What was an indentured servant

How to use indentured servant in a sentence This state constitution outlined that existing indentured servant s would remain in their contracts, and children born to them would be freed only at certain ages — women at 18, men at Loopholes have preserved slavery for more than years after abolition Caroline Kisiel January 27, Washington Post. Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham Thomas T.

Harman and Walter Showell. The Red Year Louis Tracy. Martin's Summer Rafael Sabatini. England was not the only government that transported criminals to the Americas. Sweden sent political prisoners to New Sweden, now called Delaware; the Dutch sent vagrants and criminals to New York; and the French also transported criminals to New France. England sent vanquished political foes from Scotland and Ireland. The mayors of London and Liverpool regularly gathered up urchins from the streets of their cities to be sent to America and sold into indentured servitude.

Convicts who had been sold into indentured servitude, and who were making good in their new lives, were sometimes politely referred to as "servants" to avoid stigma. Look for records of trials and sentencing in the court records and archives of the government that convicted and transported these individuals. Search this Guide Search. Those searching for family history stories can find documents to help identify ancestors who immigrated in this way. In general, indentured servants enjoyed little personal freedom.

Some contracts allowed landowners to extend the work period for servants who were accused of behavior that was deemed improper. If a servant ran away or became pregnant, for example, a master was legally entitled to lengthen the worker's term of service.

An indenture is a legal and binding agreement, contract, or document between two or more parties. In the case of indentured servants, these contracts contained "indented" marks along the sides of the document.

When the document was finalized, two copies were made. One copy was placed over the other and the edges of the pages were defaced or marked with indented characters. The servants of this era often were uneducated and could be cheated by unscrupulous masters who might forge new contracts with terms more favorable to themselves. So, this way of marking the two original copies helped to ensure a lasting means of authenticating the contract.

In finance, indenture appears when discussing bond agreements, certain real estate deeds , and some aspects of bankruptcies. Between bond issuers and bondholders, an indenture is a legal and binding contract that spells out the important features of a bond, such as its maturity date, the timing of interest payments, method of calculating interest, and any callable or convertible features, among others.

Immigrants entered indentured servitude contracts of their own free will, as opposed to slaves, who did not have a choice in the matter. Treatment of indentured servants differed greatly from one master to another.

Some masters considered their indentured servants as personal property and made these individuals work difficult jobs before their contracts expired. Other masters treated their slaves more humanely than their servants because slaves were regarded as a lifetime investment, whereas servants would be gone in a few years.

Indentured servants did have some rights, though, at least in theory. For example, they had access to the courts and were entitled to own land.

However, masters retained their right to prohibit their servants from marrying and had the authority to sell them to another master at any time.

A specific similarity between slavery and indentured servitude is that indentured servants could be sold, loaned, or inherited, at least during the duration of their contract terms. As a result, some indentured servants performed little work for the landowners who paid for their passage across the Atlantic. In Philadelphia , Jefferson bought the remaining term of service of William Rice, a stonecutter. Rice was almost certainly an indentured servant.

He worked at Monticello until , from as a free man. He probably trained the enslaved man called Jupiter in stonecutting; together with another enslaved stonecutter, called Charles, they cut the stone for the columns of the East Portico.

An article courtesy of the Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia. Click for more. Transcription available at Founders Online. MB , , n8.