A Cage For John Sawyer The Poor Of Otisfield, Maine

Abstract

Each year from 1790 to the end of the Civil War the town’s people of Otisfield wrestled with the dilemma of town relief. Examining this issue from two perspectives - the town taxpayers and the town poor - Jean Hankins sheds light on the politics, the finances, the hardships, the family life, and the burdens of responsibility in Maine's nineteenth-century small towns.