For so long in Australia it was shameful to admit to a convict
ancestor, but the younger generations now take pride in it. I have
been there, ran my hand over the chiseled stone surfaces on walls in
Sydney that the convicts had quarried out, it was so touching. At
that time, they may as well have been sent to the moon, so far away,
so little communication with their families back home [if any].
Polite society of the time may have sniffed their noses at these
"sorts" of people, but they were tough, resilient and smart, they had
what it took to survive and make a new world. Just as in the American
colonies.
Nancy
-------
I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
--Daniel Boone
On Feb 2, 2007, at 5:47 PM, Nathan Murphy wrote:
> "The odds of being descended from the latter [indentured servants
> and convicts] are far greater than the
> odds of being descended from the former [original settlers]. This
> is almost as true for
> African-Americans as it is for European-Americans."
>
> It has been my observation, in talking about this subject to people
> who are researching their families trees, that they are unaware
> that they descend from these unfree immigrants. Harold is right
> though, surviving passenger departure lists for English ports show
> that about 75% of the passengers were under indenture, both early
> on in the 1630s and at the end of the colonial period in the 1770s.
> Sources: Bernard Bailyn Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the
> Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution. New York: Alfred
> A. Knopf, 1986 and Alison Games. Migration and the Origins of the
> English Atlantic World. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
> 1999.
>
> It is my hope that projects such as Virtual Jamestown, Virginia
> Runaways, and now the Immigrant Servants Database can stimulate
> more interest among genealogists in tracing these folks.
>
>
> 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 Debra Jackson/Harold Forsythe
> Sent: Fri 2/2/2007 3:30 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] New Online Database of Indentured Servants
>
>
>
> I am no expert on this period but I think that one has to consider
> white
> migration through indenture, and commutation of death sentence, in the
> context of rural enclosure in the UK. (See, for instance, E.P.
> Thompson,
> Whigs and Hunters: the Origins of the Black Act.) Extreme
> pressure by the
> landed classes on those poorer people who made their living on the
> land or
> in the forests caused a major economic disruption, even
> starvation. The
> Crown's response to poaching, etc., was the death sentence for
> petty theft;
> even a scarf for resale or a loaf of bread. Parliament, after all,
> only
> represented freemen, those who had a minimum freehold on real
> property, not
> free men, that is anyone who was not a slave. This had been a
> major debate
> in the 17th century during the lengthy English Revolution, between
> religious
> radicals like Gerard Winstanley and the Puritan notables who
> actually ruled
> England during the Protectorate (1647-1660).
>
> So perhaps we should not judge the thousands of indentured
> servants, many
> earlier motivated by the chance for upward mobility through the
> possession
> of land in the colonies, many later driven to petty crime,
> sentenced to
> death, choosing first Virginia and Maryland, then Georgia, and
> after US
> Independence Australia in preference of the rope. Remember, only 120
> people came over on the Mayflower and 60 of them died the first
> winter.
> Thousands of people of Anglo-Saxon or Celtic stock came over as
> convict
> labor. The odds of being descended from the latter are far greater
> than the
> odds of being descended from the former. This is almost as true for
> African-Americans as it is for European-Americans.
>
> Harold S. Forsythe
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Sunshine49" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Friday, February 02, 2007 3:54 PM
> Subject: Re: New Online Database of Indentured Servants
>
>
>> sorry if I failed to use the words "many" or "some", I did not
>> mean to
>> say that all later indentured servants were criminals, because they
>> weren't. But you have to admit that an indentured servant who
>> murdered
>> someone before running away, or stole what he could from his
>> master's
>> house before burning it down, well, he may have had his good
>> reasons for
>> doing so, but many do seem to me to have been very rough sorts.
>> Others
>> were, as you say, no doubt people who just got fed up and tried
>> to leave
>> and start over elsewhere.
>>
>> Nancy
>>
>> -------
>> I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
>>
>> --Daniel Boone
>>
>>
>>
>> On Feb 2, 2007, at 1:44 PM, Douglas Deal wrote:
>>
>>> 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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