 |
|
| 1738 Indenture contract signed with an X |
I was looking for information on Scottish indentured workers in America—remembering something from Charles Mann’s book, 1491, about indentured Scotsmen dying of malaria on southern plantations so quickly that owners turned to African slaves. Googling around, I realized that my memories had simplified the story, but, as always, I bumped into other facts and ideas that, meshed with current interests and reading and rereading Josephy, have me relearning U.S. history.
I didn’t remember learning much about indentured workers at all on my first, school-time run through American history. Certainly not that as many as 80 percent of white immigrants to North America—those from the British Isles and the Continent—from the early 1600s to the Revolution, were indentured. Feeding and keeping the laborers shipboard cost more than a year’s plowman’s wages in England, some workers did not survive the long voyage, and there was
Read The Article