Accounts Of The Overseers Of The Poor Of The Town Of Boston PDF Download

The records constitute the earliest and most complete set of records pertaining to poor relief in early America. The Overseers of the Poor was a board of private citizens elected by the town meeting who were responsible for distinguishing between the ?deserving? and ?undeserving? poor. Being mostly wealthy merchants, the Overseers personally advanced the money for the deserving poor during most of the year and were then reimbursed by the town. Undeserving poor were relegated to workhouses. Given the face-to-face quality of this system of welfare, these records provide a wealth of hard to find detail about the nature of poverty in the eighteenth century, including details on both the feminization of poverty (related to waves of widows created by repeated wars) and the callous practice of freeing slaves once age or infirmity reduced their usefulness.