Dear Netti,

I read all your postings and enjoy them.  Some I wonder about, but yours sure challenges "conventional thought".  This reason one brings back memories.

"At that time [five years of age] a child was assumed to be self-supporting."

I found nothing surprising about that; although, I had forgotten, or not though about it for years.  I don't recall how old I was, but it is among some of my earliest memories.  My mother took me across the road to the cotton field in front of our house.  She had made a cotton sack for me out of a flour sack.  She taught me how to pick cotton using both hands.  Then she left me with in the field with the neighbors and went back to the house. 

I don't remember too much about this.  There is no one around now who can refresh my memories.  It may be that I kept wanting to pick cotton.  It may be that I was bugging those working.  (I'm sure I knew them all).  It may be that my mother thought it was time for me to learn how to do field work.  I do know from 10 years of age I did spend two months every year picking cotton.  There were children much younger than I in the fields.  These were all white children and from families that were economically middle class farm families.  I was born in 1941 so was a child of those who "remembered the depression".  I never had any resentment of doing this work.  However, from time to time I was not too pleased about doing the cotton chopping in the hot, humid days.  It was the rare child that was not helping out around the farm.  There were many chores to do and five was certainly not too young to do them.

I can also barely remember sometime before I was 10 being taught how to cut up the hog fat into less than inch squares to render out lard.  The remains were cracklings that were eaten, used in cornbread, and also in lye soap.

I still have the old ringer that had a fold out for a wash tub on each side.  When I was barely tall enough to reach it, it was frequently my job to turn the ringer for my mother.  It took at least three hands to ,make this thing work properly.  

From the time of April when the dew berries came out until the fall over the frost when persimmons and hickory nuts were ready, we spent much time in the woods and along fence rows "gathering" the nuts and berries native to eastern Arkansas.  I always enjoyed most of this, but hated the dew that would get my clothes soaked.  In the early '50s I could pick a gallon of blackberries in less than 30 minutes.  After Mother had all she wanted, then I could sell mine in town.  I got a $1.00 a gallon. This was about $2.00 an hour, and minimum wage, if it existed, was no more than 50 cents.  Pretty good for a 10 year old to make four times the minimum wage. 

My mother must have been a great psychologist. About agae 10 or 11 I was put to picking feathers off the chickens.  She raised a couple hundred each year for home use.  After about 25, I looked as if I had been tarred and feathered.  I went into an outbuilding and threw a fit or tantrum.  Somewhere in all this I said I was going to college where I could get a decent job.  My mother heard me and told my older sister.  Just before my older sister died she told the story.  I had never known that anyone heard me.

All this shows that children were able and expected to work at a very young age.

Cary Anderson, Ed.D.
P.O. Box 685
Decatur, AR 72722
479-752-8174  

  At that time,
> a child was assumed to be self-supporting! 
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Netti Schreiner-Yantis" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2002 10:16 PM
Subject: Re: Indenture, at what age ?


> In Wythe County, Virginia, about 1795, there was
> a contract in which James Bailey together with his
> son Zechariah Henry Bailey (age 5) bound Zechariah
> to Elizabeth Bishop until--I think it was 21.  Zechariah
> lived to be almost 100 years old and had children
> until he was 80 years old.  He managed to pass
> his story concerning this down to his children.  He
> said that Elizabeth Bishop was his mother; he having
> been born out of wedlock.  He grew up thinking
> he was bound to his step-father, whom Elizabeth had
> married after he was born.  Elizabeth, herself, started
> to Louisiana (for some reason which he did not state)
> and was never heard from again.  This must have been
> when he was perhaps between 9 and 15 years of age.
> His step-father was cruel to him and when someone
> told him it was his mother to whom he had been
> bound, he ran away.  He knew who his father was
> and his half brothers and sisters evidently also knew
> of him.  He ended up with some of James Bailey's land.
> 
> My thoughts on why the legal contract was made
> is as follows:
> 
> At that period, the court records seem to indicate
> that the father of an illegitimate child only had to
> pay "child support" in the form of money to the
> church wardens until a child was five.  At that time,
> a child was assumed to be self-supporting!   The
> reason was, I think, that the church did bind out
> children when they reached the age of five if they
> were to become a burden on the county.  James
> knew that his son was about to be bound out to
> someone else, so he stepped in and legally bound
> him to Elizabeth so he would not be taken from her.
> He  was a man of some means and capable of
> supporting the child, and I believe probably did.
> 
> I thought five years was awfully young, but then I
> read an article in the "Tri-State Trader" of Knightstown,
> Indiana, in which an aged woman was telling about
> her childhood.  This article was a reprint of an article
> written many years previously and the woman was
> born in the early 1800s.  She stated that when she
> became five years old her parents took her aside
> and said she was now old enough to help out.  Her
> first job was to turn apple slices which had been
> laid out to dry.  Her sisters pared and sliced the
> apples and laid them on slabs of wood cut by the
> brothers.  She walked up and down between rows
> turning them.  So . . . maybe most families started
> their five-year olds on chores and they really did
> earn their keep when bound out at the age of five.
> 
> I wonder if anyone else has seen a document like
> the above which might help verify this?
> 
> Netti Schreiner-Yantis
> 
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