Questions about indentured servants in the Southern colonies

[YoungDemCA]

Hi all, this is my first post in this group!

I have been reading a little about how many of the European immigrants who came to the American colonies (particularly the Southern colonies) in the 1600s and 1700s were indentured servants.

In the Southern colonies, what were the main ancestries of these poor servants? Furthermore, to what extent is the modern population of Southern whites descended from these servants? Finally, what were the main differences between servants and free whites, in terms of culture (if there were any, of course).

Thanks!

[intaglio]

1. Please help YoungDemCA because I'd like to know as well

My gut instinct would be that they would tend to be Welsh/Scottish/Irish with a healthy leavening of poor from the rookeries of London.

One interesting insight is that Robert Louis Stephenson's "Kidnapped" is based on a Scots lowland lad sold as a bond servant to the (US) colonies.

[catnhatnh]

2. Some info in "Chesapeake" by James Michener...

...the book is worth it just for covering the everyday life of various classes from the founding and Indian interaction thru the Watergate era with stops for pirate fights and naval engagements and good coverage of estuarine ecology and commercial harvesting.In case you couldn't tell, I liked the book...

[smartphone]

3. Indentured Servants In The U.S.

Indentured servants first arrived in America in the decade following the settlement of Jamestown by the Virginia Company in 1607.

The idea of indentured servitude was born of a need for cheap labor. The earliest settlers soon realized that they had lots of land to care for, but no one to care for it. With passage to the Colonies expensive for all but the wealthy, the Virginia Company developed the system of indentured servitude to attract workers. Indentured servants became vital to the colonial economy.

The timing of the Virginia colony was ideal. The Thirty Year's War had left Europe's economy depressed, and many skilled and unskilled laborers were without work. A new life in the New World offered a glimmer of hope; this explains how one-half to two-thirds of the immigrants who came to the American colonies arrived as indentured servants.

A little more here:

http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/indentured-servants-in-the-us/

[malthaussen]

4. The book you want is...

Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West. Now be advised, this is old-school social history for the most part, lots of charts and tables and dry as dust to those whose tastes doesn't run in that direction. The second half of the book is anecdotal first-person accounts of slaves and servants and can be more lively, but it has ironically been criticized the most by the profession because it is "only" narrative accounts and contains no analysis. But if you want to know the who, how, when, and where of the people who came to America from Britain, this is the place to go.

Bernard Bailyn is one of the most highly-regarded scholars of colonial American history. Born in 1922, he's still tickin', and his most recent book was published in 2012.

-- Mal

[appalachiablue]

5. Ben Franklin's mother was an indentured servant. Came over as a servant of a cleric I believe.

[JDPriestly]

6. At least one of my ancestors was an indentured servant in the Midwest --- as a child1

Her story is very sad. I would not even want to tell it on the internet. I think it happened in the middle of the 19th century. Not sure of the dates.