I thought I would post the quote below (which I received on my Beattie mail list) since the information could be helpful in relation to the recent discussion about indentured servants in Virginia. All the best, Celia From "The Peopling of Virginia" by Bennett Bean - 1938 Chapter 6 All Tidewater Settled and Frontier Counties Advanced Toward the Mountains Throughout the regime of Cromwell many indentured servants came to Virginia and during the seventeenth century a stout yoemanry developed before slavery got a hold. Indentured servants usually served four or five years. Sixty to sixty five percent of the landholders worked their plantations by their own efforts without the assistance of indentured servants or slaves. Prior to the slave invasion, which marked the close of the seventeenth century and the opening of the eighteenth, the white yoemanry of Virginia was the most important factor in the life of the "Old Dominion". What were these indentured servants? Of the forty four Burgesses who sat in the Assembly of 1629, seven were listed as servants; among thirty nine Assemblymen in 1632 six appeared as servants. In 1652 eight or nine were brought over by others and by 1662 the Burgesses were said to be composed for the most part of men who came over to Virginia as servants. Many of them were adventurers, youths of good families who came to improve their circumstances in the new country; some were the younger sons of the nobility, many were persons of culture and on rare occasions people of wealth. All persons who had positions that paid wages or salaries were called indentured servants. Persons of gentle blood became indentured to lawyers or physicians in order to acquire a knowledge of those professions. Tutors were often indentured and occasionally gentlemen of large estates, and bankrupts. Criminal servants were rare, usually harmless paupers indentured for life. Scarcely any of these survived and left few if any offspring. Jefferson says "Only 2,000 felons came to Virginia from the earliest settlement until 1787, one thousandth of the population..."......... The first 17 counties in Virginia were all in Tidewater. It is startling to realize that as early as 1664 the hardy Colonists had established and organized within the Piedmont plateau the county of Stafford which was about 200 miles from the seat of Government...After the restoration of Charles the Second, many of Cromwell's men were transported to Virginia. Numerous Covenanters, who had been driven out of Scotland, also came over at this period. Again when the Duke of Monmouth fell at Sedgemoore, King James sent many fine Protestant patriot prisoners from southwest England to Virginia...It has been estimated that the annual influx of people to Virginia from 1640-1700 was between 1500-2000. Ninety five percent were English in the early period. More than 2000 Scots came during Virginia's first century and were distributed throughout the colonl Besides the Huguenots who not only settled at Mannequin but also in Stafford County and other places, many Dutch settled on the Eastern Shore and a few Irish throughout the colony. By the end of the 17th century three towns had been started in Virginia, and twenty three counties had been organized.