The below should give you all you needed or wanted regarding indentured servants. America: A Promised Land? Indentured Servants in the Colonial Chesapeake Deborah E. Hamer BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY In August of 1640, Elinor Rowe, an indentured servant, complained to the Accomack County Court that Mr. and Mrs. John Wilkins, her master and mistress, beat her so much "that it justly and openly appeared to all mens viewe that her life was oftentimes indangered." Indeed, she feared that she would "doubtless be murthered."1Mrs. Wilkins exercised unchecked control over every aspect of Elinor's life to the extent that she later traded Elinor to a neighboring planter's wife for a new female servant. Doubtless, both mistresses justified their actions with the belief that their servants were idle and dissolute, and they were only getting their just deserts. However, at her new home, Elinor was in a position to prosecute the Wilkins for their abuse. While she lived with the Wilkins, she constantly feared for her life, and she must have imagined how tenuous her grasp on life would be if she brought a case against them in court. From the safety of her new home, Elinor could pursue the Wilkins in court to seek redress, or at least prevent her return to the Wilkins. Rowe's story shows a few of the many perils of indentured servitude for servants, and it also shows some of the ways in which their masters could abuse and exploit them. As Elinor Rowe's case demonstrates, servants had very little recourse, even to the judicial system, because they still feared their masters or mistresses. Jacqueline Jones explains what Rowe must have feared, "servants bold enough to betake themselves to court and denounce their master or mistress were often rewarded for their trouble with countersuits, and.continued (if not additional) service in the household of their nemesis."2 In this case, the court protected Elinor by legislating that she not be returned to the Wilkins. However, the court never condemned the Wilkins for servant abuse or awarded her any compensation for her suffering. The court only protected Rowe individually, and only because the Wilkins themselves broke the system's covenant by sending her to another household. In the course of the seventeenth century, from 120,000 to 150,000 immigrants landed in the Chesapeake region, and three quarters of these people came as indentured servants.3Women were very much the minority of arrivals, but their numbers grew through the course of the century. In the 1630's, the ratio of male to female arrivals was six to one. From mid century the ratio closed to three to one, and by the end of the century, it was two and a half men for every one woman.4 From the figures, it is clear that abuse and exploitation were relevant experiences to a majority of the initial colonists. The elite of Chesapeake society condoned various forms of servant exploitation in all gradations of severity. From 1607, the founding of the colony in Virginia, until 1660, Chesapeake masters abused servants in the course of their work, but only rarely denied them their rights if they reached the end of their indenture. By 1660, the system took an even more sinister turn. Tobacco planters morphed their already exploitative system into a new system that shared many parallels with slavery. The planter elite prevented freedman5 who had legally completed their indentures from acquiring land, which was the entire attraction of the New World. They tried to keep servants indentured for longer, and if they could not keep them as servants, they ensured that the former servant would remain in an economically servile position as a tenant, sharecropper, or laborer. First, I will look at the English precedents for indentured servitude and the nature of tobacco agriculture, which both produced a system that made exploitation possible and likely. Then I will examine the change for the worst in freedmen's conditions that occurred after 1660. Origins of Indentured Servants Indentured servitude had its antecedents in contemporary English practices. However, English customs and circumstance provided the worker more protection and choice. In England, constables held yearly "petty sessions" or "hiring fairs" for prospective servants to sign contracts with employers.6 Servants and masters traveled from the surrounding countryside at the same time each year to meet and sign contracts. Prospective servants negotiated the terms and labors that their masters would demand of them before signing contracts, and a servant signed a contract with one master. The master could not sell or lend out the servant's time to any other person. At an English hiring fair, master and servant also specifically investigated each other's characters before formalizing a contract. Assuming sufficient employers, a servant had just as much power to reject a master as the master had to refuse a servant. At one hiring fair a certain farmer told a prospective servant, "I shall inquire into your character and you shall know my decision [to hire] in the afternoon." Come afternoon, the servant responded, "I have inquired into your character, and my decision is to have nothing more to do with you."7 In the Chesapeake colonies, the situation was completely different, and these new circumstances easily led to increased exploitative powers. People signed indenture contracts with captains or merchants in England, and these were then sold to Chesapeake planters upon arrival to the New World. The captain or merchant had no incentive to see the servant safely housed, because his interest only included making as much profit as possible from the servant's sale. Servants could not protect themselves either. They never met their future masters, they could not know how their masters would use them, and they could not negotiate for themselves. By signing the indenture contract, they accepted whatever fate had in store for them. In fact, there is a sense that servant treatment was made worse by the constant flow of servants from hand to hand. If so many people were responsible for a servant's arrival in the colonies, no one felt personally responsible for ensuring the servant's physical safety. Servants probably envisioned service in the New World on the model of the Old World, but the agriculture of the two lands demanded different types of work. In England, there were numerous varied tasks to be completed, and a servant might even come to specialize in one of them. For example, in England, servants considered carting and horse care to be the highest level of service.8 In the New World, there was but one kind of service to be done, and that was monotonous hard labor in the tobacco fields. Servants did not experience variegated tasks, nor did they have an opportunity to rise in the ranks of servitude to some higher position. The most important and most exploitative difference between colonial labor and English labor lay in the ability to buy and sell servants contracts. This feature is what makes servitude somewhat akin to slavery, although it is important to remember that master only sold a limited amount of a servants' time, not their bodies, and not their time for their whole lives. The cost of travel to the New World necessitated more money than travel to a hiring fair. Therefore, servants needed to work for longer than one year to pay back their debts. The length of servitude and conditions in the Chesapeake created a market for buying and selling servants' times. Servants contracts represented "large investments to their masters in the form of debts owed to them by their servants." 9Because servants represented such an expensive investment, masters needed the flexibility to be able convert them to more liquid assets. Besides the monetary investment, a market for servants developed because sickness could cut down both planter and servant alike. Men who survived until age twenty could only expect to live to their fortieth birthdays.10When planters and servants had such short lifespans, inheritors needed a mechanism to profit from leftover servants. For servants, their entire lives could be reduced to chance. Even if a servant started off in an acceptable situation, the master's death, misfortune, or whim might send the servant to an unpleasant or unsafe new location. The extra length of contracts also encouraged abuse. English servants signed contracts binding them to work for only one year. After that year, they could seek employment elsewhere, giving them recourse from cruel masters. Chesapeake servants did not have the same opportunity for change. They signed contracts based on how much money they needed for their passage to America, which was usually between four and seven years. Their masters had no incentive to treat them humanely, because, even if they treated their servants well, there was no chance that servants would sign new labor contracts. Instead, freedmen worked as laborers for a few years until they earned enough money to patent a piece of abundant, Virginia land for themselves, and then started their own tobacco plantations.11 Masters knew that their servants would move on to bigger things. Brutality held no efficacy in keeping a depressed servant class, nor did kindness have the power to create a lifelong commitment to servitude. Indentured servitude existed in the Chesapeake colonies from the beginning, but these first servants belonged to the Virginia Company of London, a joint stock company that received a charter from King James I for Virginia. The servants worked the company's land rather than as laborers for individual planters. The individual planters who supervised the distribution of the servants quickly abused the system, taking the most able bodied men for themselves, and leaving the weakest for the company. In response, the company began to sell the workers to planters, and count on the money for profit rather than on the company land's produce.12This innovation served as the true beginning of indentured servitude in the colonies. Following their service, the laborers would be free to pursue their own profits in the New World.13 Unlike later indentured servants, these first laborers, or those who survived, did reap benefits from their risk. In 1619, the Virginia Company decreed that anyone in Virginia since 1616 would receive 100 acres of land.14 The decade from 1620 to 1640 was the best time to be an indentured servant, as a (male) servant received guaranteed free land at the end of his indenture. For example, Daniel Clocker arrived in Maryland in 1636, and his indenture ended in 1640. By the time of his death in 1676, he owned 200 acres worth of land, and he even breached the ranks of the governing circle. He became a justice of the peace in St. Mary's County in 1665 and served a member of the county council.15 Indenture Contracts Indenture contracts came in three accepted varieties. The original and most traditional type was similar to the aforementioned early system. People in England would sign contracts with either merchants or ship captains in England. The merchant would then buy passage for the servant on a boat to the colonies, and his representative, usually the ship captain, would sell the contract to a planter upon arrival at the destination. In this situation, the servants knew how long they would be indentured for, and they could bargain for better terms for themselves. Some evidence suggests that although this type of contract was the most common, only literate men and women generally negotiated for it.16 A second less advantageous type of service occurred when a prospective servant embarked on the boat without signing a contract. The ship captain created a contract, and upon disembarkation, the captain sold the contract to a planter. In these situations, the captain and the planter generally gave the servant a longer term of service. The final type of contract, which the planters and the Virginia governing council instituted, based its provisions on age. If a servant came at the age of 20, he or she worked for four years. If the servant came at 16 - 20 years old, he or she worked for six to eight years, but if the servant arrived under the age of 16, the law required him or her to work until age 21. This last variety of indentured servitude was part of the ruling elite's plan to lengthen terms of indenture and keep desperately needed laborers in servitude for as long as possible. Exploitation on the Tobacco Plantation By its nature, tobacco growth encourages exploitation of labor. The crop requires constant attention for its entire nine month growing cycle, from January through September, and the labor it requires is monotonous and strenuous. In January and February, the servant tended the tobacco beds, where planters grew the shoots from seeds under careful watch. In April, May, and June, planters transferred the shoots to give them more room for growth, and the servant had to "hill" them, or give them a mound of earth in which to grow. The Chesapeake planters did not use plows, so they used hoes to make the hill that guaranteed the plants enough loose soil for roots. >From July to August, they would weed around the plants and protect the plants from diseases. Finally, in September, planters harvested their tobacco crop. By October, planters completed the most difficult work, but from October to January, neither planters nor servants lay idle. The servants hung, cured, and packed the tobacco for the trip to England on export. While these tasks were more pleasant and less labor intensive than the growing, they still left little free time.17 Tobacco cultivators were almost exclusively male. Male servants and planters worked in the hot sun for eight to ten hours a day to tend the tobacco crop, as opposed to six hours of work per day in England.18The arduous nature of the labor encouraged men with money to buy indentured servants to plant for them. The shortage of men to work the land also fostered their exploitation. The New World seemed to hold endless amounts of land for tobacco plantations, but it did not have infinite people to work the land. According to Edmund Morgan, "success depended not on acquiring the right piece of land, but on acquiring men. Land that would grow tobacco was everywhere."19Plantation owners desperately needed people to make their land profitable, and their desperation encouraged them to exploit the workers they imported. Indentured servants made up the cost of their purchase at the end of one year, and they were considered the most lucrative import in the entire colony.20 Another problem governing the relationships between masters and servants occurred because of dissonance of expectations. In England, a master and his family considered the servant to be a part of the household, almost a member of the family. In the colonies, this rule did not apply. According to David Galenson, "the mechanism used to secure the investment in their voyage to the colonies had made them into property." 21Because planters bought their servants on a market, rather than on face-to-face terms, the servants became property to them. The depredations inherent in the new system are indicated in a comparison of English runaway servants and American runaway servants. American servants ran away far more often. In fact, running away was the most common offense among American servants. The system clearly became more "adversarial" and less family oriented.22 The indenture contracts and the conditions inherent in tobacco agriculture combined to make servant exploitation and abuse common. Masters invested a great deal in their servants, and they expected returns on their investments. The value of the investment justified masters in taking brutal action against their servants. The back-breaking labor of the tobacco field created recalcitrant servants, and further encouraged abuse, as masters tried to produce as much tobacco as possible so that they could earn more money. Masters believed that physical abuse, or the lack thereof was the only effective inducement for servants or recourse against intractable ones. According to Jacqueline Jones, some masters "made a calculated attempt to drive their servants mercilessly."23 Servant Abuse - Both Physical and Psychological Servants of the seventeenth century shared the same complaints, with one innovation after mid-century. They complained about quantity of food and its quality. They wanted more meat, and they did not want to pound grain for themselves. Servants especially despised the task of grinding grain with a mortar and pestle. The task required incredible strength, and it often occurred during evening hours that servants perceived as their own free time. 24In one case, Thomas Wood, a servant, refused to pound the grain, and his master beat him with "a roapes End about the bignes of a Finger.about five or six stroakes or thereabouts."25 Wood was later found dead, and the beatings clearly contributed to his death. In another case, a lame indentured servant was found dead in a Creek. His master, John Dandy claimed that the indentured boy killed himself. This assertion was probably true, but it does not explain that Dandy himself drove the boy to suicide. At the court, witnesses testified that the boy's body had whip and ax marks on it, and he also seemed to have rat bites.26Clearly, this case is one of the most egregious examples of abuse, and most masters would not have gone to such abusive lengths. However, it demonstrates the feelings of a master towards a servant that he perceived as a useless drain on the household. It also shows that psychological abuse could be just as deadly as physical abuse. After all of Dandy's verbal abuse, humiliation, and beatings, the boy took his own life rather than remain subject to his master's merciless cruelty. Servants also protested long hours in the field, and their monotonous tasks.27 As mentioned before, servants in England were accustomed to fewer hours of work and more diverse tasks. Servants fought against their jobs by intentionally shirking their work, or breaking their tools. They claimed sickness, which was a plausible phenomena in the disease ridden Virginia areas. Especially aggressive servants might threaten their masters bodily, or neglect the tobacco fencing. In one case, servants beat a herd of goats "with the bars of a cowpen."28 Most frighteningly, they could neglect or sabotage the tobacco crop, which could destroy a master's fortune.29 Servants' only new grievance in the 17th century centered upon the arrival of African slaves. Planters began importing slaves in small numbers around mid-century, and white servants complained that planters treated them the same way they treated the slaves. Servants came with an idea of English liberty, and they believed that their masters subjected them to conditions similar to slavery. James Revel, an indentured servant, wrote a poem that illustrated this phenomenon. The last two lines read "we and the Negroes both alike did fare / Of work and food we had an equal share."30 Planters could also abuse, or exploit, their indentured servants by claiming a different tenure for the indenture. In April 1642, Sarah Hickman came before the court claiming that the merchant who bound her promised her a two-year contract.31However, when she arrived and Mr. William Burdett purchased her contract, he bound her for four years. In 1642, she brought witnesses to the court to testify to her contract with the merchant, and although the outcome of the case is not explicitly stated, it seems that the decision did not go in her favor. In 1644, William Burdett's inventory includes Sarah Hickman's service for one more year valued at 700 pounds of tobacco.32If she had won her case, Hickman would have been free already. The planters serving on the court that heard her case had no interest in seeing the length of her servitude shortened. They owned indentured servants and wanted to squeeze as much time and value from them as possible. The complete overlap between the governing class and the largest planting class also posed a problem for servants seeking redress. As Lois Carr explains, "planter judges had heavy investments in their servants and could sympathize with masters whose bound laborers could not or would not work."33The men who owned the most servants served on the colony's governing council and rotated the governorship of the colony among themselves. They had a disincentive to help servants, even if the servants were correct. They wanted to control the labor of the colonies to further their own profits, and to maintain their power over other colonists.34Government officials operated in an "old boys" network to keep land for themselves. They knew where the best available land was located, and they often exaggerated in land surveys to give a planter more land than he had purchased. Female Servants Women who came to the colonies as indentured servants faced a much different set of circumstances than men. At the end of the century, the ratio of men to women in Virginia was 3.5 to 1 and in Maryland 2.5 to 1.35In mid-century, the ratio was even more skewed towards men. In this climate, practically any woman could find a husband, and men often bought indentured women explicitly to be their wives. If this was not the case, most women had their pick of the remaining men. According to David Galenson, a British planter claimed that "if [women] come out of an honest stock and have good repute, they may pick and chuse their Husbands out of the better sort of people."36Another contemporary wrote, "the Women that go over into this Province as Servants.are no sooner on shoar, but they are courted into a Copulative Matrimony."37A woman from a nominally good family could find a husband from the wealthy planting class, and woman without such connections could still marry a decent, hardworking man. If women survived servitude, they had a good chance of bettering their lives. However, women faced hard labor and trying circumstances on their road to freedom. Women were responsible for traditional English female tasks on a plantation. They took care of children and the house, and they often ran dairies to make milk and cheese for their household, and for sale to other families. For example, Robert Cole's wife, and following her death, his children, ran a dairy on their plantation.38Daniel Clocker's wife Mary from a previous example also ran a dairy and may have contributed to their land purchase by serving as a dairymaid on another plantation first.39Women made valuable contributions to plantation life, and according to David Galenson, younger female indentured servants were even more valuable than older women, because they would not run off and get married immediately.40 However, women faced even greater risk than men in coming to the colonies. Women experienced many of the worst aspects of servitude, and they initiated many of the court cases regarding abuse. In one case, a master had two of his male servants beat a female servant until she was bleeding to the waist.41Not only was the beating a punishment, but it was also a humiliation. Women experienced sexual harassment from both masters and strangers, and their terms of indenture could be significantly lengthened if they bore a child out of wedlock, even if it was the master's own child.42 Mistresses jealous of their husbands' roving eyes would beat them, or their masters might beat them for carrying out too little work. Women were particularly susceptible to beatings from their mistresses. For complaining about back pain, one mistress beat her servant until "her head 'was beaten as soft as a sponge in one place.'"43 Women also had shorter lifespans in the colonies than women in England, and shorter lifespans than their male counterparts within the colonies. Women dealt with a harsh lot in the colonies. They were subject to more danger than men, because they had to worry about sexual predators, and they shortened their lifespans by coming to America. Those who survived the ordeal, however, often found their lives improved. Changing Conditions in 1660 During the 1660's, freedmen found it more difficult to patent land for themselves. The courts in Virginia and Maryland prevented freedmen from obtaining land. Servants received "freedom dues" at the end of their indentures, and the law dictated that masters give male servants fifty acres of land. In Virginia in 1626, this law was struck down, and masters owed their servants only clothes and food for a year. In Maryland, the courts struck down the fifty acres requirement in 1663. Without the "free" land, servants found it increasingly difficult to jump to landholder status.44 Even though the colonies no longer gave a servant free land, it might be asked why servants could not just buy land, as they did in Virginia after 1626. The Chesapeake elites eliminated that option by securing most of the land for themselves through the headright system. The headright system developed at the inception of the colony, and its purpose was to encourage immigration. Every planter who "imported" a laborer or servant to the colony received a fifty-acre land grant. By mid century, the elite amassed "acres, at first hundred of thousands and then tens of thousands, for both speculative and productive purposes."45The elite controlled all the land near the sparsely cultivated settlements and shore, and they charged exorbitant prices when they sold it. In Surrey County, the price for land doubled between 1650 and 1666, and it doubled again by 1674.46At these prices, freedmen could not afford to buy any land at all. According to a study of all the servants freed in Lancaster County between 1662 and 1678, less than ten percent became landholders by 1679.47A study of freed servants from before 1666 shows a rosier picture. About forty percent of landowners in Virginia came to the colony as indentured servants.48This statistic indicates that until 1666, the Virginia elite was unable to freeze freedmen from the power structure. Afterwards, freedmen had a more difficult time entering the upper echelons of society. Edmund Sears Morgan argued, "after mid-century the prosperity of Virginia's big men, in the face of low tobacco prices and rising crops and population could not be widely shared, nor could the governmental authority that made it possible."49 Land meant more than economic prosperity; it meant upward social mobility, and the expense of land froze freedmen outside the power structure of society. Freedmen of the 1660's faced an additional economic block to acquiring land. Freedmen of past times used their wages to purchase land, but in the 1660's, wages declined drastically. Tobacco was a profitable commodity in the 1620's and 1630's, but by the middle of the century, it was overproduced, and its price declined. Freedmen could not get free land, nor could they afford to patent land of their own. They were left in a perpetual state of poverty and disillusionment. Conclusion Although exploitation certainly existed throughout the 17th century, it increased in scope and severity when servants lost their automatic opportunities to become landowners following their term. Left without land, a servant had several options. He could work for a planter as a laborer or sharecropper, hoping to make enough money to buy his own land in the near future. Or he could move outside the populous regions and set up a plantation on the outskirts on unclaimed land. Unfortunately, Native Americans still roamed the outskirts perpetrating random acts of violence in retaliation for the violence against them, so a freedman often chose to work as a laborer to save money. If a servant reached freedom before 1660, his chances of becoming a prosperous, though not a planter of the upper echelons, were decent, but after 1660, a servant's chances declined rapidly. Most labored for other men until they died at a relatively young age. Even though by the mid 17th century, masters lengthened the times of indentures and reduced freedmen to servile status, they did not turn to slavery in large numbers until the turn of the century. Of course, although slavery clearly differed from servitude, even interminable terms of servitude, because slavery added an element of racist ideology, indentured servants still considered themselves to be almost enslaved. Mortality rates in early Virginia explain the continued preference for servants, and the eventual turn towards slavery. Until the beginning of the 18th century, mortality rates were so high that it was not worth the cost to spend double on a slave when both a servant and a slave had an equal chance of perishing in their first Chesapeake year. However, when healthier more settled conditions prevailed, slavery seemed more sensible, because a planter could count on a slave living longer than the term of an indenture. Planters also preferred slaved, because they could work black people in the fields. Convention demanded that planters work only white men outside in the tobacco field, while keeping white women in traditional female chores, like milling and dairying. However, convention demanded nothing in terms of black women. They could be set to work in the field at just as grueling a pace as men, and they could also bear children that would be slaves and add to the wealth of the master. By the mid 17th century, planters still had market demand for indentured servants, but the servants' prospects were far more limited than they had been before 1660. The pressures of an over saturated tobacco market forced masters to exploit their indentured servants in two ways. Masters tried to increase their servants' levels of work and rates of production. When servants did not respond to these demands, masters often resorted to abuse and beatings to reach their profit goals. After working their servants hard for all of their legally owned labor time, masters also tried to extend the indenture times of those whose indentures had expired. If they failed to extend the indentures, they tried and succeeded in keeping freedmen oppressed by denying them land and then exploiting their monetary desperation by employing them for low wages. The experience of indentured servitude foreshadowed the change to slavery. By the 18th century, servitude declined into non-existence, while slavery gained ascendancy, as masters looked for cheaper ways to bolster their profits against diminishing tobacco returns. ----- Original Message ----- From: <Tmollaun@aol.com> To: <warpaint1128@sbcglobal.net>; <vaaugust@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 1:14 PM Subject: Re: [VAAUGUST] ARMSTRONGS In a message dated 4/27/07 10:10:05 AM, warpaint1128@sbcglobal.net writes: > How did people get to be indentured in the first place, were they known > by the party who brought them over, were they kin in someway? > Gay Nix > I would like to know the process also. I hope it's all right to bring this up. This subject is so interesting. My ancestor came from England into Baltimore, MD as an indentured servant in the mid 1700s. In his case, it was a punishment for taking clothes off a clothesline. They weren't his clothes. I know that others willingly came to this country as indentured servants. They did this because they couldn't afford passage. What was the process for that, how & where did they apply for it and where are the records kept today? Anyone know? Best Wishes, Donna ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Third Sunday in each month will set aside for a "Brick Wall" Roll Call. Please always put the surname you seek in the subject and tell us something about your Brick Wall person. To contact Listowner: Rena Worthen doreatr@rbnet.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to VAAUGUST-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

I'm not saying that all of the masters were good, but I'm sure its just like now, some bosses are good, others... some people always complain or buck the system... etc here's one from Northumberland county - sorry, the only book I have 1962 - 10 July 1775 - Upon the Complaint of John Parrot agains William Foalks for ill usuage, it is ordered that the Sherriff take the sd William into his Custody and him safely keep untill he enteres into Bond wth Sufficeint Security to keep the peace and be of good behaviour towards all his Majesties Kings people for the space of one year. OB 1773-83, 237 they worst I've transcribed was a servant had to wear an iron collar, the coolest - letting a servant work for another master so that he could be near his wife. thanks you gave some GREAT information! --------------------------------- Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell? Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos.