Hi Mary Ellen, I was very interested n seeing a repl to yo post about young servant girls. Im very curious about the why's and wherefores of young girls being servants. My grandmother is recorded as a servant in Iowa when she was 10 years old. There were older sisters who were not recorded as servants, one is recorded simply as "at home" another I think says something like in school. I'm thinking with large families they may have needed help with income, but 10 seems very young to me. Although when I think about it, if they could marry at 12 years old then being a servant by 10 might have been common place. Wow, Im sure glad we live in the world we do today, even with all it's problems. Cris Atwater California

Cris~ Not sure about the USA, but from reading about Europe, it appears that young girls were placed in the "big" houses at very young ages. Sometimes because of the abject poverty of the times, families were in poor houses. The children were taken/sold to people for servants and one can only imagine!! "At home" from the census for my family meant the child was too young for school and of course, "at school" is self explanatory. Also, saw the term "at home" placed by an aunt who was not married and may have helped the wife with her duties. Mary Ellen crazyangel25@webtv.net wrote: Hi Mary Ellen, I was very interested n seeing a repl to yo post about young servant girls. Im very curious about the why's and wherefores of young girls being servants. My grandmother is recorded as a servant in Iowa when she was 10 years old. There were older sisters who were not recorded as servants, one is recorded simply as "at home" another I think says something like in school. I'm thinking with large families they may have needed help with income, but 10 seems very young to me. Although when I think about it, if they could marry at 12 years old then being a servant by 10 might have been common place. Wow, Im sure glad we live in the world we do today, even with all it's problems. Cris Atwater California ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to IRL-LIMERICK-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message