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Indentured Servants: New Light on Some of America's “First” Families

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Abbot Emerson Smith
Abbot Emerson Smith
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

Among the commodities which could profitably be shipped to the English plantations in America, a parcel of human beings was not the least remunerative. The colonists demanded labor, and were willing to pay for it. For a hundred years after the founding of Virginia this demand was met by the transportation and sale of white indentured servants recruited in Great Britain and Ireland, and so great was the volume of this business that the servants made up about three quarters of all immigrants coming to the colonies south of New York. During the eighteenth century their exclusive sway was gradually disputed by German redemptioners and Negro slaves, yet indentured servants continued to play a vital part in colonial life and to form an important element in colonial trade. The progenitor of many a proud American family found himself landed upon these shores not so much on account of his desire to seek freedom as because his person could be advantageously exchanged for a quantity of tobacco, lumber, or sassafras root.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , May 1942 , pp. 40 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1942

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References

1 Kingsbury, Susan M., ed., Records of the Virginia Company of London (Washington, D. C, 1906.), III, 266.Google Scholar Public Record Office, C. 0.124/2, pp. 93, 324. Verney Papers (Camden Society), 160–161Google Scholar.

2 Public Record Office, High Court of Admiralty Miscellany. Bundle H.C.A. 30/636.

3 Williamson, Peter, State of the Process, Peter Williamson against William Fordyce, and others (1765).Google Scholar This pamphlet is in the British Museum. I am indebted to Mr. Julian Boyd for calling it to my attention and for allowing me to use a microfilm of it which was in his possession.

4 Public Record Office, Shaftesbury Papers, G.D. 24/48, No. 14. The Colonial Records of the Stale of Georgia (Atlanta, 1904–1916), II, 110.Google ScholarStock, L. F., ed., Proceedings and Debates of the British Parliaments respecting North America (Washington, D.C., 1924–1937), IV, 852Google Scholar.

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6 Ibid., 47.

7 Public Record Office, CO. 389/2 (an entry book of date 1671, devoted almost entirely to testimony concerning the practice of “spiriting0). There is a file of indentures as registered by the Justices of Middlesex in 1683–1685 at the Middlesex Guildhall, in Parliament Square, London. The registrations of indentures before the London magistrates, of dates 1718–1736, could be seen, ante diem irae, in the Records Office at the London Guildhall.

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11 Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1661–1668, No. 769. , Stock, Debates, II, 453–455.Google Scholar There are many confirmations of this story and of the general situation, one being by a committee of the Council of Trade and Plantations as early as 1661 (British Museum, Egerton MSS. 2,395, f. 277).

12 This account is taken substantially from Wilmore's two pamphlets, found in the British Museum: The Case of John Wilmore Truly and Impartially related… (London, 1682)Google Scholar; The Legacy of John Wilmer, Citizen and Late Merchant of London: Humbly offered to the Lords and Commons of England (London, 1692).Google Scholar Several other contemporary pamphlets lend confirmation to Wilmore's story, and he is mentioned in , Stock, Debates, II, 455.Google Scholar A fate not unlike Wilmore's befell Richard Owsley, a merchant, who shipped out a boy that William Haverland brought him, and was brought up to the court of Bench, King's. Acts Privy Council, Colonial, II, 43–44Google Scholar.

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