Slavery and the Charleston Orphan House, 1790-1860 DISSERTATION
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Slavery and the Charleston Orphan House, 1790-1860 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Felice F. Knight Graduate Program in History The Ohio State University 2013 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Stephanie Shaw, Advisor Dr. Kenneth Goings Dr. Ousman Kobo Copyright by Felice F. Knight 2013 Abstract This study examines the use of slave labor by the Charleston Orphan House, an institution widely acclaimed to be the first public orphanage for white children in the United States. The institution, which was founded in 1790, hired, purchased, and acquired through natural birth, gift, and bequest more than 100 slaves before the Civil War. All of the slaves worked in domestic labor of one sort or another. From 1790 to 1803, the orphanage utilized hired slave labor alone, but in 1804 it purchased its first group of slaves. This study traces the challenges that the officials of the institution faced between 1790 and the eve of the Civil War, and their efforts to face many of these challenges through hiring and buying slaves. The study pays particular attention to the institution’s quest to provide a service to poor and orphaned white children in part through the use of slaves. ii Dedication This document is dedicated to the One who makes all things possible. Matthew 19:26 iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank my dissertation advisor, Professor Stephanie Shaw, for her guidance and also the members of the dissertation committee, Professors Kenneth Going and Ousman Kobo. The Institute for Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina, The College of Arts and Sciences at The Ohio State University, and the Graduate School at The Ohio State University provided research grants and/or fellowships which helped make the completion of this research possible. Dr. Nicholas Butler, public historian at the Charleston County Library, and the staff of the Charleston Archive and South Carolina Room at the library also provided professional and friendly assistance. The consistent encouragement and support of my family members, colleagues and friends were also exceedingly helpful. Special thanks to: Robert Knight, Larry and Mabel Ferguson, Gabrielle F. Cannick, Lauren Ferguson, Larry Ferguson, Kathleen Ferguson, Melissah Pawlikowski, Bethany P. Kim, Margaret and Oliver Sanders, Jan Durant, Dr. Deveonne Cooke, and Anita Dawson-- your belief in me made all the difference. iv Vita 1998................................................................Academic Magnet High School 2002................................................................B.A. History, Furman University 2006................................................................M.A. History, The University of Charleston and The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina 2007 to 2011 .................................................Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of History, The Ohio State University Fields of Study Major Field: History Areas of study: African American History, Primary field Early American History, Secondary field African History, Minor field v Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Dedication .......................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. iv Vita ...................................................................................................................................... v Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Slavery in Charleston ........................................................................................ 8 Chapter 2: The Charleston Orphan House ........................................................................ 34 Chapter 3: The Orphan House Slaves ............................................................................... 58 Chapter 4: Slave Labor at the Charleston Orphan House ................................................. 75 Chapter 5: Sickness, Birth and Death among Slaves at the Charleston Orphan House .. 106 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 119 Appendix A: Population of Charleston ........................................................................... 123 Appendix B: Slaves Owned by the Charleston Orphan House ....................................... 124 Appendix C: Slaves Hired by the Charleston Orphan House ......................................... 128 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 138 vi List of Tables Table 1. Prices of Slave Badges in Charleston by Occupation, 1783 ............................... 13 Table 2. Occupations of Slaves in Charleston, 1848 ........................................................ 21 Table 3. Pattern of Slaveholding in Charleston, 1790 and 1800 ...................................... 62 Table 4. Slaves Hired by the Orphan House, 1799-1803 ................................................. 65 Table 5. Wages of Hired Slaves, 1799-1818 .................................................................... 66 Table 6. Population of Charleston, 1720-1860 ............................................................... 123 Table 7. Slaves Purchased by the Orphan House ........................................................... 124 Table 8. Slaves Acquired by Gift or Bequest ................................................................. 125 Table 9. Children Born to Women Owned by the Orphan House .................................. 126 Table 10. Slaves Hired by the Orphan House, 1790-1798 ............................................. 128 Table 11. Slaves Hired by Orphan House, 1799-1818 ................................................... 130 vii Introduction In 1799, some of the owners of slaves working at the Charleston Orphan House angrily informed the Steward of the orphanage that they would take their slaves “away, unless they are paid their Hire.” Alarmed, the Steward informed Alexander Alexander, a member of the Board of Commissioners who had been assigned to visit the Orphan House that week, of the slave owners’ threat.1 Perturbed, yet fearful of losing the institution’s valuable slaves, Alexander reported the threat to the other Commissioners and remarked with some derision, “The City Council and the Commissioners must be sensible that the Institution cannot be supported without servants.”2 Alexander’s remarks epitomize the importance of slave labor to the Charleston Orphan House, an institution that has been widely acclaimed as the first public orphanage for white children in the United States of America.3 Founded in 1790 in Charleston, 1 The Commissioner’s name is rendered correctly. His first and last names are the same. 2 Minutes, Commissioners of the Charleston Orphan House, 12 April 1799, Records of the Commissioners of the Charleston Orphan House, Charleston Archive, Charleston County Public Library, Charleston, South Carolina (hereafter cited as OH Minutes). 3The claim that the Charleston Orphan House was the first public orphanage for white children in the United States has been made by many scholars (e.g. Barbara L. Bellows, Benevolence Among Slaveholders: Assisting the Poor in Charleston, 1670-1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), 121; Newton B. Jones, “The Charleston Orphan House, 1860-1876,” The South Carolina Historical Magazine 62 no. 4 (October 1961): 203; History and Records of the Charleston Orphan House, 1790-1860, abstracted and compiled by Susan L. King (Easley: Southern Historical Press, 1984), 1; and John E. Murray, The Charleston Orphan House: Children’s Lives in America’s First Public Orphanage (University of Chicago Press, 2013), 206n 6. Kindle Edition e-book.), but it appears to have originated with Benjamin Joseph Klebenar. In 1954, Klebenar published an article in The South Carolina Historical Magazine on the history of poor relief by the City of Charleston (see Benjamin Joseph Klebaner, “Public Poor Relief in Charleston, 1800-1860,” The South Carolina Historical Magazine, 55 no. 4 (October 1954): 210). Though the Charleston Orphan House was tangential to his study, he acknowledged it as “the first municipally supported orphan asylum in the United States.” Klebaner referenced the following work as the source of his claim: Homer Folks, The Care of Destitute, Neglected, and Delinquent Children (New York, 1 South Carolina, the Orphan House fed, clothed, and sheltered over 2,000 poor and orphaned white children before the Civil War.4 During the same time period, the Orphan House hired, purchased, and was given, through charitable donation and bequest, numerous slaves. These slaves cooked, cleaned, and washed the clothes of the child inmates and of the white men and women employed as the children’s primary caregivers, and also performed other domestic duties. Seldom mentioned in the literature on the orphanage, these slaves are part of the hidden history of the Charleston Orphan House. They are also part of the hidden history of institutional slavery in the United States. This study resurrects the Orphan