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Yes, I have a documented one in Maryland (he was a Randall). I suspect that I have a couple of more. I have found the mid 1700's to be difficult. The passenger lists from that time period (if you can find them) sure don't give you much info. I found an interesting site last night. I didn't see any of my people (yet), but maybe it will help others: ISTG - Ships Passenger Lists
Do you have any ancestors who were indentured servants?
Where and when? What do you know about their lives?
Any female indentued servants you've found?
Yes I do. His name was Jan Cornelius VanTexel. He was the son of a Dutch colonist and an Native American. This occurred in the 1600's. He bloodied someone for calling him an Indian Dog and was involved in a land dispute.
Reading through this thread I'm not sure everyone is clear what an indenture is. It's a contract, nothing more, nothing less.
Indentures, from the root word "dent," meaning a tooth, got their name from the way two identical copies of a paper document were written on the same piece of paper, then torn apart in a zig-zag, or tooth shaped pattern, which served as a confirmation that the two halves were matching. Indentures are still used today today for financial transactions involving debt or real estate, but seals and signatures have replaced the torn paper "teeth" of earlier times.
Indentured servants were free people who were contracted to work for a specified period of time. In a typical arrangement an individual traveled from England to the colonies without paying, by virtue of an indenture arrangement, in which a third party bought the contract at the end of the trip. The indenture specified the terms, in which the indentured person work for room and board only during the indenture period, receiving no wages, and then being released as a free person upon completion of the contracted period.
Indentured servants were not slaves, nor were they convicts being punished by transportation. They went to the destination under indenture because they wanted to go there.
Reading through this thread I'm not sure everyone is clear what an indenture is. It's a contract, nothing more, nothing less.
Indentures, from the root word "dent," meaning a tooth, got their name from the way two identical copies of a paper document were written on the same piece of paper, then torn apart in a zig-zag, or tooth shaped pattern, which served as a confirmation that the two halves were matching. Indentures are still used today today for financial transactions involving debt or real estate, but seals and signatures have replaced the torn paper "teeth" of earlier times.
Indentured servants were free people who were contracted to work for a specified period of time. In a typical arrangement an individual traveled from England to the colonies without paying, by virtue of an indenture arrangement, in which a third party bought the contract at the end of the trip. The indenture specified the terms, in which the indentured person work for room and board only during the indenture period, receiving no wages, and then being released as a free person upon completion of the contracted period.
Indentured servants were not slaves, nor were they convicts being punished by transportation. They went to the destination under indenture because they wanted to go there.
This is the toned down, prettied up version on the average US text book, with some truths. But its not true. The defination of the paper itself is the origion, but what was made of it is something quiet different. This would describe the 'free willers' who were the first wave, very poor people hoping for something better. The signed an indenture with the ship's captian/owner. Upon arrival they could try to find a situation but in reality they usually overvalued themselves, and thus were taken to the town square and sold by the ships captain for what they could get. The came voluntarily, but discovered that what they were told was largely lies. As time went on the free willers got more and more scarce. They were not 'free' either once the indenture was signed. They had signed over their rights to the holder and hadn't thought it through so well.
One of the first of more typical shipment was that of street children. Some came for 'sweeps' of the streets deliberately to fill the ships, and when parents demanded their children back they were refused. They were as young as 8, and often offically shipped as 'aprentices'. What happened to them was they worked in tabacco fields and were held until the age of 21. Very very few reached that age. Neither the children nor their parents ever chose to have them shipped across the sea to die. The average life expectancy in the tabacco fields for a child was two years, worked twelve hours a day. But they were cheap and easy to replace. Whatever the legalese says, they were physically held as slaves.
This repeated in Ireland as Irish children were swept up and shipped away. The term kid-napped origonates from the practice of climbing in houses and stealing sleeping children out of their beds, practiced in preference since they were long gone by the time the parents discovered them gone. It repeated in Scotland after the Scots rebelled. Using forced child labor was popular through the 1600's into the early 1700's. In no way can these children or their parents be seen as giving concent for them to be worked to death, which was for most the reality.
Adults got the message early, and the free willers dried up. Sweeps of poor English, Irish and Scots were made, requiring no offense except looking poor and available. Some went technically as 'convicts' as they got a quick charge and were hauled to the ship. Some were handed a paper to make a mark which in time became an indenture. But they all ended up dumped out as cheap labor in largely Virginia/Maryland/No.Carolina. The laws forbid them to leave and permitted them to be punished with no real limites if they tried. This does not equate with 'free' or 'voluntary'.
The formalized practice of selling convicts began with the Transportation act in 1718, December I believe. The gaols were overloaded and had to be emptied. It removed the need to fake an indenture. It took some time to organize it, but in March 1719 the first group of ships arrived in Maryland. There is a list of convicts online at ancestry. My fifth g grandfather and his brother are among them. Convicts were transported in unaltered slave ships, under identical conditions save the need for more crew and secuirty since ships were more often taken over and the crews killed by the cargo. The same companies ran the 'convict trade' on the same routes used in the slave trade and it was easily profitable as the government had already paid five pounds a head for every convict who arrived at the ship. Thus, anything they got from the sale of their merchandise was gravy.
I found something called a dispursement form. It listed those on the ship my gxfivegrandfather was on. Convicts were listed offically as 'sold'. They were not considered indentured servants, its true, but having drawn the color line to prevent more joint rebellion, white 'servants' were better off than black slaves. Convicts were used with the slaves, housed with them, and punished with them.
What made them useful is they were cheap. And with the practice of adding time for every possible infraction they drew out the length of the captivity as long as possible. Some half of convicts who arrived did not survive the sentance. The practice of converting the cost of searching for a runaway in advertising, travel, payment of reward plus an added few years per escape, going up if it was past the first, could add many many years to the sentence for a few days of freedom.
But after the revolution, the new government began refusing shipments. Part was disease, but they were troublesome too. It was after that when Australia and Botiny Bay was created to drain the surplus. But the 'sweeps' of women and children and poor continued to feed the need for labor too.
And as nobody wanted to say they were descendent from a servant, and especially not a convict in the new society, it got whitewashed away in explanations such as the post quoted. But the reality was that in the time nobody called those hauled across the sea 'servants', as they refered to them as slaves in the written history.
In no way does this lesson black slavery. In fact, the first Africans were simply put under an indenture and some became wealthy. It was not until Bacon's rebellion in the later 1600's that a combination of black and white discontented nearly removed the government of Virginia that race played any part, as in divide and conqure. One of the first actual slaves was a black 'servant' who ran away more than the first time with a white 'servant'. The white one was given more time again, plus a requirment to server the colony of Virginia for three years afterwards. But it was dictated that the black one had to have worse, so it was worded that he was held for life.
After a period of time when Australia actually destroyed records of shipping of human cargo, they have again come to look with pride at the resourcefullness of their ancestors in surviving and going on to make a better place. The fact is that three quarters of those who arrived before the revolution arrived on some sort of bond. In the 1700's more than 30,000 convicts had been sold in Maryland alone. And there are many many Americans today who descend from these 'servants'. Slavery itself, as practiced in the United States, evolved out of the practice of holding indentures servants as temperary property.
If anyone wishes to learn more, this book is a well written, factually based book on the 'servant trade' and how it worked, concentrating on the main hubs, Maryland and Virginia.
I think part of learning your heritage is not only names of paper but where they came from and what sort of life they lived. We shouldn't leave out those which are perhaps to some not PC.
Last edited by nightbird47; 07-26-2012 at 03:36 PM..
Reading through this thread I'm not sure everyone is clear what an indenture is. It's a contract, nothing more, nothing less.
Indentures, from the root word "dent," meaning a tooth, got their name from the way two identical copies of a paper document were written on the same piece of paper, then torn apart in a zig-zag, or tooth shaped pattern, which served as a confirmation that the two halves were matching. Indentures are still used today today for financial transactions involving debt or real estate, but seals and signatures have replaced the torn paper "teeth" of earlier times.
Indentured servants were free people who were contracted to work for a specified period of time. In a typical arrangement an individual traveled from England to the colonies without paying, by virtue of an indenture arrangement, in which a third party bought the contract at the end of the trip. The indenture specified the terms, in which the indentured person work for room and board only during the indenture period, receiving no wages, and then being released as a free person upon completion of the contracted period.
Indentured servants were not slaves, nor were they convicts being punished by transportation. They went to the destination under indenture because they wanted to go there.
Indentureship was not limited to the U.S. and certainly was conducted differently in a plethora of cases. You can hear it from the mouths of indentured laborers how they were shot at, kicked and beaten with whips by the British. And of course, people who expected to go back home were never taken back.
I believe one of my ancestors left England 1777 as an indentured servant his name was Rowland or Rowley Purser i think they probably went to North Carolina, i do intend looking into it further later in the year.
Indentureship was not limited to the U.S. and certainly was conducted differently in a plethora of cases. You can hear it from the mouths of indentured laborers how they were shot at, kicked and beaten with whips by the British. And of course, people who expected to go back home were never taken back.
The Carrabian was also a major destination for British "indents" and convicts. Before any Africans were sent there was a popultaion of convicts and others toiling in the sugar fields. A lot of Irish were rounded up and shipped there, and there are still a lot of Irish names among native residents. The national symbol for Barbatos is the shamrock and there are still areas where galic is understood, along with numerous Irish names. Reading down the list of convicts and their destinations, a considerable number were headed there as well. The poor english/Irish/scots population mixed with the african population to form the bottom layer of later society.
The terms 'redneck' and 'redleg' were derogatory terms for the fair skinned labor in the equatorial zone who sunburned.
Conditions were terrible and for far more it was for life. The rules were also different. Any child born of an indentured slave (as they were refered to) in that area was held for life, so often mothers would stay rather than leave their children. Children of women who were indentrued in the american colonies were indentured until 21, but the same often occured since mothers did not want to leave them behind.
When the British shipped the Irish (later the scots as well and the poor of Britan from the start) the general object was that by whatever means it took, they did not come back. If you wanted to sail back home you had to be able to pay for it yourself.
My maternal grandmother's father was illegitimate. Nobody knows who his biological father was. So it is possible that through him there might be some indentured servant in my ancestry or not.
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