ChildrenNot much history has been written about children because, generally, they were too young to create any history. The plight of the child is interesting, though. Throughout history, young children were not very productive and were not useful until they had attained a certain age and that age was around five years old. At some point they were used in fields, canning houses and oyster shucking houses. They would do menial work, such as snipping beans, de-heading shrimp or picking in the fields. It is hard for us to imagine now how a child of five is forced to go to work at five in the morning, but it was done. In a periodical from 1913, a federal inspector found that the children were coming in as early as three in the morning during peak canning or shucking periods. This volume of the Child Labor Bulletin from February, 1913, has many pictures of children working and their living conditions. We cannot even imagine such conditions today.
Since Salisbury was mainly an agrarian society, many hands were needed to work the large expanses of land owned by some farmers. The cheapest labor was his own children. Due to the large infant mortality rate, people on farms had many children. There was always something to do, no matter what age a child was. Taking care of the larger animals was usually taken on by the man of the farm because they were so important to the whole operation and could be dangerous for children. The children picked, fed and carried as much as their age and size would allow. There are many people around Salisbury that grew up on farms, and they can verify that there was never a dull moment. I’ll bet they never let their father hear them say, “I’m bored”, such as the children of today lament.
Education was spotty at best a hundred years ago. The number of one-room school houses that dotted the Shore covered the full extent of a child’s education. They only had one teacher, and the only qualification was that they had assisted a teacher for one year after they had finished the full nine years of formal education. Many of the students were at different stages of growth, and their “school grade” would differ greatly due to the level of knowledge attained. Many of the children had to miss a lot of time due to the planting season in the spring and the harvest season in the fall. When my grandfather decided to throw in the towel on his formal education, he was 15 in the fifth grade. Usually it was age and not graduation that determined when a child left school.
Doing genealogy on the Shore has always been difficult due to the fact that many farmers had a second wife. The first wife might have had six or seven children by the time she was worn out and died in her twenties. Since the farmer couldn’t tend his farm and the children, he would marry again. A second family might include another half-dozen children. These would include any children resulting from the second marriage and any children the second wife would bring with her.
bet the streets were safe to walk.
ReplyDeleteThank you for another historic report. My father said his first job was working as a waterboy to the field hands around Quantico, Md. He was elementary school age.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting... So why do kids today still have the entire summer off?
ReplyDelete10:32 b/c most kids are extremely lazy and all the work has been done by their elders. No one has taught them the benefits of hard work.
ReplyDeleteNice post George , my dad use to make me hold the lattern while he visited the outhouse , not too many inside bathrooms in those days.
ReplyDeleteMy children knew better than to say those three nasty word "I am bored".
ReplyDeletePeople have forgotten the satisfaction derived from hard work. There is a biological reason of the satisfaction that comes from this type of work versus pecking away at a keyboard all day. When you do all kinds of various physical work, you are working all the important components of your brain.....cerebrum, cerebellum, hypothalamus....this section is critical for your emotions. When incorporating all of these brain sections, you produce serentonin, endorphins, cortizone, etc. everything you need to feel good from your results. That is why it is so important for depressed people to get up and move, create and get some kind of results to make them feel valuable.
ReplyDeleteWhen you study the amish, there is almost no depression in that culture mostly related to the hard physical work that they perform that creates their self sufficiency. Parents-make your kids work. It is good for their mentality.
Kids may not like it when you give them jobs to do, but they develop a new respect for things and gratification knowing they were the ones responsible for accomplishing a certain task.
Another great contribution.
ReplyDeleteI really wish more children and adults were responsable especially since I have a 13 year old who wants to work, with animals or on a farm something outside but she would be grateful for anyone who would hire her at this age. my 10 and 11 year old also want to work. To bad there isn't jobs for them nowadays. It suck but for now they are helping the family inside the home and I make them help nieghbors for no charge. I am trying to teach them you do good to others because it is the right thing to do and do not expect anything in return other than the warm fuzzy feeling you get inside.
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