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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