Daily AncestorPoor relief and institutions
Paupers, poorhouses, orphans, apprentices and guardians in old records. Free to print and share. Full explanations: dailyancestor.com/dictionary/poor-relief
- Almshouse
- Poorhouse, named from alms (charity)
- Apprentice
- Youth bound to a master to learn a trade
- Boarded out
- Placed with a paid family instead of an institution
- Bound out
- Placed by contract to work for a family until grown
- Chargeable
- Dependent on public relief, a cost to the town
- County home
- County-run poorhouse of later years
- Feeble-minded
- Early 1900s label for intellectual disability
- Foundling
- Abandoned infant of unknown parents
- Freedom dues
- Payment owed a servant when the term ended
- Guardian ad litem
- Court-named guardian for one lawsuit only
- Half orphan
- Child with one parent dead
- House of refuge
- Early reformatory for wayward children
- Idiot
- Old legal term for profound intellectual disability
- Indenture of apprenticeship
- Written contract binding a child to a master
- Indoor relief
- Aid given by living in the poorhouse
- Insane asylum
- Institution for people judged mentally ill
- Legal settlement
- Town legally responsible for a person's relief
- Lunatic
- Old legal term for an insane person
- Mothers' pension
- State aid so a poor mother could keep her children
- Old Age Assistance
- Public cash aid for needy elderly people
- Orphan asylum
- Institution housing orphaned and needy children
- Orphan train
- Train taking city children to rural homes
- Outdoor relief
- Aid given outside the poorhouse
- Pauper
- Person supported by public poor relief
- Pauper burial
- Funeral paid from public poor funds
- Pauper's oath
- Sworn statement of being destitute
- Placing out
- Sending dependent children to live with families
- Poor farm
- Public farm where paupers lived and worked
- Poor relief
- Public aid to the needy under the poor laws
- Poor tax
- Local tax raised to pay for poor relief
- Poorhouse
- Public home where the destitute lived
- Potter's field
- Public burial ground for the poor and unknown
- Redemptioner
- Immigrant who worked off the ship fare after arrival
- Reform school
- Juvenile institution instead of adult prison
- Removal
- Sending a pauper back to their home town
- Superintendent of the poor
- County official in charge of the poor
- Vendue of the poor
- Auction placing paupers with the lowest bidder
- Warned out
- Formally told to leave town to avoid relief costs
- Workhouse
- Institution where poor or idle people were made to work