1729
Establishment of the first orphanage for girls founded by the Ursuline Sisters in New Orleans to care for survivors of a nearby massacre

1751
The Pennsylvania Hospital is founded in 1751 by Dr. Thomas Bond and Benjamin Franklin “…to care for the sick-poor and insane who were wandering the streets of Philadelphia.”

1773
First public mental hospital established in Williamsburg, Virginia.

July 4, 1776
Signing of the Declaration of Independence.

1785
First Federal land grant made to establish public schools in the Northwest Territory (today the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota).

1787
The Northwest Ordinance endowed States and territorial universities with land grants.

1789
The Federal Government accepts the responsibility of providing pensions to disabled veterans of the Revolutionary War.

The U.S. Constitution is ratified with clause equating slaves to 3/5ths of a white citizen and provision that slave trade would end within 20 years.

1790
First publicly funded orphanage is established in Charleston, South Carolina.

1793
Eli Whitney’s invention of cotton gin sets stage for expansion of slavery in American South using slaves to pick cotton.
The first local health department with a permanent board of health was formed in Baltimore, Maryland.

1795
Thomas Paine published his pamphlet Agrarian Justice, in which he proposed a social welfare insurance program for the nations of Europe and potentially for the young American Republic.

1796
The Boston Dispensary, the first organized medical care service in New England, is founded. This organization is the recognized forerunner of present day home-care programs.

1798
The Marine Hospital Service is established by an act of Congress, to provide for the temporary relief and maintenance of sick and disabled seamen. This was the first prepaid medical care program in the United States, financed through compulsory employer tax and federally administered. This service later became the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, predecessor to the U.S. Public Health Service of today.

1799
States are given Federal help in quarantine law enforcement. The Marine Hospital Service extended to Navy men.

How to Cite this Article (APA Format): Social welfare development in the 1700s. (2011). Retrieved [date accessed] from /events/1700s/.