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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