Public Poor Relief and the Massachusetts Community, 1620-1715

Abstract

IN 1624 secretary for the Merchant Adventurers, James Sherley, sent the inhabitants of Plymouth Colony one red heifer begin a stock for the poor. Five years later, preparing for the Winthrop fleet to sail, the Massachusetts Bay Company instructed John Endecott, its resident governor of the settlement at Salem, to raise a general stock for community purposes, including the relief of the poor.1 These actions were the first formal steps taken to provide public poor relief in Massachusetts. Thereafter, settlement and provision for public poor relief advanced hand in hand. With one possible exception, every community in the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies provided for relief in the initial stages of settlement and subsequently administered relief as a regular town function.2 Public poor relief, it appears, was basic to the Massachusetts community experience. So basic was the association, in fact, that public poor relief