Hi Delores, Thank you for mentioning this. Just this past winter I decided that my husband's widowed grandmother only told "part" of the story of her life, and was not always truthful about it. So, I will consider all possibilities. And someone else just told me that she might have "fibbed" about not being in the family's home - come Census day. She said she was hidden away in a basement. But, someone said there was probably no reason for that to happen. And, Elsie never told her grandson that her sister, Rosie, was also an "indentured servant." (That's a guess of mine.)
Regarding what you said about families having "no" food for their children, that reminds me of the story of the childhood of "Dr. Ruth." She was a young girl in Germany maybe 9 and her parents sent her off to Switzerland with a lot of other children. She never saw them again, and they and the grandparents were all killed. (Dr. Ruth is still appearing on TV and still offering advice.) Betty (near Lowell, MA, USA) On Apr 17, 11:25 pm, Family History <[email protected]> wrote: > Delores, > I sent some info to the list that I read in the book Azores: Nine > Islands. It stated that children (during certain years of the Azores > history) who could not be cared for by their mothers were given over > to nannies (paid by the government) who cared for them until age 7 > years then they were sold to be indentured servants until age 18 or 21 > years. It did not sound as though there were lots of children in this > circumstance as the book said a very high percentage of the children > died before age 7 years. The mothers must have been sick with grief to > have to give them up, then to have them die, because there was not > enough food on the islands. > > I was told by a German researcher that there were periods of famine > where villages in Germany knew that they could only support so many > people with the food that they had. And there was no food to buy. So > the villages would gather what money they could and buy passage for as > many people as possible to send them elsewhere, often to the United > States, so that they would have a chance at living rather than so many > starving to death. > > Char > > On Apr 16, 10:03 am, Dolores Coyle <[email protected]> wrote: --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. Follow the confirmation directions when they arrive. For more options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail (vacation) mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership." -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
