How Welfare Worked in the Early United States

The year George Washington was finishing his first term as president, 1792, William Larned was beginning his first term as overseer of the poor for Providence, Rhode Island. Larned would be re-elected for another thirty-five one-year terms and arguably exercised more authority over locals than any president could. Larned's long career in this little-known but powerful local government position illustrates several aspects of early American poor laws. Overseers of the poor could be life-savers to locals in need. They could also upend lives, forcing families out of town. They controlled the largest portion of local tax dollars, which dwarfed state and federal tax levies from the individual taxpayer's perspective. Overseers used these tax dollars to providefood, housing, healthcare, and other necessaries to people in need. An ancillary benefit was that these dollars also buoyed the incomes of local government relief contractors--