Andrew Santee - poor apprentice, blacksmith, adventurer?

​The announcement below appeared in the Kenosha Telegraph, on August 17, 1883.

This article in a Wisconsin newspaper does not at first seem to have any link to Sutton, Massachusetts. But this is the story of a young boy and a very long journey, and does indeed begin in our small town.

One Poor Apprentice

Isabella Santee, a woman of color, first appeared in Massachusetts in the Resolves of the General Court of 1811, when Sutton charged the State with $65.47 for boarding and doctoring Isabella and her children1. She was not legally settled in Sutton, and did not become so during her lifetime. Instead, her support was entirely delegated to the Common Treasury. In total, she had at least six children born between 1804 and 1820.

Isabella’s eldest son Andrew was taken from her by the Overseers of the Poor of Sutton, and sent to work for Joshua Miller, a leather tanner who lived in Rehoboth. Andrew’s indenture bond dated February 26 1818 was drawn up by Daniel Woodbury, Nathan Lumbard, and Samuel Taylor. It required Andrew to be employed “in any lawful work or trade or farmer” until October 6th 1826, when he turned 21 (“if the said Andrew be living”). This twelve-year-old boy had the following terms imposed upon him:

“he shall do no Damage to his said master or mistress nor willingly suffer any to be done by others and if any to his knowledge be intended he shall give his master and mistress notice […] he shall not waste the goods of his said master and mistress nor bind them unlawfully to any cards and dice or any other unlawful game he shall not play. Fornication he shall not commit nor matrimony contract during the said term. To ale houses or plays of gaming he shall not haunt or frequent. From his masters service he shall not absent himself but in all things and at all times he shall carry and behave himself as a good and faithfull servant aught during the whole time aforesaid”

In return, Joshua Miller agreed to teach Andrew “in the art of labouring at a trade or farming” as well as to read, write and cypher (“if he is capable of learning”). He also agreed to provide the child with “sufficient meat and drink, cloathing and lodging and other necessaries fit and convenient for such a boy”. Upon the expiration of the indenture, Andrew was to be given a woolen suit of clothes.

These terms are common to indentures of this period. Sometimes apprentices would be given ‘freedom dues’ – a sum of money, but in this case, a set of clothing was all Andrew could expect after 9 years of unpaid service.

Very occasionally, an arrangement of this sort turned out well. Isaiah Thomas was bound at the age of seven to a printer named Zachariah Fowle. Although he ran away from the apprenticeship, the skills he learned therein served him well when he started The Massachusetts Spy newspaper2. Few poor children achieved this level of success, but Andrew Santee does appear to be one of the luckier ones. He left his apprenticeship (it is not known if he finished it or broke the terms of the indenture) and made his way north to Vermont.

Andrew is first named in the decennial census in 1830, as the head of a multigenerational household – most likely two or three Black families cohabiting in Bristol, VT. By 1834 he was established enough to purchase the land and trip-hammer shop he had been renting from Nathan Drake, for $300.3 This was a considerable sum for the time – the equivalent of over $10,000 today. Given that he was apprenticed to a leather tanner in Rehoboth, how did he learn the skills to run his trip-hammer shop? And where did he get the money from?

1840 finds Andrew Santee in a single-family household with his wife and three boys under 10. We know the identities of these boys from later census records, although in common with many minority groups of the time, there are scant vital records to help our research. Andrew Santee met Lois Hunter (1812-1875) at some point before 1834. No marriage record has yet been found, but their children were Cornelius (1834-1914), George (1836-?), and Andrew (1838-1857).

Andrew and his family then decided to relocate to Wisconsin. As the town they settled upon later became known as Bristol, he likely moved with other Vermonters from the same place. He set up as a blacksmith and owned $400 of real estate in 1850. Homesteading in the Midwest in the 19th century cannot have been easy, and several newspaper articles attest to problems along the way, but the Santee family persevered, until Andrew’s death at age 77.

Records from later in his life give no clue, beyond the State of Andrew’s birth, as to his origins. It was only with the chance discovery of a single document that I was able to link the poor child from Sutton and the venerable settler from Wisconsin. Genealogical research thrives on these unusual discoveries, but it is not always easy. 

AUTHOR’S NOTE

​I believe that archival collections, and the research undertaken therein, should represent an entire community. However, their contents are often biased in favor of the wealthy, the influential, and the notorious, as these are groups who leave the most evidence of their lives. Wills, letters, newspaper articles, deeds, and other documents all combine to give us a clear picture of the lives of these notables. But for the poor, the transient, racial and ethnic minorities, and women, it can be a different story.

Sutton has a relatively complete set of vital records, but not every person born in the town had their birth recorded. The poor, the unhoused, Native Americans, and people of color were only sporadically recorded, making the process of researching these groups increasingly difficult the further back we travel. We have to turn to alternative records, the marginal notes of history, deductions based on documents featuring no names, and negative space – the use of what does NOT appear to infer events.

The inspiration for this article was a collection of such alternative records. In this case, nineteen indentures held by the Sutton Historical Society. They include details of seventeen children, ranging in age from 5 to 16 as well as two adults. Details of the names of the indentured children and their masters are available on request (email [email protected]) This is not a complete list of all children bound out in Sutton. I am sure that there are more in the collections of the Society yet to be rediscovered, and in the collections of other towns – where children from elsewhere were bound to Sutton families. I discovered four early indentures on the Digital Commonwealth4 website, which is well worth a look – it’s a state-wide project to digitize local museum collections and make them accessible to researchers worldwide.

Andrew Santee’s life story is still just a sketch. It has huge gaps, and some facts will never be confirmed. But I feel that we should continue to research our ancestors and share their stories, even if they did nothing of import, and especially if their names do not live on in our road-, building- or place-names. I aim to remember the forgotten.

REFERENCES

1. Resolves of the General Court of Massachusetts, passed at the session begun and holden at Boston, on the thirtieth day of May, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and ten. Boston: Adams, Rhoades & Co., 1810. p.262
2. Murray, John E., and Ruth Wallis Herndon. “Markets for Children in Early America: A Political Economy of Pauper Apprenticeship.” The Journal of Economic History, vol. 62, no. 2, 2002, pp. 358. JSTOR, [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2698184] 
3. Williamson, Jane. “African Americans in Addison County, Charlotte, and Hinesburgh, Vermont, 1790-1860.” Vermont History, vol. 78, no. 1, 2010, p 26. [https://vermonthistory.org/journal/78/VHS780102_15-42.pdf]
4. http://digitalcommonwealth.org