Here's an interesting article I recently came across regarding "Maids for Wives:"
Mrs. Henry Lowell Cook, "Maids for Wives," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Oct 1942): 300-320, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Jan 1943): 71-86.
Mrs. Cook was able to find statements issued by the English government concerning which ships were specifically employed to carry women recruited to be settlers' wives. She argues that the practice ended in the early 1620s; however, it is known that many future masters married maid servants in later years. I know that the Privy Council attempted to "impress" 40 young women in Ottery St. Mary, Devon, England in 1618; however, they ran away and the Privy Council gave up!
Out of curiosity, do your servant ancestresses appear in my database? If not, I'd love to add them.
Best wishes,
Nathan W. Murphy, MA, AGŪ
Researcher and Marketing Director
Price & Associates, Inc.
http://www.pricegen.com
________________________________
From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history on behalf of Douglas Deal
Sent: Fri 2/2/2007 12:01 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] New Online Database of Indentured Servants
Sunshine49 wrote:
> You may be confusing this with later indentured servants in the
> colonial period, who were petty crooks and troublemakers [male and
> female], who were sent to Virginia. From the runaway ads in the
> Virginia Gazette, they seemed to have been quite a troublesome lot. A
> good many seem to have been Irish, or Welsh, a few Scots or English; a
> few could not speak English, evidently they were Gaelic-speaking.
>
>>
Many of the 18th-century servants were convicts who chose transportation
to the colonies in lieu of some harsher punishment at home. Others were
not criminals at all, and we should hesitate to "type" them or the
actual "criminals" as a "troublesome" bunch in Virginia just because
they ran away from their employers. Would we call slave runaways
"troublesome" or would we use a word like "bold"? The ads are sometimes
the only, or nearly the only, sources we have about them (unless there
are also court records about their "crimes"), and in using them we
should keep in mind that they portray the runaways from the masters'
perspective. To servants trying to escape cruel treatment or other
indignities and hardships, thing probably looked rather different.... A
good many masters probably ought to be characterized as "troublesome" too!
Doug Deal
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