Carla Occaso
How did Vermont townspeople support their poorest neighbors before the days of food stamps and housing vouchers? They auctioned them off to the lowest bidder. In a process called “Dutch auctions” as described by Walter Algeo in his 2023 article “When the Poor were Bought and Sold,” events were held in Vermont and other rural areas where the lives and medical costs of penniless people were ‘purchased’ by those who would care for them at the lowest cost to the town. This was seen as a way to sustain people in a town too small and rural to afford running a “poor farm,” Algeo writes. Parents, siblings, and other relatives were required to take them in first, if they could.
Central Vermont was no different, according to a section of “Early History of Berlin, Vermont 1763–1820” by Mary Green Nye published in 1951. Nye reported from town records how they voted to “vendue (sell) the doctoring of the town poor for the year ensuing” each year in the 1820s. James Langdon won in 1825 for $29, while Dr. Winslow won in 1828 for $5.50. But entire people were sold in 1828, whereby Nye reports, “the following town paupers were disposed of to the lowest bidders: Nelson Johnson to Isaac Preston for one year at $11.74, Sidney Dowe to Cyrus Johnston ‘til he is 21 years of age at $22. Harriet S. Dowe to James Perley ‘til she is 18 years of age at $25.” The town paid the lowest bidders the amounts they bid for upkeep.
Vermont had enacted a law called “An Act Providing for and Ordering Transient, Idle, Impotent, and Poor Persons” in 1787, requiring each town to care for its own poor, and different towns went about it in different ways. By 1797 towns were also required to pay for medical care. The law was amended in 1837 to allow towns to pool resources to build poor farms and poor houses, according to the article, “Montpelier/Berlin Poorhouse Farm” by Matt Kouky written for The Bridge in 2016. Montpelier and Berlin co-founded a poor farm, which was operated on a property along Route 12. While there, people could expect to be shackled, whipped, and starved if they refused to do the work they were told to do, per Kouky’s article. Montpelier also had a poor farm on Elm Street (Route 12 north) where the Community College of Vermont now stands.
