As a possible descendant of one of these "Maids for
Virginia," I have investigated the sources at great
length. Basically, there have been three or four very
goods articles about them through the years. You may
find all of them in PERSI (the Periodical Source
Index).

Someone at the Library of Virginia can probably give
you a complete list of sources on this subject, but
one that readily shows up on the LVA website is as
follows:

Call Number    HQ1438.V8 M15   
Author    McIlwaine, H. R. (Henry Read), 1864-1934.  
Title    The maids who came to Virginia in 1620 and
1621 for husbands / by H.R. McIlwaine.  
Material    p. [105]-113 ; 24 cm.  
Gen. note    Caption title.  
Subject - Corporate    Virginia Company of London  
Subject - Topical    Women -- Virginia -- History  
In    nnas Reviewer. vol. 1, no. 4 (April 1, 1921)  
   
 
holdings (1)    All items  
System Number    000198515  

The Maids certainly were not all from orphanages or
prisons -- in fact most if not all very NOT such
people. The criteria laid down by the Virginia Company
in London was that they be maidens of good families
and good reputation. They were screened, probably
interviewed, etc., according to VC records.

Unfortunately, the names of the maids who arrived on
the first 1 or 2 ships (ca. June 1620) have been lost,
as is the case with the one who may have been my
ancestor. I found her in a separate record (which was
only referenced in the Colonial Records Project, not
copied, and CRP didn't mention her as a Maid, but the
original document that I ordered from the Public
Record Office in London did). Clearly, this document
(a 1624/5 "deposition" in a lawsuit involving Virginia
property) should have been copied for the CRP because
this maid -- first name Margry -- m. Reverend William
Mease, founding minister at St. John's Church,
Hampton, 1610-11.

jc







--- Mildred Fournier <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> While we are on the subject of "forced" emigration,
> does anyone have a list
> of the women sent to Virginia in 1619 to marry the
> planters?  I am told that
> most of them came out of prisons or orphanages. 
> 
> 
> MWF
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion of research and writing about
> Virginia history
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Nathan W. Murphy
> Sent: Friday, February 02, 2007 12:11 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: New Online Database of Indentured Servants
> 
> ANNOUNCEMENT: Free Online Database of Indentured
> Servants, Redemptioners,
> and Transported Convicts
> 
> PROJECT TITLE: Immigrant Servants Database
> 
> PROJECT URL: www.immigrantservants.com 
> 
> DESCRIPTION: Nathan W. Murphy, Ph.D. candidate at
> the University of Utah, is
> using skills he developed as a social historian and
> professional genealogist
> to reconstruct a passenger arrival list of
> indentured servants coming to
> Colonial America. The project will continue for
> several years. It follows in
> the spirit of Peter Wilson Coldham's efforts to
> publish passenger departure
> lists from sources in the United Kingdom and Ireland
> for indentured servants
> and transported convicts, but focuses on tapping
> American sources of
> immigrant servant arrivals to complement the UK
> data.
> 
> Murphy, an Accredited Genealogist who resides in
> Salt Lake City, Utah, has
> quick access to Colonial American and European
> sources through the Family
> History Library. He has received permission from the
> major publishers of
> Colonial Virginia's court orders to extract
> evidences of imported servants
> from their books and make them available for free on
> the Internet. He hopes
> to complete his search of seventeenth-century court
> orders by Spring 2007.
> 
> NOTE: The approximately 10,000 immigrant servants
> currently in the database
> do not derive from the same sources as those in the
> Virtual Jamestown
> project. The numbers of immigrants in this new
> database will continue to
> grow in the future.
> 
> PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS:
> - Three search engines: SIMPLE SEARCH (queries all
> text in database),
> ADVANCED SEARCH (search by any of more than 50
> fields in database), and
> LETTER SEARCH (browse through lists of servants
> arranged by the first letter
> of their surname). The search engines are equipped
> with SOUNDEX, which
> retrieves servants with surnames that sound alike,
> i.e. Murphy, Morphew,
> Murfee, Murfew, Murfey, Murphew, and Murphey all
> come back as possible
> matches with the surname "Murphy."
> - LEARNING CENTER, includes a copy of Murphy's
> ARTICLE "Origins of Colonial
> Chesapeake Indentured Servants: American and English
> Sources," published in
> the March 2005 edition of National Genealogical
> Society Quarterly, which
> provides tips for tracing the immigrant origins of
> English indentured
> servants; GLOSSARY of terms associated with the
> practice of indentured
> servitude; extensive list of LAWS from Colonial
> Virginia pertaining to
> indentured servants; lengthy BIBLIOGRAPHY
> identifying sources Murphy has
> used and hopes to use to build this database
> (includes references to 12
> personal accounts of immigrant servants); and a list
> of LINKS that will
> interest researchers of immigrant servants.
> 
> Comments and suggestions are welcome.
> 
> Nathan W. Murphy
> [log in to unmask]
> 
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