The Marietta Intelligencer, June 3, 1847
As the excitement growing out of a recent case involving the rights of a certain orphan child in Marietta has subsided, it will be profitable to examine the principles involved in that case. Not only every orphan child - but every person in the community who may have the orphan children of his poor friends or relations cast upon him - is deeply interested in them. I will avoid allusion as far as possible to the unpleasant circumstances attending the case and state only such facts as are necessary to a correct understanding of it.
The parents of the orphan died nearly at the same time in Cincinnati about five years ago. They were both members of a Presbyterian church in that city and on their death-beds committed their children to the care of two or three benevolent ladies, who were members of the same church - and requested that they might be placed in families where they would be instructed in the religious principles and faith of their parents.
One of these children was sent to a family in Marietta. As it was supposed there would probably be some property left for the children on the settlement of their father's estate, the person to whom the child was sent took guardianship of her. Afterwards ascertaining there would be no property for her, the letter of guardianship was not renewed when she became 12 years old. Her only surviving grandparent, her uncles, and elder married sister, earnestly requested the friend in whose care she was placed to keep her in their family till she became 18. Both they and the child objected to her being bound to service. She has remained in this family to her own entire satisfaction and that of her relations and friends till the present time.
About the last of April, in consequence of some unpleasant reports which had been put in circulation, the Township Trustees interfered, and without allowing a hearing to her friends, without communicating with the relations, and against the strongly expressed wishes of the child herself (now supposed to be nearly 16 years old), bound her in service as a domestic in a respectable Methodist family in Marietta.
The child refused to go with her new master, and as her friend and protector did not compel her to leave him, she was brought before one of the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas on a write of Habeas Corpus. The return on the writ stated the principal facts above mentioned and also that the child was and had been furnished with everything necessary and proper for her. On these facts, the plaintiffs claimed that the child was a destitute orphan and that the Trustees were authorized to take her from her friend and bind her to service, and so the Court decided.
The orphan still refused to leave her old friends, and her master finding he could not take her with him without violence, told her to return to them and remain there till he called for her, and there she still is, contented and happy.
In reviewing this case, it appears to be the law of Ohio:
1st. That an orphan child without property or some responsible person liable for its support is a destitute orphan, no matter how well treated and provided for it may be, nor how able and willing its friends may be to continue to provide for it.
2nd. That the Township Trustees may take such child from its friends without notice and without assigning any reason for their conduct and bind it to the most menial service allowed by the laws of Ohio, contrary to the wishes of the child and of all its relations and friends, and while they keep within the letter of the law, there is no redress. The court must ask it, if of the proper age, to choose its own guardian, but the Trustees may give it to whom they please as its master.
3rd. It follows also that the guardian of such child (he not being responsible for its support, where it has no property) can have no such control over it, except by binding it out himself, as to prevent it from being taken from his custody and bound out by the Trustees against his will.
4th. That the want of property, according to the laws of Ohio, creates distinctions and disabilities to which the poor must submit, but which cannot affect the children of the rich. it is not the probability that the child may become chargeable that justifies the interference of the Trustees, but the fact that it is poor.
I have no complaint to make of the decision of the court or of the law in this case. I have no doubt, not only that the Judge decided it according to his honest convictions of duty, but that he would have gladly allowed the injured parties a hearing if he had believed it to be in his power. If the fathers and mothers of Ohio who have nothing to give their children but education, industry, and virtue, are content to leave them, when they died, to the operations of such laws, it is not for me to complain. There is a strong, and it is a natural and proper repugnance in a parent to binding his child in service to another, but no poor man can safely leave his children without thus providing for them.
There is also an unwillingness on the part of many excellent persons, who would gladly receive and bring up poor orphans, to take them as indented servants, but they can have no assurance of being able to keep them without it.
The poor orphans adopted and educated as their own children by rich relatives and friends must be bound as servants or the Township Trustees may take them away at their pleasure.
The pious orphan young men and women who are pursuing their studies in our colleges and seminaries, under the patronage of education societies and benevolent individuals, may be taken at any time by the same authority and bound out till of age to any service the laws allow.
And the large number of the orphan children of the poor, who are earning an honest living in the families of their brothers and friends, or gaining an education by their own unaided efforts and talents, are not safe a moment from this same degrading control. But it is not necessary to multiply cases of the iniquitous operation of such laws, or of the danger of trusting such power in the hands of even the best men. They will readily occur to everyone.
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