REPORT OF THE BOARD OF MANAGERS OF THE
CLEVELAND PROTESTANT ORPHAN ASYLUM
FOR THE YEAR CLOSING
OCTOBER 31, 1919.

The function of the Orphan Asylum, making a home for children, carries always hope and love and increasing interest. Every year the workers are learning and improving, and accomplishing more satisfactory results. The definite form of service in this Asylum, taking care o f children in this home, finding permanent homes for some of them in a good family, sheltering and eventually returning others to their own family or relatives, goes steadily on. There were two hundred and thirty children admitted during the past year. Three hundred and nine, in all, were cared for. Seventy-four were placed in homes, one hundred and fifty-six were returned to their own friends, and seventy-nine were still in the Asylum on October 31st, 1919.

. . .

The staff of visitors has been increased. This permits us not only to emphasize visits to the homes where our children have been placed, but also to carry on extension and advisory lines of work through visits to the parents of children who are in the Asylum for temporary shelter and thereby help them and their children in the future. The remarkable personal work and thought for every child results in good health, happiness and a helpful spirit toward others. The children were singularly free from illness and contagion for several months of the year. Careful attention was given to the report cards which the boys and girls brought home from school. Days in the open air when all enjoyed picnics to the farm were especially beneficial.

. . .

Respectfully submitted
Mrs. J.R. OWENS,
SECRETARY

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON ADMITTING AND PLACING CHILDREN FOR THE YEAR
CLOSING OCTOBER 31st,

Quietly and persistently your Committee on Admitting and Placing Children has carried on its work during the past year. Because of the flu epidermic and the readjustment period following the War the many cases have kept us on the alert trying to help those worthy and counseling those who needed guidance rather than help.

However, our aim is to aid in some way all who call. Visitors ofttimes feel slighted because we do not immediately relieve them of their children and suggest instead other ways and means. Many times the parents need the children with them to act as governors on their own conduct. In other instances the quicker the children are admitted to the Home the better it is for them.

We have cared for three hundred and nine children during the past year. It is interesting to note that of the one hundred and eleven new families helped this year but forty-four were American. The remaining - sixty-seven represented twenty-two different nationalities.

On our records of the year we also note that twenty-four fathers and nine mothers deserted. Twelve mothers were immoral. Eleven families were temporarily broken up because one or the other of the parents was in the hospital. The deaths of twenty fathers and sixteen mothers caused us to take temporary care of the children until other arrangements could be made for them. Fourteen cases were illegitimate.

The present policy of the Institution is the same as in the past in regard to admitting and caring for children. In recent years there have been greater calls for the temporary shelter of children by parents who have for one cause or another been unable to care for their own.

Last year we returned one hundred and fifty-six children to their parents or relations, as we believe in keeping the family together if possible. It is also our aim to thoroughly investigate the relatives of the child with the idea in mind of having them take care of their own kin and not delegate this responsibility to strangers.

During the past twelve months we leave placed but seventy-four children in foster homes. One reason for this is that many children given to us for adoption have been returned to relations whom we have succeeded in interesting in the case. Very often, upon investigation, we found relatives who at first refused to assist the parents in caring for children willingly accept the responsibility when they learned that the parental rights had been legally forfeited.

The real work of the Institution, however, is the same - the receiving of children who are left dependent and are eligible to be placed in foster homes. We are still firm believers in the family life for the child and no one can question the fact that the Institution is a great help in training the child for his future home.

We thoroughly investigate the parents and home before We accept their child for adoption, believing it is but natural that the child should be kept, if possible, in the home of his own people.

It is our plan to move slowly in placing a child, no matter how desirable the home may appear, because people sometimes are impulsive in this as in other important matters and give little thought to the responsibility they would assume. By delaying the placement a reasonable period it gives the parties concerned time to consider all phases of the undertakings. It also gives us a better opportunity to fit the home with the proper child and thus prevent a return or transfer later on. Our experience has shown us that this is the most satisfactory plan.

Every charity organization has on its list people who are habitual troublemakers. The following case is typical in this respect. Several years ago we admitted a family of five children whose parents were of the worst type and who were living under disgraceful conditions. With the possible exception of the boy they could not rightfully be termed borderline, but rather they belonged to that class of child known as difficult. It was only after long periods of training that the children were placed in foster homes.

The boy was transferred three times before he was placed in a home where he finally proved at all congenial. Temperamentally he is easy-going and if let alone he enjoys doing any kind of manual work and is happy when nothing occurs to disturb the routine of his life. He neither smokes, chews nor drinks and seldom leaves the farm. He has a good sized back account and as his needs are few the sum is steadily increasing. He will never add to the world's intellectual store, but the brawn of his class is a mighty factor in caring for a record crop of wheat or potatoes.

It has been our experience that the logical place for a mentally retarded man or boy is the farm provided, however, that he has not in his makeup the trait of cruelty to animals. In the city the chances are that he will be but a tool in the hands of astute criminals but in the rural districts the opportunities for getting into trouble. are reduced to a minimum.

Edith, a sister, was found a home in an ordinary family. They were told she was a difficult child to manage, but they assured us we would not be called upon to solve their petty problems if we would but allow them to take the girl with them. The reports of our visitor show that there were many occasions when the family life did not run smoothly and had her foster parents been less persistent and persevering it is not to be doubted that there would have been an entirely different ending to the story of her girlhood days. She now has a home of her own and knows from experience that caring for children has its sorrows as well as its joys, its moments of pain as well as happiness.

Clara, another sister, was the cause of much solicitation by everyone with whom she came in contact. She was by nature a disturber. If an occasion lacked variety or excitement, this child would find a way to supply the apparent deficiency. Her imagination was constantly at work and the plausible stories, complete with detail, caused more than one family to return her to the Home.

When people would see her among the children in the Girls' Department they could not be convinced that she was not really as demure as she appeared, but after they had had her for a time we invariably received a letter asking for advice or requesting our visitor to call and We knew at once that the same old story was to be repeated.

Upon one occasion she almost caused a separation between her foster parents by her stories. Frequent visitations and letters were necessary but even these would have been of no avail had the people with whom she was last placed wavered in what they considered their Christian duty. Clara, too, is married and now realizes her mistakes of earlier days.

Sadie, a few years older than Clara, was marked with a propensity for wandering and was easily influenced by the older children. She remembered localities and names of streets where she had formerly lived with her own people and she never became really reconciled to her foster home. All efforts to interest her in the better things of life failed. School to her was but a place in which to idle away one's time and her attendance at church was always preceded by many protestations. One day we were notified that Sadie had boarded a train for Cleveland. We afterwards discovered that she had found her own people and drifted back into their ways.

Bessie, the youngest, is still in her foster home. She has been a care in many ways but her foster parents are firm in the belief that she will outgrow her natural tendency for troublemaking. Should this prove true, it will be because she was placed when very young and her careful training will have neutralized the family trait.

We have in mind another family of an entirely different type. Conditions were such that of the five children, only two of them were placed in homes- the others being returned to relatives. In after years the brothers and sisters were brought together. The brother and sister of the foster homes had received college educations and each specialized in a chosen field of endeavor. When the others learned of this they were not to be outdone and immediately began courses of study in widely separated institutions of learning. The germ of achievement had been lying dormant in them thorough the years and needed but a stimulus to produce results. Today they are professional men and women but it is doubtful this would have been so had all of the five children been returned to their friends and relatives, as the educational advantages received by the two placed in foster homes proved an incentive to the others and goaded them on to work and study in order to attain an equality of learning similar to that of their more fortunate brother and sister.

We cannot close this report without a word of appreciation to those people who have taken these dependent children into their homes. Many times it has been their first experience in the intimate care of little ones and they have begun their task with positive opinions in the matter of child-rearing. However, they soon find that some revision is necessary. What seems perfectly plausible in theory does not always work out practically where the child is concerned. This period of adjustment affects the child as it does the parents and if the latter are but half-hearted in the desire for a little one in the home they are unable to stand the strain and the child is returned to the Institution the worse for having been placed.

Many people feel so sorry for the little ones they take that their sympathy rather than good judgment is the dominant note in the child's training. Even a baby will take advantage of the weakness of a foster parent and instead of being governed the child becomes the monarch of all he surveys and every whim must at once be gratified.

We see alike the frailties of the child as well as those of the foster parents who think they are following a wise course when they indulge children but really are in error. It is a simple matter to talk to the little one and point out his mistakes but it requires tact to do this with the foster parents. The latter class differ in their tendencies as do the children. They forget that the act of taking a penny from the kitchens table is an offense of no greater magnitude than it was when they themselves surreptitiously tip-toed to the cookie jar twenty years ago. They cannot see why the child should tell stories occasionally but they forget their own vivid imaginations when they were young.

It is sometimes said that it child is lacking in appreciation but we find in some cases that the foster parents have made very little effort to bring out this admirable trait.

When the foster parent has returned from a shopping tour the child eagerly inspects the purchases hoping that perhaps he may find something for himself. Clothing and the incidental expenses of keeping a child in the home mean very little to the average boy and girl and the juvenile tendency is to take these things as a matter of course, but the aspect of a child"s whole world is changed for him if he is occasionally remembered with a small gift such as a base ball bat or a hair ribbon. Perhaps the mistakes of the foster parents have been legion, but the fact is indisputable that were it not for the many homes opened to these desolate little ones their chances for a normal existence would indeed be slight.

Respectfully submitted,
MR. DOUGLAS PERKINS. . .

BOARD Of MANAGERS' REPORT.

On this, the twenty-seventh anniversary of The Cleveland Protestant Orphan Asylum, we cannot but review with grateful hearts the many blessings that have been showered upon it by a guiding Providence, from its beginning until the present time.

In April, 1852, the charity of one lady furnished the Asylum with the lease of a small frame house on the corner of Erie and Ohio streets, where it began its work of sheltering orphans and destitute children. This house was mainly furnished by articles of second-hand furniture begged by the ladies first undertaking its management. The post of manager for the Orphan Asylum was during its first years no sinecure, for active exertion was needed to see that the necessaries of life were procured for the household. There were times, at its beginning, when, after one day's table was spread, there was uncertainty as to how that for another was to be provided. Yet the little household never lacked. The promise, "Bread shall be given thee, and thy water shall be sure," never failed towards it. The city at that time was neither so large nor wealthy as it now is, by many degrees, but there was never a time when hearts did not warm to the need of the orphan, and a call of the managers of the Asylum for the means of providing for its necessities always met with a ready response. Soon the little frame house became too small for the number of inmates, and at the second anniversary meeting the report of the managers states that there were then "twenty-five in the family, and no larger number could be accommodated."

A call was immediately made for funds to erect a building purposely for the Asylum, and a general subscription from the citizens of Cleveland resulted in the erection of a building suitable to its wants at that time. The donation of an acre of land by Rev. Eli N. Sawtell, on the corner of Woodland and Willson avenues, had already supplied a site. Four months after the third annual meeting, the building was so far completed that the orphans were removed to it. This house is the one that has ever since been occupied by the Asylum. With joy and pride was the new building opened for use, and little did those then connected with the institution expect to witness a call for another and larger home. The children reveled in the wider liberty afforded them here. One poor little fellow, who had come from some dark, cellar-like home, waking at night in one of the airy sleeping apartments, and seeing the light of a full moon streaming in at the numerous windows, exclaimed: "This is a grand place; they don't have no nights here." The Asylum has indeed been a bright and blessed place for many whose lives but for it would have been forever darkened.

Though the house was occupied in July, 1855, it was not then wholly finished or furnished. This was slowly, and, with some difficulty, accomplished during the four or five years thereafter. It was, fortunately, quite completed in 1860, just previous to the war, when there was an increasing call for shelter for orphans, while the high prices of the necessities of life caused a heavy strain upon the means at command of the institution. This need was, however, generously met by the public in their patronage of a series of entertainments arranged by the ladies connected with the Asylum.

In December, 1863, the well known legacy of Capt. Levi Sartwell supplied the Asylum with such an addition to the small Permanent Fund previously collected, as relieved it from the pressure of anxiety, and with other donations from time to time from kind friends, the Asylum has ever since been enabled to perform its work. Although this has steadily increased with each succeeding year, its income has about covered its living expenses.

We have, in previous reports, called attention to the fact that owing to the rapid growth of our city, the site of the Asylum has gradually become more unsuitable for its purposes. The family has grown larger, and the building is no longer well adapted to its use. Much anxiety has also been felt, that a house sheltering so many little children was not fireproof. But generous friends, of whose kindness we call not speak too highly, have been ready, not only to observe the needs of the hour, but to act upon them.

Mr. Leonard Case opened the way by donating a valuable tract of land, fronting upon St. Clair street, as a site for a new asylum, and soon afterwards our staunch friend, Mr. J. H. Wade, signified his willingness to contribute towards the erection of a substantial fire-proof building, the sum of $40,000. It is now one year since work was begun upon the foundation of a building of this description. It has since progressed as rapidly as possible, under the skillful direction of Mr. Samuel Lane, architect, with the very efficient help of Mr. Reuben Bulman, Superintendent of Works.

The building from every point of view presents a massive and imposing appearance, having just enough of ornament to relieve its solidity.

It is built of rock-faced Amherst stone, trimmed with red Marquette sandstone. In the interior the wide halls and large rooms, with their high ceiling, give an impression of ample air and space, and promise of thorough ventilation.

The solid character of the work has prevented its being carried on with the speed that was at first expected, and the interior is still in a rough state, so that a day for its occupation cannot with certainty be named.

Work upon a building at once so elegant and so substantial, has, of course, been costly, and before the summer was over the large sum given by Mr. Wade was almost exhausted. But there was no exhausting the generosity of our large hearted friend, as was proved by the following letter, addressed to Mr. Joseph Perkins, President of the Board of Trustees for the Asylum:

Cleveland, August 29, 1879.
JOSEPH PERKINS, ESQ. President C.P. Orphan Asylum:

Dear Sir:-The amount promised by me towards building the new Asylum is nearly expended, with the building a little more than half finished. This suggests a review of the situation, and inquiry as to where the balance of the money is to come from. The building is costing considerably more than was anticipated, and to complete it from the limited means of the Society will, I fear, reduce their income below the proper requirements for so many children as the new building is capable of accommodating. And wishing to see it all utilized, if Cleveland has enough homeless children to fill it, I have come to the conclusion that rather than have the managers, in whom I have so much confidence, embarrassed for want of funds, in what I regard the holiest of human charities, you may disregard the limit heretofore named, and continue to draw on me for the completion of the building, including heating apparatus, plumbing and gas fitting.

Very respectfully,
J.H. WADE

For such noble generosity the managers are powerless to render a suitable expression of thanks, but they fervently trust that the blessing of many a soul ready to perish, may through long years to come richly reward the donor.

In the plan of the building a great part of the upper story is reserved for a child's hospital. This plan has had the careful study of Dr. Alleyne Maynard, who last year appropriated for the fitting up and maintenance of this hospital, according to the best recent methods, the sum of $10,000 as a memorial offering for his wife, Mrs. Mary Clarke Brayton, a lady so widely known as one full of good and charitable works.

Our thanks are again tendered to Mr. Leonard Case, who has lately extended his gift of land to the Asylum, by thirty feet fronting on St. Clair street, in order to give a more ample space for so large a building. The whole amount of land in the tract thus liberally donated by Mr. Case is 4x24/100 acres. The great advantage to the Asylum family, of such extensive grounds for use and recreation, will be apparent to all.

In the rear of the new Asylum, and entirely separate from it, a good brick house is being erected for laundry purposes. The cost of this, and of the extensive sewerage required for connecting with mains at a distance of about 1,800 feet, and also the expenses of improvement of the ample grounds, will be met by funds expected to accrue from the sale of the old site, which, it is hoped, will prove sufficient to cover these outlays.

Of the year that has just closed we are glad to be able to record that it has been a prosperous one in our Asylum work. Our Superintendent's report will show the large number of children placed in homes during the year, and we have reason to rejoice in the excellent character of these homes and the good hope that the little ones there placed will grow up under the most favorable circumstance for lives of usefulness. Much time and labor is given by the Superintendent and Matron to the visitation at homes and correspondences both before and after placing ant children, so that we have the satisfaction of knowing that the best has been done that is possible, for each little human waif.

The Asylum household remains under the same excellent supervision that has for years past had our entire confidence. Mr. A. H. Shunk and Mrs. Julia W. Shunk retaining the places of Superintendent and Matron, which they have so long well and faithfully occupied.

Miss M.J. Weaver and Mrs. O. R. Wing, who for nine years past have been our reliance as special care-takers for the boys' and girls' departments, have continued to do good service in those posts; while Mrs. Dora Ellison has given efficient help in different departments.

There has been but little severe sickness within the Asylum during the year. One death has occurred from diptheretic croup.

Our thanks are due to Dr. Thomas, also to Dr. Barr, for their professional services; one at the beginning and the other at the close of the year.

We are pleased to acknowledge again the help of our good friend Mr. David L. Wightman, who has continued to act as a co-worker in bringing to our doors some of those unhappy little ones who are in a state of worse than orphanage, from which it needs the aid of some such good Samaritan ns he to rescue them.

We would recognise the kindness of Miss Jennie Hutchinson, who without charge, for five weeks of the summer vacation, taught a school on the kindergarten plan in the Asylum, and thereby gave great delight as well as good instruction to our restless little ones, on whom, as well as on our tried care-takers, the long vacation hours are apt to drag heavily.

We note a legacy of ($300) three hundred dollars, from the estate of Mrs. Betsy Barnes of Medina, 0., paid into the Permanent Fund of the Asylum through her executor, Mr. William P. Clarke; also a legacy of $55.75 from Francis W. Warner, by Mr. G. Vanvoast, administrator.

In the infant department we consider that much has been done by very simple means. There are no accommodations for infants within the Asylum, but an active committee is appointed, consisting of Mrs. Wm. Rattle, Mrs. N. W. Taylor and Mr. A. H. Shunk, whose duty it is to give careful attention to this part of the work. During the past year twenty-five infants have been placed by this committee in good homes, where they were taken for adoption. It is remarkable, considering the extreme difficulty in bringing along safely infants deprived of a mother's care, that only one babe has died during the year while in charge of the Asylum, and this was one that had suffered so severely from exposure before being received that it was unable to rally from the effects. As care due to the older children renders it impossible to have the infants sheltered in the Asylum, most of the babes have been placed with Mrs. Sarah Woodin, who, during the past six years, has proved herself a careful and affectionate nurse to the infants entrusted to her. We think it but just to commend her as one having a special love for babyhood, that gives an aptness in the delicate management needed for it, and renders the vigilant watching which it day and night demands a welcome toil. We report the following donations for the special use of the nursery, and not included in the Treasurer's report. Mr. James A. Tracy, $25; Mrs. Charles Bissell, $10; Mrs. Wm. Rattle, $25.

At the last meeting of managers for the year, we were informed of two most welcome offerings to the Asylum: one, a fine sewing machine from the White Sewing Machine Company of 360 Euclid Av., a gift which is thankfully received and well appreciated; the other an offering from Mr. J . A. Vincent and his daughter, Mrs. Hines, to furnish the parlor of the new Asylum building. We desire to return thanks to the kind donors for this most seasonable and acceptable gift.

We close our year's work with hearts filled with joy and gratitude for the mercies vouchsafed to our institution, and with brightest hopes for its future prosperity, under the blessing of Him who declared himself the father of the fatherless.

For the Managers,
Respectfully submitted,
A. WALWORTH, Secretary

SUPERINTENDENT'S REPORT

The number of children in care of tile Asylum at the close of the year (September 30, 1878) was 59; during the year there have been admitted, 150; there have been returned to friends, 91; died, 2, (one in the Asylum and one in the nursery); taken to the Industrial Home for Girls, 1; placed in homes for adoption, 70; now in the Asylum, 45; whole number of children cared for, 209.

As we look over the work of the past year, we can safely say it has been a prosperous and fruitful one. As is our custom, we have given much attention to children who have from time to time been placed in homes. As a general thing we found them in good health, happy and contented; their physical wants abundantly supplied, and their mental and moral training carefully looked after. We are often surprised at the physical development of our boys and girls. We find many of them standing shoulder to shoulder with the best of people, and taking high position in the active duties of life. Surely a good home in the country is a good thing.

During the year we have travelled 13,000 miles, and have visited 113 boys and girls in their homes. For various reasons we have made some changes, and in some cases have thought best for children to return to the Asylum.

Occasionally our friends become somewhat discouraged in the management of our boys and girls, but this discouragement comes largely from the fact that we are all working in undeveloped ground. Children, no more than adults, can be raised to high levels suddenly. We must take them on their own plane, place them under the elevating influence of Christianity and education, and gradually bring them to the appreciation of higher privileges.

Personal influence is a great power. There is no such sunshine as sympathy and encouragement. Slow growth is often sure growth, - some minds are like Norwegian pines, they are slow in growth, but they are striking their roots deep.

We must keep in line of sympathy and thought with the young. We need more wisdom, more cheerfulness, more fruitfulness. These are elements that every man should seek for in his daily experience. The good farmer, with whom we like to place our boys, knows full well the value of trenching and enriching the soil. Success in agriculture and horticulture is in exact proportion to the amount of labor and stimulus given. Let us have less of the pruning knife, and more root culture; less repression, and more encouragement.

There are few things to which we need to train ourselves more diligently and conscientiously than the habit of giving cheer and encouragement.

We soon expect to leave our old Asylum Home, with all its sacred memories. And as we enter our new and commodious building, erected by generous hands, we are not unmindful of the fact that increased facilities bring greater responsibilities. The design of the Orphan Asylum is to supply the place of the parent, as far as possible. The homeless and destitute children of the city are our special wards. Our open door bids them a cheery welcome, where warm hearts and willing hands will minister to their necessities. Our ambition is to save the perishing. We want the Asylum to be a known refuge to every child who may need its hospitality. To this end we earnestly invite the co-operation of all friends of suffering humanity. We shall at all times be glad to have anyone point us to a homeless child or a child in distress.

We still believe that the true home for the child is the family, and that the ultimate aim of all asylum work should be to establish the child in family relations as soon as possible. In this department of our work we need troops of friends; we need their help, we need their advice, we need their encouragement, and we intend to do our work in such a way as to command their confidence and respect.

We fully appreciate the good work done by the many friends of the Asylum in days past, and we sincerely hope they will not forget us in days to come. Speak a good word for the Asylum, and point us to some good home for an orphan child. There are many childless homes throughout the country, Christian homes of peace and plenty, but such homes naturally tend to selfishness. The divine law is a law of unselfishness, and we would say to all such homes, take to your hearts some bright orphan child, and learn that life is another thing when great love enters it.

Sometimes people ask where all our children come from. They come from hunger, from cold, from nakedness, from neglect and abuse. Their poverty is not of their own misdeeds; but for this mysterious providence they appeal to us as God's poor.

In our new building, No. 940 St. Clair street, we shall always be glad to see our friends and co-operate with them in any good work which will tend to bring a homeless child and childless home into a divine and mutually blessing relation.

The following letter is from two sisters who went out from the Asylum four years ago:

October 5, 1879.

DEAR MR. AND MRS. SHUNK : - Papa received your welcome letter, and he wished me to answer for him. Katie (or Minnie as we call her now) and myself attend school all the while. We have a very good school; there are five departments. Little Minnie took the price in the first intermediate at the close of the year. I attend the high school, study history, geography, grammar, arithmetic. We also attend Sabbath school and church every Sunday. I have played the organ in Sunday school for two years, and have played for church service all summer, the organist being absent. We have a beautiful organ; little Minnie plays a few exercises. We have a very pleasant home; papa and mamma are very kind to us, and give us all the advantages they possibly can, and we are very happy. I am sorry we have no portraits to send you at present; will send them as soon as we have some taken. I suppose the children are all sitting out on the grass this beautiful afternoon, listening to some story being read by some of you. Would like very much to see you all. I don't suppose there are any of the girls at the Asylum that were there when I was, but presume you hear from them once in a while.

Papa, mamma and sister Minnie wish to be remembered, and they would like very much if yon could come and make us a visit. Please let us hear from yon again.

Lovingly,
Mary.

Eighteen months ago, Mr. D. L. Wightman, agent of the Humane Society, brought a little curly headed boy to the Asylum, deserted by his father and abused by his mother. He had received an injury from which he came near having hip disease; but through the skill and kindness of Dr. Biggar, the child recovered. We placed him in a good home, where he has been legally adopted and made an heir to property. A few weeks ago, in company with his foster parents, this little boy visited the Asylum; hale and hearty, with his past neglect and suffering entirely forgotten.

Last spring Willie W. wanted to know whether we would buy some potatoes of him in the fall. Certainly, said we. So early in the morning, October 7, Willie drove up to the Asylum with a big load or produce. We paid him the market price for his potatoes, and we find them to be excellent. Will is an Asylum boy, a manly fellow, and we are always glad to have him come home. In the same good place lives Gracie. She is an Asylum girl, and always comes in with a smile on her face. Occasionally Gracie calls with a basket of eggs, and is quite disposed to drive q good bargain. We attribute this to her Western Reserve training, which is all right, tor industry and economy bring wealth. We are proud of Will and Gracie.

Coney B., who lives in the same neighborhood, bas a good deal to tell us about the good time he has going to school, and hunting rabbits and squirrels. Coney is in good hands, and we expect good things from him.

Lulu is a fine girl of nine years. The old, old story or drunkenness and abuse was the cause of her coming to the Asylum. Nearly two years ago we placed her in a pleasant home in the country. Before coming to the Asylum, Lulu scarcely ever heard anything fall from the lips of her parents but profanity and obscenity. Mr. Wightman will bear us out in this statement. In her new home she is neat and tidy, happy and contented. We called to see her recently. She read to us out of the Bible, and sang many of the popular Sunday school songs of the day. She never goes to bed at night without first praying for the children at the Orphan Asylum.

Once upon a time, not far from the above home, we placed a little homeless girl baby. We called to see it. She is a promising child and has been legally adopted. Furthermore, she has four big brothers, who declare that she shall have her rights under the law. And as we looked over the large, well ordered farm, we came to the conclusion that her rights under the law is no small matter.

The following letter from Daisy tells a sad story:

DEAH MR. SHUNK: - I write to tell you that my dear papa is with us no more. Mamma and I are so sad and lonely. Papa was so much company for us, and he was so kind to teach me how to write, and how to read in the Bible, and to love God. I shall not forget his kind Words. I will try to be a good girl, and meet him in heaven. He is buried near by, so I can go to his grave every day and carry flowers to it. Mamma and I are coming to see you in November. Truly your friend, DAISY.

October, 1879.

MR. A. H. SHUNK:

Dear Sir: - I wish to send you many thanks in acknowledgement of the great kindness you rendered me when you sent me the dear little baby I have waited for so long. She is entirely different in looks from the ideal baby I looked for: but her sparkling eyes, and quick, bright ways make her so attractive that she long ago found the way to our hearts; and we dearly love the little homeless one - homeless no longer - for we would not think of parting with her now. She is well and grows nicely, and has already learned to know her papa and mamma from everyone else. She is such a comfort to me. How can I thank you enough? Now about adoption papers. Please let us know what will be required of us, for we wish to keep our baby. We will be glad to finish it up as soon as possible. I---H---

If there ever was a child rescued from danger, it is the little boy who (in words of his own selection) morning and evening repeats IRVIE'S PRAYER:
0, Lord, take care of papa,
0, Lord, take care of mamma;
0, Lord, take care of me;
0, Lord, take care of all little children. Amen!

David writes good letters. He has a good home, and seems to be much interested in agricultural pursuits. He has been the subject of much anxiety, but we believe the good work done by his best earthly friend has not been in vain, and that he will yet rise up to call Miss Weavce blessed.

We would like to speak of a great many of our boys and girls; would like more fully to tell of our visits to them; would like to read many good letters we have from them, and mention the good reports we hear of them, but we have not room for all these good things. We want our boys and girls to get more and more in the habit of writing to us. Tell us all about what you are doing and how you do it; be assured we will be interested in anything you may have to say, and be assured we shall always be glad to see you at your Asylum home.

A.H. SHUNK
Superintendent.

Why I Taught the Source

In studying the historical meaning of disability in the U.S., official reports of the myriad institutions established for the care, education, training, and sometimes merely confinement, of persons whose differences set them apart have been a key source of information. Such documents were typically written by administrators concerned primarily with the need to ensure continued public and institutional support.

These reports can tell us many things and provide a useful resource to help students understand children's experience of disability over time, but they only provide part of the story. For example, they often address the experience of children with physical impairments or who bore such labels as "feeble-minded," but no comparable record exists concerning children with emotional disabilities. In addition, these reports represent the institutional voice. They do not reflect "insiders' views," that is, the perspectives of the persons affected by the services. These reports can be considered alongside memoirs written by those with sensory or other disabilities for multiple perspectives.

How I Introduce the Source

The 19th century was characterized by the establishment of institutions. Records of asylums for persons judged insane from the 19th century, however, make only occasional reference to inmates in their teens or childhood. If childhood emotional disturbance was present in the 19th century, the sparseness of data leads one to ask: Where were the children? Or, alternatively, does the absence of facilities specifically for the treatment of childhood disturbance indicate that the emotionally disturbed child is new to the 20th century?

In teaching a course on the history of childhood, I pose these as alternative hypotheses:

1. American children have always experienced the same range of mood, conduct, ideational, and other disorders as do children today, but their needs were not appropriately addressed before the 20th century; or
2. Perhaps owing to a variety of socio-cultural factors (e.g., urbanization, industrialization, economic stressors, immigration, etc.), childhood emotional disturbance became significantly more visible and a cause for concern with the dawn of the 20th century.

In class, we discuss the socially constructed nature of disability. In light of this, students tend to lean toward the first hypothesis, noting further the role of changing societal norms in determining whether certain behaviors are aberrant.

In the 19th century, the U.S. actually presented an array of facilities where children considered different or difficult might be found. In addition to "lunatic asylums," reports from institutions for the "feeble-minded" in the 1880s noted cases of "moral idiocy" and "juvenile affective insanity." The mixed motives driving reformers led to a network of "Houses of Refuge," a euphemism for reformatories. At mid-century, many of the inmates of America's almshouses were children with physical or cognitive impairments including, as Dorothea Dix reported, "insanity."

The nature of these institutions, though, changed over time. Many American orphanages were established during or after the Civil War. In the 1920s, in the context of a broad mental hygiene movement, these asylums began to redefine themselves into mental health agencies now known as residential treatment centers for disturbed children and youth. By the mid-1960s, treatment centers were established in virtually every region of the U.S., as well as in Canada and other industrialized nations.

The records of these institutions provide a picture of change over the course of a century. They address the perceived or actual nature and needs of the children who were served – from dependent and pitiable to "difficult" and disturbed.

The Cleveland Protestant Orphan Asylum (CPOA, later renamed BeechBrook) was established by a religious organization, as many were in this era, and began with what is often described as a child-rescue mission. The 1879 Annual Report of CPOA demonstrates their original purpose of ". . . sheltering orphaned and destitute children."

Reading the Source

The 1879 Report is especially instructive because it describes children who had been served since the agency's founding in 1852: ". . . we found them in good health, happy and contented; their physical wants abundantly supplied and their mental and moral training carefully looked after." With the exception of a few children rescued from alcoholic and abusive parents, the agency's clientele comprised orphaned or "half-orphaned" children. "Half-orphaned" usually involved a mother, or in some cases a father, who was at least temporarily unable to care for her or his child or children.

The annual report describes the goal of physically moving children in response to the "increasing call for shelter for orphans," with the goal of either "returning" or "placing out" with another family every child who was admitted. CPOA's annual reports summarize the agency's success in achieving that goal.

The year 1919 marked the first time in which specific reference was made to "difficult" (though still considered redeemable) children. Of the 296 children served, 85 had been placed in foster homes and 132 had been "returned to friends" (typically a parent or close relative). Over the next few decades, the agency reports document increasing numbers of "difficult" children. The growing discussion of degrees of difficulty, as well as evidence such as engaging psychiatric consultation, indicate movement toward the agency's present role within the mental health system.

To read the report, students work in small groups and address a number of topics:

1. The role of age, gender, parental socioeconomic level, and geographic location: The documents are informative with respect to many key questions concerning clientele and possible changes over time. For example, in the 1870s, when CPOA and sister agencies were growing rapidly, urban school districts such as Cleveland were starting to establish "classes for unrulies," primarily troublesome male pupils. Did CPOA's clientele tend to come from rural rather than urban surroundings? Did sociocultural characteristics change over time? Were more girls than boys admitted or vice versa? At what ages were children typically admitted, that is, possibly before becoming "unruly"?
2. Etiological attributions: In describing even "difficult" children as victims rather than menaces, these reports seem to contrast sharply with those of asylums and reformatories. Reports from the latter often ascribed child deviance to parental or child sexual or other "vile" misconduct. Does this reveal differences in perceptions and attitudes, or does there seem to have been a sorting process, whereby children were referred to the type of provider thought best suited to address their needs? Alternatively, do the reports put a rosy face on less salubrious realities – examples of what Goffman termed "cleaning up the front regions"?
3. Prognoses: Is the goal of returning children to, or placing children with, families consistently evident in the successive reports? Are expressed beliefs about children's "redeemability" inconsistent with apparent societal attitudes during the "period of indictment" and of "negative eugenics?" 1 What factors might help to explain such inconsistencies?
4. Remedies: Were there strategies for "redeeming" young children in need or in trouble? What were they? Is there evidence that the philosophy of moral treatment that influenced early American, as well as European, psychiatry guided CPOA (and by extension similar agencies)? Specifically, was the ameliorative role of work, a key element of moral treatment emphasized in 19th-century orphanages, in any way different than in the asylums, almshouses, and reformatories?

The Adoption History Project is a superb resource for scholars and students alike. Not only does it offer a broad and consistently high-quality range of historical information, the site itself was designed with user accessibility in mind—it is easy to navigate and welcoming for students.

The home page introduces the five major categories. Of these, one that might appeal most immediately to students is the Timeline, which gives a concise, one-page overview of major developments in adoption history from 1851 to 2000. Other categories include: major people and organizations; explanations of adoption studies and adoption science; general topics in adoption history; and a rich collection of primary-source documents that, in itself, offers hours of compelling reading. See, for example, the illustrated excerpts from The Dangerous Classes of New York and Twenty Years' Work Among Them [1872] by Charles Loring Brace, a leading figure in 19th century social reform and child-rescue.

Shorter primary sources appear in full-text form; longer ones are efficiently excerpted for easy reading, with full citations provided. Further Reading offers references to many useful texts. One of the site's nicest design features is that much of this information is cross-indexed, so that visitors can find the same pages easily through a variety of different paths. To make navigation even simpler, a Site Index provides a clear and cogent list of topics.

Written in a clear and engaging style, the site offers quick access to major issues that shape the field of adoption history. For example, Adoption Studies/Adoption Science leads to a paragraph that neatly explains: "Adoption has been the subject of four major types of empirical research: field studies, outcome studies, nature-nurture studies, and psychopathology studies." Each term is hyperlinked to chronological lists of studies in the relevant area. The page also provides descriptions of particular studies and excerpts, making it relatively simple for someone new to the field to quickly grasp the general shape of the discourse of adoption history.

The overall content reflects the impact of Cultural Studies and multiculturalism on the field of adoption history. Pages on transracial adoptions, African-American adoptions, and the Indian Adoption Project complement those devoted to the more traditionally visible history of white orphans, white social workers, and white adoptive parents.

One small critique of the biographies of major figures: the pages devoted to female figures (such as Pearl S. Buck and Anna Freud) mention their marital and/or parental status, often in the very first paragraph, presenting the impression that a woman's personal relationships are the most necessary and relevant facts of her life. Meanwhile, the male figures are discussed solely for their professional importance, with little or no mention of their family life.

Feminist historians will find this irritating, especially in the case of Anna Freud, who is described reductively as an apparent victim of an Elektra complex: "She made her father's profession her own . . . . Anna Freud never married or had children. She was her father's constant companion, his colleague, and his nurse during the final years of his life." Especially because it appears in the first paragraph, this is an inappropriately condescending description of someone who deserves to have her professional accomplishments foregrounded. That flaw, however, could easily be turned into a good teaching opportunity with students who are old enough to grasp the concept of gender bias in historiography.

Overall, the Adoption History Project is among the best-designed and most succinctly comprehensive historical websites currently available. It is useful for students and scholars at all levels of academic proficiency.

I teach an undergraduate American Studies course on "Children's Literature and American Culture," which uses children's literature as a lens for examining the history of childhood (and American cultural history more generally). I use the Norton Critical Edition of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868-69), edited by Anne K. Phillips and Gregory Eiselein (2004) as the core text in a three-week unit on girlhood in the late 19th century.

Scholars often label the period between 1865 and 1920 the "Golden Age" of Anglo-American children's literature, as this is the period when many of the classics were written and published, including Alice in Wonderland (1865), Ragged Dick (1868), Tom Sawyer (1876), Treasure Island (1884), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903), The Secret Garden (1911) to name just a few. This "golden age" came about because of changes in American childhood that produced the impetus to create and the market to consume books written primarily with the aim of entertaining children.

Why I Taught the Source

Little Women, or Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy stands at the threshold of changing notions about childhood (and consequent changes in children's literature), between the more didactic literature from earlier in the century that aimed to mold a moral, rational child, and the more purely amusing literature written decades later. The enormously popular and enduring book, focusing on four sisters in a middle-class New England family that has fallen into hard times financially, gives particular insight into the changing position of girls and women in American society. Moreover, the wealth of detail in the book reveals a great deal about the quotidian dimensions of children's daily lives in the late 19th century, from what they read, ate, wore, and played to their schooling, chores, and dating rituals. Finally, the moralizing dimensions of the book make explicit a set of ethical and moral assumptions that guided young people at this time in their thinking about class, gender, nationality, friendship, marriage, parenthood, and a range of other issues.

Little Women, or Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy was originally published in two volumes by Roberts Brothers: the first volume was published in 1868, the second in 1869. The two volumes were published as a set in 1870; this edition was republished several times over the next decade. A set of revisions between 1880 and 1881 resulted in what became known as the "regular edition," which was reprinted countless times. In the last several years, the original 1868-1869 work has received new critical attention, and it is this edition that is reprinted as the Norton Critical Edition.

The Norton Critical Edition of Little Women contains a wealth of materials that enhance one's ability to teach Little Women as both a literary and a historical document. Not only does the edition include biographical information, writings by Alcott, reviews of the book from the time, and recent literary criticism, it also reprints several earlier works that are key to understanding the form and content of Little Women, including relevant chapters from a 19th-century American edition of Pilgrim's Progress and Maria Edgeworth's short story, "The Purple Jar" (1801). The former is an excellent example of a religious and highly moralistic—yet exciting—text read by children from the Puritan era into the 19th century; the latter, read alongside material on the literary and historical context of the early 19th century, aptly represents a didactic tradition that emphasized moral lessons, yet portrayed children as capable of making and accepting responsibility for their own decisions.

How I Introduce the Source

These earlier literary works lay essential groundwork for a discussion of Little Women: Alcott uses Pilgrim's Progress as a central structuring and metaphorical device in her novel (chapter titles include "Burdens," "Beth finds the Palace Beautiful," "Amy's Valley of Humiliation," "Jo Meets Apollyon," and "Meg Goes to Vanity Fair") so that a reading of relevant chapters in Bunyan's tale greatly enhances students' understanding of Little Women. Alcott draws on the metaphors employed in Pilgrim's Progress to communicate moral lessons, but one can also find explicit and implicit debt to Edgeworth, whose work the girls' mother, Marmee, reads aloud to them after a particularly trying day. The central tension in Little Women is Meg, Jo, Amy, and Beth's struggle to be good amidst all the temptations of vanity, self-indulgence, materialism, laziness, gluttony, selfishness, ambition, and, in Jo's case, willfulness. From Edgeworth Alcott seems to have borrowed the practice of teaching children moral lessons through example. Several vivid chapters in the book illustrate this, such as a the hilarious "Amy's Valley of Humiliation," in which Amy gets caught in school with pickled limes and must bear the humiliation of her punishment, and "Meg Goes to Vanity Fair," in which Meg attends a much anticipated society soiree and returns home feeling an uncomfortable combination of exhilaration and shame: shame about letting herself get so dolled up that she was unrecognizable, and about vicious gossip she overheard. In this instance, just in case Meg hasn't learned the lesson herself, Marmee, with quiet scorn, remarks upon that class of "worldly [but] ill-bred" people, "full of those vulgar ideas about young people" (83).

A chapter from Anne Scott MacLeod's American Childhood: Essays on Children's Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Georgia 1994) on "American Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century: Caddie Woodlawn's Sisters," provides an extremely useful framework for thinking about Little Women. Using examples from several 19th-century stories with girl protagonists, MacLeod suggests that this literature (including Little Women) reveals, on the one hand, the relative freedom afforded young girls and their involvement in rough and tumble outdoor pursuits, and, on the other hand, that this freedom ended rather abruptly as girls reached womanhood and were expected not only to get married, but also to assume a "womanly" demeanor and a range of household duties. These themes are echoed in Steve Mintz's Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood (Belknap 2005): chapters on "Inventing the Middle-Class Child" and "Children Under the Magnifying Glass" likewise work well with Little Women, offering useful background on childhood during this era. Such themes as expressed by MacLeod and Mintz clearly play out in Alcott's autobiographical Little Women, which betrays nostalgia for the girls' relative freedom and their grand aspirations for the future, in contrast with the rather settled lives they will lead as women.

Reading the Source

Teaching Little Women, I start with background on the period and on Alcott, and then we move into a discussion of the book, reading, along with the text itself, relevant chapters in Mintz and MacLeod, as well as literary criticism included in the Norton Critical Edition.

We spend three weeks studying Little Women and related texts and approaches, with the book serving as the central case study in a more general discussion of childhood and the "Golden Age of Children's Literature." Earlier in the course, students read excepts from Pilgrim's Progress and Maria Edgeworth's "The Purple Jar" as part of their study of Puritan-era and early republican children's literature. This also prepares them to follow allusions to these sources as they come up in Little Women.

In the first class period of the "Golden Age" unit (my class meets twice a week, for 75 minutes each class period), we discuss the relevant historical, literary, and biographical backgrounds to the book, with students reading Anne Scott MacLeod's essay, "American Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century: Caddie Woodlawn's Sisters," Alcott's own "Reflections of My Childhood" (collected in the Norton Critical Edition of LW), and a chapter of Steve Mintz's Huck's Raft that deals with childhood in the late 19th century. I give a mini-lecture on trends in childhood and in children's literature of this period, and briefly go over Alcott's biography; as a class we discuss the key ideas that came up in the readings, particularly in the MacLeod piece, as they help to illuminate the experience of American girlhood in the late 19th century. By the second class period in the unit, students need to have read the first 12 chapters of Little Women. Prior to this, I ask different students to read for specific issues: some focus on the development of particular characters (Jo, Beth, Amy, Marmee, Mr. Laurence, Laurie, etc.); others look for moral and/or religious messages; the image of childhood, home and family life; gendered messages and/or imagery; messages about class; and the way in which Pilgrim's Progress serves as a framing device for the book.

During the next class period we discuss these issues as they play out in the book, with students or groups of students reporting on what they found in the reading. In class I also ask students (in small groups) to find details in the text that describe clothing, food, play (there are wonderful examples of children's theatrics, a self-produced newspaper, and chores made into games); domestic furnishings; courting rituals; and gender roles. I also ask them to consider the book's take on religion and spirituality; attitudes about class; attitudes about immigrants and foreigners; and discourses around health and mortality. In preparation for the next class discussion, I ask students to post their own questions on blackboard (covering up through Book II, chapter V of the story). Students' questions have addressed romantic relationships in the book, patriotism, publishing, characterization, education, changes in tone from Book I to Book II, shifts away from the tone and style of earlier publications for children, religion, morality, marriage, and a range of other issues. These questions wind up taking more than one class period to discuss; I have students devote a portion of the time to small group discussions, but the class tends to be small enough that we can fruitfully discuss as a whole class. During the last two periods we begin to bring in other readings again: they read an essay by MacLeod on "American Boys" and use this to think about how Little Women fits into the "Bad Boy" tradition in American children's literature (think of Tom Sawyer and Thomas Bailey Aldrich's Story of a Bad Boy), and I also have students pose additional questions on blackboard once they have finished reading the book. The last day of our discussion is focused on literary criticism, using the criticism that is collected in the Norton Critical Edition. All students read Elizabeth Vincent's "Subversive Miss Alcott," and then each student chooses one other piece to read carefully and summarize: their choices include Catharine R. Stimpson, "Reading for Love: Canons, Paracanons, and Whistling Jo March," Barbara Sicherman, "Reading Little Women: The Many Lives of a Text" and Elizabeth Keyser, "Portrait(s) of the Artist: Little Women." Students bring written summaries of their articles to class, discuss their articles in small groups, and then report on the articles to the rest of the class. We also have a more general discussion about how literary criticism can open up our understanding of texts.

The paper assigned as a culminating exercise for this unit asks students to use Little Women as the starting point for a discussion of childhood or girlhood in the late 19th century, using both historical frameworks provided by MacLeod, Mintz, or other background, as well as at least one piece of literary criticism from the Norton Critical edition. The ways in which the book both challenges and reinscribes gender roles in the late 19th century makes it an obvious text for students of American girlhood, but there are a wealth of other historical arenas that one could explore by starting with Little Women.

Reflections

What I really enjoy about teaching this book is that most students know about it, but few have read the original source, and they wind up enjoying it much more than they expect to, especially when given historical and literary backgrounds with which to frame their reading of the book. I also like the practice of pairing literary texts with historical ones. I have only taught this class once, but it was one of the more successful courses I've taught. I have never before devoted three weeks to a single book, but it worked very well, especially with assignments and related reading structured in.

Literary materials are somewhat complicated artifacts for use in the history of childhood, but they tell us a great deal about how children were imagined and addressed by adults and, in the case of a book with a long and devoted following among children, they can tell us about children's interests and reading habits. Moreover, the details of this particular book, while not a documentary record, do give students a rich portrait of life in a particular place, at a particular time, for middle-class, Anglo-American girls, a portrait far more textured than might be available in other kinds of historical documents.

Although I use Little Women in an upper-level, writing-intensive undergraduate American Studies course, I think the book could be used very fruitfully in a course on the history of childhood or the history of girlhood, with, perhaps, less emphasis on literary criticism and more emphasis on the ways in which various details (e.g. about chores, or the girls' reading, or religious mores, or games, etc.) can be corroborated through other historical sources.

Carretta likens the volume to another 18th-century autobiography, Benjamin Franklin's, which also uses a life story to advance larger themes and arguments. In short, reading this book challenges a reader to weigh historical evidence and to address the problematic nature of any autobiography, including the extent to which we can rely on a writer's memories and self-representation.

Until recently, the subject of childhood under slavery was almost entirely unstudied. This was true despite the fact that childhood is central to an understanding of slavery. In classical antiquity, abandoned children were a major source of slaves. Although most sub-Saharan Africans forced into slavery were in their teens and 20s, a substantial and growing proportion were children. In the American South in the decades before the Civil War, half of all slaves were under the age of 16.

A focus on children not only underscores slavery's oppressions, it also reveals the ways that enslaved children and their parents dealt with slavery's hardships and horrors. It demonstrates that even children were active agents who were able to carve out a space where they could find a degree of autonomy.

The study of slave children has brought many important facts to light. Infant and child mortality rates were twice as high among slave children as among southern white children. A major contributor to the high infant and child death rate was chronic undernourishment. Slaveowners showed surprisingly little concern for slave mothers' health or diet during pregnancy, providing pregnant women with no extra rations and employing them in intensive field work even in the last week before they gave birth. Not surprisingly, slave mothers suffered high rates of spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, and deaths shortly after birth. Half of all slave infants weighed less than 5.5 pounds at birth, or what we would today consider to be severely underweight.

Growth rates among slave children were extremely slow. Most infants were weaned early, within three or four months of birth, and then fed gruel or porridge made of cornmeal. Around the age of three, they began to eat vegetables soups, potatoes, molasses, grits, hominy, and cornbread. This diet lacked protein, thiamine, niacin, calcium, magnesium, and vitamin D, and as a result, slave children often suffered from night blindness, abdominal swellings, swollen muscles, bowed legs, skin lesions, and convulsions. These apparently stemmed from beriberi, pellagra, tetany, rickets, and kwashiorkor, diseases that are caused by protein and nutritional deficiencies.

Deprived of an adequate diet, slave children were very small by modern standards. Their average height at age three was shorter than 99 percent of 20th-century American three year olds. At age 17, slave men were shorter than 96 percent of present day 17-year-old men and slave women were shorter than 80 percent of contemporary women.

About half of all U.S. slave children grew up apart from their father, either because he lived on another plantation, had been sold away, or was white. On large plantations, infants and very young children were supervised and cared for by adults other than their parents. Children as young as two or three might work at domestic chores, including childcare or collecting trash and kindling, toting water, scaring away birds, weeding, or plucking grubs off of plants. Generally, in the U.S. South, children entered field work between the ages of eight and 12.

Slave children received harsh punishments, not dissimilar from those meted out to adults. They might be whipped or even required to swallow worms they failed to pick off of cotton or tobacco plants. During adolescence, a majority of slave youth were sold or hired away.

The study of childhood under slavery has given rise to a series of controversies. One is the extent to which slave children succeeded in "stealing" a childhood. Despite slavery's hardships and brutalities, many slave children were able to experience something that we would consider a childhood. Children played with home-made toys, including improvised marbles and hobby horses. Even where education was forbidden or strongly discouraged, a surprising proportion—perhaps between five and ten percent—learned how to read and write. Through their activities, games, religion, and relations with kin and other members of the slave community, children were able to make life bearable.

Like children of the Holocaust, they played games that helped them cope with slavery's oppressions, including mock auctions or games that included whipping. Their songs, too, helped them deal with slavery's horrors. One song included the following lyrics that addressed the subject of family separation directly: "Mammy, is Ole' Massa gwin'er sell us tomorrow? / Yes, my chile. / Whar he gwin'er sell us? / Way down South in Georgia."

Another area of controversy involves the extent to which slave parents were able to shield their children from slavery's brutalities. We have discovered that there was a "tug-of-war" between slave children's parents and plantation masters and mistresses, who were eager to make slave children, especially young children, feel loyalty, and even gratitude, to their owners. To win over children's affection, owners sometime gave them gifts and favors. At times, owners asked children to report rules violations within the slave quarters.

Slave parents, in turn, sought to instill in their children a sense of loyalty to the slave community as a whole. They taught children to refer to other girls and boys as sister and brother, and to unrelated adults as aunt or uncle. Through folk tales, such as the famous "Br'er Rabbit" stories, parents taught their children how to outwit more powerful adversaries.

Less studied questions are how the lives of slave children differed in urban and rural areas or on larger and smaller plantations, and how childhood experience differed at various points in time.

Why I Taught the Source

In reconstructing children's experience under slavery, historians tap a wide range of sources. These include the published testimony of fugitive or emancipated slaves, contemporary letters, journals, plantation records, and oral histories, such as those collected by the U.S. Works Projects Administration during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Recently, scholars have supplemented traditional sources with unconventional forms of evidence, including photographs, slave songs, and artifacts, such as toys.

Published narratives by fugitive or former slaves provide especially useful insights into the world history of slave children. Especially notable are those by Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, who were enslaved in the U.S. during the early 19th century and whose writings underscore important aspects about childhood under slavery: (1) the extent of interracial interaction, including interracial play, on plantations in the U.S. South; (2) the moment when the full reality of life-long bondage dawned on slave children and the moment when they learned that adults in their lives, including parents, could not protect them from punishment; and (3) the harsh reality of sexual abuse faced by slave girls in their teenage years.

Especially useful in helping to place slavery in a world history perspective is one of the first slave narratives, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African, originally published in 1772. A former slave who purchased his freedom from a Quaker merchant in 1766, he traveled across the Atlantic and the Mediterranean on British merchant ships, served in the British navy, and became a leading figure in the 18th-century British antislavery movement. His autobiography, which went through nine editions between 1789 and 1797 and was translated into Dutch, German, and Russian, awakened thousands of readers to the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade.

His narrative challenges the view that Africa at the time of the slave trade was a benighted or backward region. His region, "a charming fruitful vale, named Essaka," was "uncommonly rich," and his fellow countrymen were "almost a nation of dancers, musicians, and poets." He offers a graphic account of his kidnapping into slavery at the age of 11, and describes being held captive along the West African coast for seven months before was subsequently sold to British slavers, who shipped him to Barbados and then took him to Virginia.

His narrative also offers a harrowing account of the shock and isolation he felt during the Middle Passage across the Atlantic. His description of the inhuman conditions aboard the slave ship has a power that has not been matched. "The air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died," he wrote. "The closeness of the place and the heat of the climate," he wrote, "added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. . . . The wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable. . . . The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable."

How I Introduce the Source

Our knowledge about the past is derived from surviving sources of varying reliability. Primary sources provide the raw data out of which history is reconstructed. These may include printed or published texts, unpublished manuscripts and papers, maps and other visual materials, music and other audio materials, and artifacts. Primary sources must be used cautiously and critically because they do not offer an unmediated view of the past. At best, they offer a partial view. How, then, should students read the sources? By asking a series of questions dealing with: (1) authorship (who was the author of the primary source? when and why did the author write this text?); (2) content (what information does the primary source convey? is the author propounding a thesis or argument? what rhetorical techniques does the author use?); (3) purpose (what was the author's purpose in writing this text? what was the intended audience?); and (4) reliability (is the author's account credible? how would you describe the author's tone?)

Reading the Source

I have students read several excerpts from Equiano's autobiography. Either as a class or in small groups, we discuss each one, focusing on the questions about authorship, content, purpose, and reliability noted above.

This autobiography can be read on multiple levels. It offers a graphic first-hand look at slavery's cruelties, including the process of enslavement and the horrors of the Middle Passage. It provides vivid insights into the social history of the 18th century and a gripping first-person account of the workings of triangular trade connecting Africa, the Americas, and Europe. The book is also a religious conversion narrative, which helps us understand how an individual coped with slavery's oppressions, as well as a travel narrative, which offers a vivid glimpse of the 18th-century Atlantic world.

At this point, I complicate the discussion by introducing students to a lively scholarly controversy: a recent debate over whether Equiano was actually born in Africa. Two surviving documents—Equiano's baptismal records and the Royal Navy's muster rolls—indicate that he was born in "Carolina," leading Equiano's biographer, Vincent Carretta, to conclude that his "account of Africa may be based on oral history and reading, rather than personal experience." Carretta likens the volume to another 18th-century autobiography, Benjamin Franklin's, which also uses a life story to advance larger themes and arguments. In short, reading this book challenges a reader to weigh historical evidence and to address the problematic nature of any autobiography, including the extent to which we can rely on a writer's memories and self-representation.

Critics argue that the surviving documents may be mistaken, noting, for example, that the muster list gives the wrong last name for Equiano, suggesting its reference to his birthplace might also be incorrect. I then have the students discuss whether the debate over Equiano's birthplace lessens the value of his account. Here, it is important to note that even if his account is a composite of stories and information gathered from others, this does not make it a work of fiction.