennedy–the 2021 Martin L. Levitt Fellow–and Bria Page–the inaugural Rutgers University Graduate Public Humanities Intern–came to the APS interested in investigating the history of childhood in America. Working with the staff at the Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS), Bria and Lauren engaged with two different datasets to examine the lives of children, Investigating Indentured Servitude: Visualizing Experiences of Colonial America and Eastern Apps: Visualizing Historic Prison Data. Bria and Lauren used the underlying data from these open data projects to examine the lives of 18th and 19th-century children who were indentured servants or imprisoned.
Lauren’s investigation of indentured servitude and apprenticeship in the late eighteenth century demonstrated the gendered nature of training. She showed that girls were most likely trained in housewifery, a situation that would remain unchanged in the 1820s and 1830s for girls being indentured after their first year at the House of Refuge.
Bria’s digital narrative tells a different story. Contemporaneous to the House of Refuge, Bria revealed that although the House of Refuge was a place where, to co-opt Dell Upton’s phrasing, “optimistic repression” provided children with opportunities they may not have received elsewhere, black children were not afforded the same chance. [Upton, Another City: Urban Life and Urban Spaces in the New American Republic] In fact, as Bria shows, black children were significantly more likely to end up in institutions such as Eastern State Penitentiary where education and training were not part of the reform model.
In the following sections, Bria and Lauren employ data visualization and analysis to further interrogate the data and to highlight individuals who have been hidden in the margins. We hope their work encourages other scholars to explore the APS’ archive and datasets and bring to light more histories of people and events past.
Click on the sections below to learn more.