School-Days in 1800 by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

SO here we were, eight girls condemned to spend some weeks in the same house with no society but our own, and we naturally regarded each other very curiously. Four of us, the Winslows, Jane Withal, and myself, were intimate, being all members of the reading-circle. The other four were Salome Loveland, sister to Doctor Perkins's wife, Content Hoyt, Bell Atkins, Mrs. Adams's "bound-girl," and Hannah Frisbie. Salome was a stranger to all of us. She was a serious, rather prim, but pleasant girl, the oldest of the party, and said to be uncommonly well educated and intelligent. Content Hoyt was a bright girl of thirteen; Bell Atkins was a year younger.

I had heard Mrs. Adams tell mother only the day before, between meetings, that "Bell would do more work and more play, make more trouble and be more help, than any other two girls she ever saw. " Bell's mother had stopped at Mrs. Adams's house one Saturday night, very tired and very sick, and begged for a shelter, and good Mrs. Adams took her in and nursed her as if she had been a sister. She died, however, in three days' time, unable to give much account of herself save that her name was Atkins, that her husband had died in Montreal, and that she had friends in Boston who she thought would take her in if she could get there, but who those friends were Mrs. Adams could not understand. She was decently buried, and Mrs. Adams kept little Bell, having her bound by the town authorities. This was a common way of providing for orphans and forlorn children in those days. A girl was apprenticed till she was eighteen or twenty-one. She was entitled to a certain amount of schooling, and made one of the family in most cases; and when she came of age, she usually received a cow, a sum of money, and some articles of furniture.