W: Wednesday, "Wow, I didn't expect a history lesson!", Welfare

I hated studying history in high school and college (with the exception of a college course in ancient Greek history, which was taught by an inspiring professor). So, I was surprised by the interest in history that I have developed while learning about my ancestors. I think the difference is that what I'm learning now is directly related to someone's day to day life. I haven't much cared what generals and senators were up to, but I care very much what everyday life was like for the people who came before me and lived in the places where I have lived.

The photo above is my grandmother Mae Cynthia Bertalot Smith Lloyd (1884-1952) and her six sons (one of whom is my father) and one daughter. Family tradition was that this photo was taken (probably in 1916) just after the death of her husband Fred H. Smith. Left with seven children ranging in age from 8 to infancy, she was faced with the real possibility that she would be unable to support them, and the alternative was to place them with other families or see them removed to an orphanage. So she had this photo taken.

Fortunately, around this same time, American society had begun to recognize its role in protecting and preserving families.

"In 1911 Illinois and Missouri became the first states to enact mother's pension laws. Advocates argued that children deprived of a male breadwinner should not also be deprived of a “normal home life.” Mothers' pensions offered cash payments so that children could remain in their own homes in the case of a father's death, desertion, or imprisonment... By 1921, 40 states had programs similar to Illinois', and by 1931 only Georgia and South Carolina had no mothers' pension programs. In 1935, state mothers' pensions were replaced by the Social Security Act's Aid to Dependent Children program (later, Aid to Families with Dependent Children). " Source: "Children and the Law", by Kriste Lindenmeyer, Encyclopedia of Chicago, http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/279.html

Yes, my grandmother was on "welfare".  In June of 1918 she applied to the Stephenson County (Illinois) court for a mother's pension -- that was the procedure in those days -- and began receiving payments of  $50.00 per month. 

In 1920, Mae remarried, and her second husband worked and supported his, her and their children (they added another boy and a girl to the blended family). They probably remained poor by today's standards, but they stayed together, and, according to another family legend, her children remembered her as a loving and caring mother who did what she could with what she had.





Sources:
 Freeport Journal-Standard, June 15, 1918, p. 7.
 The Institution Quarterly, State Board of Administration, State Charities Commission, State Psychopathic Institute (Illinois),  Vol. 4, No. 1 (March 31, 1913), p. 35.

T: Tuesday, "Things I Found While Looking for Something Else", and Tact

While looking for my ancestors in the U.S. Census for the year 1880 in Stephenson County, Illinois, I found out that there was in 1880 a "Schedule of Defective, Dependent, and Delinquent Classes" prepared in addition to the regular census schedule.

I made this discovery because one of my ancestors is on this list!

My second great-grandfather, Jacob Bertalot, who was born in Germany in 1823 and arrived in America some time between 1851 and 1854, is on the schedule of Deaf-Mutes with four of his neighbors in Winslow, Illinois. The following information about him was reported:

• He was self-supporting.
• The onset of his deafness occurred at age 50.
• He was not semi-mute, but he was semi-deaf.
• He was never institutionalized.

Also on this page were listed (in addition to the other four deaf persons) one insane person and one idiot (their term, not mine).

Martha Maurer (sp?) was insane, according the the census, as a result of "improper treatment at change of life". She was about 62 years old and had been suffering for 15 years.

Amelia Clemm was an idiot who "when she was one year old was sick" and was given "some medicine or something" and "never knew anything afterward". Her parents had just arrived from Germany about three years before the census, and apparently couldn't convey any clearer picture of the onset of her idiocy.

Wow...I had to know more about this whole process of finding out who the insane and idiots were of the community. The U.S. Census has a splendid website, http://www.census.gov/, but it didn't have any information specifically relating to this Schedule. The website does, however, have a copy of the original instructions given to the census enumerators, and although I didn't find the 1880 Instructions, I did find this from 1870:

"Deaf and dumb, Blind, Insane, or Idiotic.--Great care will be taken in performing this work of the enumeration, so as at once to secure completeness and avoid giving offense...The fact of idiocy will be better determined by the common consent of the neighborhood, than by attempting to apply any scientific measure to the weakness of the mind or will." (Emphasis added)

The enumeration form itself gives additional help to the census-taker and advises that the word "idiot" has a special meaning:

"An idiot is a person the development of whose mental faculties was arrested in infancy or childhood before coming to maturity. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the stupidity which results from idiocy and that which is due to the loss or deterioration of mental power in consequence of insanity. The latter is not true idiocy, but dementia or imbecility. The enumeration desired for the Census is of true idiots only. Demented persons should be classed with the insane." (Emphasis in the original)

That's a lot for a census taker to remember and process. And that may explain why, in Stephenson County, there are so few "insane" and "idiots" reported on the 1880 Schedules of Defective, Dependent, and Delinquent Classes Schedule.