Indentured Servants and Company Towns

thatdsaThe term indentured servant arose in the context of a system for financing immigration to North America primarily during the colonial period. Europeans who could not afford passage to America sold themselves to merchants and seamen in exchange for transportation to the colonies. This arrangement was spelled out in a contract--called an indenture--in which the emigrant agreed to work without compensation for a fixed term, typically four or five years. Servants often entered into such contracts freely but sometimes merchants and ship captains, in a practice called "spiriting," kidnapped impoverished children and youths, forcing them into an indenture. Shiploads of these volunteers and victims disembarked in colonial port towns and along river banks, where ship masters sold them to plantation owners and others who needed workers. These strangers became the servants' masters and literally owned them for the duration of their contracts.

Labor shortages in America's middle colonies enabled indentured servitude to flourish there for more than 150 years. Increased African slave imports during the eighteenth century triggered its decline. By the early 1800s the system had disappeared among Britons coming to the United States. The origins and destinations of indentured servants varied widely. They embarked from many European countries, including England, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Settlers used them as laborers primarily in the middle, southern, and West Indian colonies but the custom prevailed in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Records in the diverse countries of origin and the colonial destinations of these servants vary greatly. This article will focus on servants from England who were imported to the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and Virginia.

Indentured servants resembled other groups of colonial migrants, including African slaves and transported convicts. Indentured servants, in fact, often were called "white slaves."

All three groups experienced mistreatment. The groups also differed. Convict servants were the only group whose emigration and unpaid labor were penalties imposed for criminal behavior. Whether indentured servants were voluntary or forced laborers, their indentures were temporary, unlike the Africans, who were enslaved for life. Table 1 compares some characteristics and privileges of indentured servants with transported convicts and free immigrants.

Indentured servants were not glamorous or famous figures in colonial America. Nevertheless, family historians are interested in knowing that an ancestor--male or female--may have been indentured. More important, the designation "indentured servant" signifies that the individual immigrated--a fact that surviving colonial sources often do not clarify and one that can open doors to finding the ancestor in European records.

Social historians, who have laid the groundwork for understanding