Jeffrey Lash wrote: >Thanks for the clearer description of Thomas Grant's legal status in >America prior to his release from servitude and purchase of land near >Re\hoboth. I suppose we could definitely say Gilbert Brooks and his older >brother William were "bondservants" of William Vassall who brought both of >them to Boston in 1635. I had thought, perhaps erroneously, that Grant >himself would be considered a "slave" in the sense of forced labor in the >salt mines regardless of the duration or conditions of employment. I probably muddled more than clarified. Thomas Grant, in today's language, would be a prisoner of war. Without a look at contemporary records (which I haven't time to undertake), I honestly don't how what moniker to use for his status. The word "indenture" was commonly used at that time, and we know that Gilbert and William Brooks worked off their indentures to William Vassall, since both were later freemen and property-owners. But I really don't know how to characterize the Civil War prisoners sent here as convicts, at least in whatever was the appropriate terminology of the day. Speaking of Gilbert, the "Great Migration" profile of him indicates that he consistently signed documents by mark rather than by signature. So much for the various LDS pedigrees which make out to be the son of a London minister. An illiterate indentured servant was much more likely the son of a yeoman farmer than the son of a clergyman, who would be a university graduate. >And did you know Gilbert was brought to court in 1639/39 for "drinking >inordinately" while in 1646 he was accused by Capt. Miles Standish on some >legal matter? The court found for our wayward Gilbert. I did. Did *you* know that Standish, a diminutive, quarrelsome man who swaggered about like a banty rooster, was pejoratively known as "Captain Shrimpe" by his contemporaries? :-) Today we'd probably describe him as "having a Napoleon complex." Chris