Indentured Servants in Colonial America: History and Conditions

Introduction: A Forgotten Chapter of Colonial History

In 1901, Karl Frederick Geiser wrote Redemptioners and Indentured Servants of Pennsylvania "in the hope of throwing some new light upon an important phase of our Colonial history upon which comparatively little has been written." One hundred years later, Geiser could easily publish his book again, since most people in the United States know little about servitude in early America beyond the institution of African slavery. Terms such as redemptioners, embarkation, debarkation, and even indentured servants are seldom examined in detail, yet this was — for good or ill — a major aspect of Colonial history.

When colonists came to the New World and saw that the land would yield profitable returns, they tried a number of different ways to entice immigrants — particularly the poor and laboring classes — to make the long and expensive trip to America. However, the burden was too great for most individuals. In the mid-1500s, the owners of large land companies recognized that in order to increase the number of workers they had to offer free transportation. The English government quickly agreed, since it would then have fewer unemployed individuals who "threatened to become criminals" (Geiser, 1901, p. 5). This arrangement answered one of the major economic problems of the era.

Indenture and Redemption: How the Systems Worked

Historians identify two methods of acquiring trans-Atlantic passage through servitude: "indenture" and "redemption." Today, the term "indenture" is used generically to describe both methods. The two differ depending on whether the immigrant became a contracted servant at embarkation, in the case of indenture, or at debarkation, in the case of redemption. Indentured immigrants signed contracts before the voyage and, once arriving in America, were called "servants whose times are to be disposed of by the captain." Redemptioners, because they did not sign a contract until they arrived in America, were often called "passengers" or "freights" who were "willing to serve a reasonable time for their passage money." Once they signed their contracts, redemptioners were also called "servants." Although both groups shared the same name, it is important to distinguish between the two methods of contract signing, since this distinction affected the allocation of contracting risk between shipper and servant and the flexibility of contracting between servant and American master.

The derivation of the term "indentured" is believed to have come from the Middle English word endenture, a written agreement, derived from Anglo-Norman endenter, meaning to indent — a reference to the matching notches on multiple copies of the document. The contract that the intended servant signed was copied twice on the same piece of paper, which was then torn in half, with the worker and the captain each keeping a copy. The ragged edge of each half would fit exactly with the other, proving that the two pieces were parts of the original contract (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2007). In this way, neither party could alter the original terms — such as the number of years of servitude or the freedom dues owed.

This system applied, at least initially, to the earliest servants who lacked the funds to travel and made arrangements with ships' captains before setting sail. Later, however, other groups became redemptioners — immigrants who had some of the money needed for the trip to the Colonies. They agreed to pay the remainder of their ticket cost shortly after arrival, since many expected to find relatives or friends willing to pay the balance. If that proved impossible, they had to work for several years as indentured servants.

By the time Pennsylvania began using the system of indentured servants in the 1600s, Governor William Penn was already employing a variation of the "pay first" model. In order to attract enough people to settle his colony, he began offering large tracts of land at nominal prices — fifty acres for every servant brought into the colony. To compete with other colonies offering similar incentives, Pennsylvania published pamphlets in various languages and distributed them throughout England and the continent, having a major impact on immigration (Geiser, 1901, p. 6).

Recruitment, Deception, and the Voyage to America

Most likely, many individuals would have thought twice about emigrating had they known how harsh life as an indentured servant could be. They knew very little, however, because it was the 17th century and America was thousands of miles from their homeland. They wanted to believe, as all immigrants do, that in the New World a person could get a second chance in life. Shipping agents compounded this by lying to potential emigrants, describing the colonies in glowing terms. The cost of transporting a person to the colonies has been estimated at ten pounds, while the sale price of an indentured servant often reached thirty pounds or more. An average profit of roughly 66 percent made the deception well worth the lies printed in pamphlets circulated throughout England and Western Europe (Geiser, 1901, p. 6).

One of the schemes used to attract German immigrants involved the use of agents known as "spirits" or "soul catchers" (Jernegan, 1931, p. 50). "Newlanders" or "soul-sellers" were a special class of agents who traveled up and down the Rhine Valley persuading peasants to sell their belongings and sail to the colonies. They pretended to be wealthy merchants from Pennsylvania, dressed in costly clothes with ruffles and wigs. They would then sign an agreement with a merchant in Holland for a fee for each person they persuaded to emigrate. They described the new colonial state as a land flowing with "milk and honey," with "gold and silver easily found on the hills," where servants could become independent and live like noblemen. Many German peasants sold everything they owned and trusted themselves to these soul-sellers. A large number were forced to become indentured servants because the excessive charges imposed for transportation from the Rhine Valley to the port of departure depleted their small savings (Jones, 1724, p. 36).

Although sometimes the crossing took only a month, the voyage to the colonies was often no better than that endured by enslaved Africans. While ships were supposed to carry an average of approximately 300 passengers, shipmasters eager to maximize profits would often crowd double that number onto a small vessel. Each adult person was allotted only six feet by two feet of space between decks — no privacy, the same clothes worn for four weeks to four months or more, and frequently lying flat for days at a time as the ship was battered by storms. Ventilation was nonexistent; passengers suffering from contagious diseases lay side by side with those already dead. This was surely not the milk, honey, and gold that had been promised.

A diary entry by the indentured servant John Harrower (1750) describes one of these harrowing scenes between decks during a storm: "There was some sleeping, some daming, some blasting their leggs and thighs, some their liver, lungs, lights, and eyes, and for to make the scene the odder, some curs'd Father, Mother, Sister, Brother." When food ran short, each person received only three ounces of bread a day. The eyewitness Gottlieb Mittelberger (1750) reported that passengers received spoiled biscuits that were "dirty and full of red worms and spiders' nests." When even that dreadful food was exhausted, passengers resorted to eating mice and rats.

Mittelberger (1750) further explains that hundreds of people died of hunger and misery. Children from newborn to age seven rarely survived. He witnessed 32 small children thrown into the ocean during a single voyage. Conditions were frequently so terrible that several colonies passed laws regulating food supplies, the number of passengers permitted per vessel, and the care of the sick. Ports such as Philadelphia were constantly exposed to contagious diseases, and legislation became necessary to establish quarantines, inspect vessels, and construct pesthouses (Jernegan, 1931, p. 52).

The Irish began coming to America for a variety of reasons, mostly economic. Continuous poor harvests and subsequent famines that severely affected Ireland in the eighteenth century led to a large exodus of Ulstermen. Particularly devastating were the famines of 1727 and 1740, which produced two of the largest waves of emigration from Ulster in that century. Another major cause was the decline of linen manufacturing from 1771 to 1773, when many thousands of people suddenly lost their livelihoods and joined the hundreds already leaving for America. "The linen trade had entered upon a period of stagnation, and the consequent distress gave an impetus to the emigration to the land of promise" (Dunaway, 1944, p. 30). Religious persecution suffered by Ulster's inhabitants was an additional motivation for departure.

Those who emigrated included both well-to-do individuals and the needy, with the great majority falling into the latter category — a pattern common to immigrants of all nationalities throughout American history. Most carried provisions for the voyage along with some household goods. Craftsmen brought tools of their trade. Everyone carried whatever money they had, though for indentured servants this was little or nothing (Dunaway, 1944, p. 31). Many letters from relatives across the Atlantic survive from this period. One such letter illustrates the pull of opportunity and the hardships left behind:

Dr Cusen: had upertunity of reading your letter that was sent to your fatherinlaw, which gave me great satisfaction to here you were all in good health and fortuned so well as to be posessed in so good a bargain of lands. We are all in good health at present I bless God for all his mercies and yr uncle David is helthy and harty and do all join in our love and Compliments to you and your families and enquiring friends. I expected an account oftener from you, only times being troublesome in that country with wars that we were assured that you were all ded or killed the good Bargains of your lands in that Country Doe greatly encourage me to pluck up my spirits and make Redie for the Journey, for we are now oppressed with our lands set at 8s per acre and other improvements... (Boiling, 2003, p. 28)

Conclusion: Servitude in a Land of Proclaimed Freedom

Overall, regardless of whether one considers the "ownership" of indentured servants or enslaved Africans, the fundamental point is that neither group enjoyed freedom in a land that regularly proclaimed its commitment to liberty. Mittelberger's account of the transatlantic passage captures the depth of this contradiction:

Many parents must sell and trade away their children like so many head of cattle; for if their children take the debt upon themselves, the parents can leave the ship free and unrestrained; but as the parents often do not know where and to what people their children are going, it often happens that such parents and children, after leaving the ship, do not see each other again for many years, perhaps no more in all their lives.... It often happens that whole families, husband, wife and children, are separated by being sold to different purchasers, especially when they have not paid any part of their passage money. When a husband or wife has died at sea, when the ship has made more than half of her trip, the survivor must pay or serve not only for himself or herself but also for the deceased. When both parents have died over half-way at sea, their children, especially when they are young and have nothing to pawn or pay, must stand for their own and their parents' passage, and serve till they are 21 years old. When one has served his or her term, he or she is entitled to a new suit of clothes at parting; and if it has been so stipulated, a man gets in addition a horse, a woman, a cow. When a serf has an opportunity to marry in this country, he or she must pay for each year which he or she would have yet to serve, 5 or 6 pounds.

Indeed, it must be noted that no form of servitude is just, especially in a country founded on democracy and the principle that "all men are created equal." It was not a chapter of history in which Americans should take pride.