Legal settlement

Under poor laws based on English settlement law, each person had one place of legal settlement, and the rules varied by state. In Maine after 1821 it could come by birth or marriage, by four years of apprenticeship followed by setting up a trade in the town, or by living there five years as an adult without receiving poor relief, among other ways.

When a pauper's settlement was in doubt, overseers took statements about the person's birth, parents and past homes, and towns sued each other over who must pay. Those papers can hold family details found nowhere else.