The Charleston Orphan House: Children's Lives in the First Public Orphanage in America

[...]the author makes the records yield a great deal of information about poorer families in Charleston throughout the antebellum era. During the early nineteenth century, the free market undermined traditional crafts where boys (and some girls) gained valuable training through an apprenticeship system. [...]as Murray shows, it was the demise of that system that provided fewer opportunities for children who were bound out of the orphanage during the middle of the century.