How Welfare Worked in the Early United States: Five Microhistories

by Gabriel J Loiacono

What was American welfare like in George Washington's day? It was expensive, extensive, and run by local governments. Known as "poor relief," it included what we would now call welfare and social work. Unlike other aspects of government, poor relief remained consistent in structure between the establishment of the British colonies in the 1600s and the New Deal of the 1930s. In this book, Gabriel J. Loiacono follows the lives of five people in Rhode Island between the Revolutionary War and 1850: a long-serving overseer of the poor, a Continental Army veteran who was repeatedly banished from town, a nurse who was paid by the government to care for the poor, an unwed mother who cared for the elderly, and a paralyzed young man who attempted to become a Christian missionary from inside of a poorhouse. Of Native, African, and English descent, these five Rhode Islanders utilized poor relief in various ways. Tracing their involvement with these programs, Loiacono explains the importance of welfare through the first few generations of United States history.In Washington's day, poor relief was both generous and controlling. Two centuries ago, Americans paid for--and many relied on--an astonishing governmental system that provided food, housing, and medical care to those in need. This poor relief system also shaped American households and dictated where Americans could live and work. Recent generations have assumed that welfare is a new development in the United States. This book shows how old welfare is in the United States of America through five little-known, but compelling, life stories.

245 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 15, 2021

Reviews

[Poppy]

I had a feeling I was going to enjoy this book, and I certainly did.

Loiacono presents a cogent story of welfare in the early United States (mainly New England), to create a long history of poverty and government assistance in the US, and illustrate that welfare (or, 'poor relief,' as it was called at this time), is not a new invention. I think Loiacono did a fantastic job at illustrating how poor relief touched every American during this time, whether they needed it or not. I'm particularly interested in the chapters where Loiacono touched on mobility, social control and identity--though, I appreciate that he took the story beyond just 'social control', as historians have done in the past. Poor laws, settlement laws and relief all played significant roles in policing marginalized groups, suppressing their mobility, and even tearing families apart, but it didn't fully destroy their identity. As Michael Katz (In the Shadow of the Poorhouse, 1969), explains, "the resilience of the poor, their capacity to survive and resist, is the only major note of cheer in the depressing past that characterizes American welfare" (xii). I think Loiacono would agree, those in need of relief were creative, dynamic and resilient individuals who created their own forms of family, community, labor and life in new ways.


I loved Loiacono's narrative storytelling, it was compelling, engaging and written without the academic fluff. I really love microhistories, and I am drawn to this kind of scholarship. I hope to one day be able to write like this. Finally, the epilogue was both timely and useful to understand the relevance of this scholarship. It's scary to think about how similar many of the patterns are.