Indentures, Servants, and Apprentices
Contracts and Conditions Varied For Young Men in the Colonies
Although many early settlers arrived from Europe as indentured servants, notably in the Chesapeake region, working long and strenuous hours for practically no compensation, young men entering apprenticeship indentures had a considerably brighter future. Signing an indenture covering the typical five year apprenticeship ensured the young man a trade. The ability to earn money once the indenture ended also meant the possibility of marriage.
Indentures as Apprenticeship Contracts
Both parties entered into the indenture of their own free will. Each contract specified a start and an end date. Indentures typically lasted four to five years but could be longer or even extended. Typical promises, taken from a 1753 North Carolina indenture, include:
- Faithfully serving the Master
- Keeping the Master’s Secrets and obeying his commands
- Doing no “Damage” to the Master or allowing others to Damage the Master
- Not to waste the Master’s goods or lend them to others.
Additionally, apprentices could not marry during their time of indenture, “play cards, dice or any other unlawful Games,” nor “absent” themselves day or night without the Master’s permission.
In return, the master taught the apprentice the skills of the trade, provided “meat, drink, lodging, and washing.” A 1770 Apprenticeship Agreement from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania added providing “Apparell both linen and woolen and all other Neccessaries…” Finally, at the end of the term, the apprentice would receive “one new suit…”
Apprentices were expected to attend church services with the master’s family and abstain from drinking and carousing. Once their term was completed, they could strike out on their own. Having a skill meant the ability to earn a decent wage. Young men rarely contemplated marriage unless they had the means to do so.
Indentured Servants Contracts
Unlike apprenticeship contracts, those signed by the thousands of indentured servants coming from England included no promises other than the promise to work for a set number of years as redemption for the passage. Most of the indentured servants coming to America were destined for Virginia and the Carolinas. Before the advent of mass slave importations, beginning in Virginia in the 1660s, indentured servants labored on the tobacco plantations.
Any infraction committed by indentured servants would result in punishment and the lengthening of the indenture. The few females that came as indentured servants had it the worst, often sexually abused by masters and with no legal recourse. [1] Early Virginia indentured servants also include Africans that had made their way south from New Amsterdam after leaving colonies in the Caribbean. [2] These men and women would account for a small population of free blacks, often owning plantations themselves.
In a 1623 letter to his parents, indentured servant Richard Frethorne describes the terrible conditions of indentured servitude. “…I have nothing to comfort me, nor is there nothing to be gotten here but sickness and death…” Subsisting on peas and water gruel, he begs his father to send beef, cheese, and butter. [3] Many young men like Frethorne were lured by stories of great wealth to be had and plentiful food. As the writer states, however, “as for deer or venison, I never saw any since I came into this land.”
T.H. Breen and Stephen Innes suggest that there is a correlation between the slow decrease of indentured servants in the early to mid eighteenth century and the rise of involuntary African slavery. [4] Statistics seem to validate this. It is also true that as the first throes of the Industrial Revolution began in England, unskilled laborers were needed to work in the early factories. And in any event, slaves represented lifetime labor and were thus viewed as more cost effective by planters.
[1] see Part I in John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1988).
[2] and [4] T. H. Breen & Stephen Innes, Myne Owne Ground: Race & Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1640-1676 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980)
[3] Susan Kingsbury, ed. The Records of the Virginia Company of London (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1935) 4: 58-62
Apprentices Learned a Skill or Craft
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