Vagrants and Vagabonds: Poverty and Mobility in the Early American Republic

236 Pages·2018·1.588 MB·English

by  Kristin O'Brassill-Kulfan

Vagrants and Vagabonds

Early American Places is a collaborative project of the
University of Georgia Press, New York University Press,
Northern Illinois University Press, and the University of
Nebraska Press. The series is supported by the Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation. For more information, please visit
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Advisory Board
Vincent Brown, Duke University
Andrew Cayton, Miami University
Cornelia Hughes Dayton, University of Connecticut
Nicole Eustace, New York University
Amy S. Greenberg, Pennsylvania State University
Ramón A. Gutiérrez, University of Chicago
Peter Charles Hoffer, University of Georgia
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, New York University
Joshua Piker, College of William & Mary
Mark M. Smith, University of South Carolina
Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University

Vagrants and Vagabonds
Poverty and Mobility in the
Early American Republic
kristin o’brassill- kulfan
a
New York University Press
new york
NeW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York
www.nyupress.org
© 2019 by New York University
All rights reserved
References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the
author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or
changed since the manuscript was prepared.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: O’Brassill-Kulfan, Kristin, author.
Title: Vagrants and vagabonds : poverty and mobility in the early American
republic / Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan.
Other titles: Poverty and mobility in the early American republic
Description: New York : New York University Press, [2018] | Series: Early
American places | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017060989 | ISBN 9781479845255 (hbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Rogues and vagabonds—United States—History—19th century. |
Vagrancy—United States—History—19th century. | Poor—United
States—History—19th century. | United States—Social conditions—19th
century.
Classification: LCC HV4505 .O24 2018 | DDC 305.5/692097309034—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017060989
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Contents
Introduction 1
1 “She Is Doubtless a Very Vagrant”: Poverty and Mobility
on the Legal Landscape 13
2 “A Wandering Life”: The Physical Landscape of Indigent
Transiency 36
3 “The Removal of So Many Human Beings . . . Like Felons”:
Forced Migration of the Poor 58
4 “Since He Was Free”: Vagabondage, Race, and Emancipation 84
5 “Punishment for Their Misfortunes”: Discretion,
Incarceration, and Resistance 112
6 “It Was amongst the Vagrant Class . . . That Cholera Was
Most Fatal”: Mobility, Poverty, and Disease 134
Conclusion 157
Acknowledgments 161
List of Abbreviations 165
Appendix 167
Notes 173
Index 221
About the Author 227

Introduction
In 1841, a young Scottish woman named Isabella Stewart donned an
outfit of men’s clothing, walked to Liverpool, and hired on to a ship’s
crew under the name of “Billy Stewart.” She passed “as a sailor boy . . .
dressed in the habiliments, neatly rigged from top to toe” and “actually
performed the duty of a lad on board . . . for several days” before the
crew’s suspicions led to the revealing of her identity as “a healthy, stout
female, 16 years of age.” Stewart was punished for her deception by the
captain, A. Turley, with passing the rest of the voyage in steerage wearing
“female apparel.” Newspapers throughout the antebellum United States
reported on Stewart’s escapades. But underpinning the interest stimu-
lated by the thought of a dainty young woman performing the hard labor
of seafaring was a question of the relationship between subsistence and
travel: according to the National Gazette, Stewart was “a destitute girl,
who had taken this method to get a passage to America.”1 Participation
in the Atlantic world’s economy of makeshifts sometimes required going
to great lengths, and often, as it did for Stewart, great distances.2
Stewart’s illicit mobility involved a complete revamping of her identity
for the sake of cobbling together a living for herself, like so many others
traveling to and residing within the antebellum United States. Unlike
many single- paragraph nineteenth- century newspaper sensations, how-
ever, Stewart’s notoriety was not limited to this one dramatic episode.
Over a year after her arrival in the United States, she graced headlines
in Philadelphia as “The Sailor Girl” about “whose adventures . . . a pretty