Domestic Servants--1870

The 1870 U. S. census instructions to Assistant Marshals stated this about "domestic service":

   "The organization of domestic service has not proceeded so far in this country as to render it worth while to make distinction in the character of work.  Report all as 'domestic servants.'
     Cooks, waiters, &c., in hotels and restaurants will be reported separately from domestic servants.
     The term 'house-keeper,' will be reserved for such persons as receive distinct wages or salary for the service...." [1].

So why would a young Irish woman like the Mary Murphy in the Philo L. Ives household – in the 1870 census -- choose to be a domestic servant? 

Lack of education, limited job opportunities in the area may have played a role, and she may also have been a newly arrived immigrant.  It may be worth pinning down a profile of the typical domestic servant in order to trace the Mary from the Ives household.    

I’m interested in tracking down a couple of books on the subject:

F.E. Dudden, Serving Women: Household Service in Nineteenth-Century America (Middletown, Conn., 1983) and  D.M. Katzman, Seven Days a Week: Domestic Service in Industrializing America (New York, 1978).

 
 Notes:

 
[1] “Ninth Census, United States, 1870, Instructions to Assistant Marshalls,” United States Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov : accessed 18 October 2013).