Both white and mixed-race children were bound out by the Virginia courts.
White boys til twenty-one and white girls in some colonies to 16 and in
others to 18 years. If the mother was a servant, she had to serve extra time
for "the trouble of her master's house" and receive lashes or pay a fine for
the offense. Sometimes her master would agree to an additional year of
service in return for payment of the fine.
A special law of 1691 ordered the mixed-race children of white women bound
out for thirty years (later thirty-one if I remember correctly) and the
woman was to pay 15 pounds currency or be sold for 5 years. Servant women
could not pay 15 pounds currency, so they were sold, often to their former
master. It was clearly a punishment.
In Maryland white women were sold for 7 years, but it did not deter hundreds
of them from having mixed-race children. At least one woman was sold for 28
years.
Paul