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Guernsey's emigrant children |
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Arrival in a new land
Modern day Boston skyline |
Guernseymen were great 'networkers'; in those days who you knew was more important that who you knew, and they gathered around themselves a network of contacts for all occasions! It is likely that when John de Jersey said that he would take 30 children to New England he knew of 30 people in New England looking for apprentices, and they knew John de Jersey and felt that they could trust him to bring out appropriate children.
Once the children arrived in Boston very little is known of them, for although the Town Hospital kept exceptionally precise records of the children and people in their care, once they were away from the island they were no longer the business of the poor house.
The ship's captain, Captain Flight, guaranteed to apprentice the children into proper trades on arrival, with respectable God-fearing citizens, most of whom had already agreed the deal with Jean de Jersey.
On arrival in Boston most of the children would have been taught a trade. The boys would have learnt carpentry, shoemaking, sailmaking, ropemaking, while the girls would have been taught how to sew and knit, and how to be domestic servants. In addition the children would also have been taught to read, write and count. Which in the 1750s, was highly unusual; it was not for another hundred years that the 1870 Education Act was passed which enforced schooling, and therefore literacy for all children.
On boarding de Jersey's ship, these children were given the chance to leave the poorhouse and their inferior social status behind. Their new start in a new country enabled them to become apprentices free from the stigma of poverty. Regardless of de Jersey's motivation behind this kind of assisted emigration, it was the children who benefited the most.
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