My pleasure; glad I could help.  :-)   
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: [log in to unmask] 
  To: [log in to unmask] 
  Sent: Friday, June 11, 2004 8:23 PM
  Subject: Re: Wrong?



  Paul,
  I am going to print that out, and use it for future reference. Thank you for enlightening me on Indentured Servants, and the Headrights system. I have seen the word headrights a thousand times, and had no idea what it entailed. 

  Great post!!

  Anita 


  -- Paul Drake <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
  From Nancy:

  > "Mr. Drake; I read your explanation in the digest about Nugent's > books and how you do not think those lists are correct.  I beg > > to differ with you and use it all the time to know who my Hunt > and Jordan ancestors brought here and what happened to them.  How am I wrong?  Thank you.  Nancy" 

  Nancy, I did not say those lists are "wrong"; what I said was that those lists are not reflective of who - what persons - actually "transported" those servants.  In the 17th- and 18th-centuries the word "transport" did NOT mean only that some named sponsor saw to the boat trip and trans-Atlantic fare.  That word also was used to designate those who had reimbursed or otherwise supplied money those who actually had provided the trip over.  Why the dual definition?  Because Parliament and the Virginia Land Co had provided that any person who transported another across the sea would gain (usually) 50 acres of VA land to be broken to the plow and rendered habitable to some minimal extent.  

  Thus it was that if you were of a business mind you could own a ship (or hire one) and provide the ride across the ocean for enough folks to fill that ship, folks who would come here as servants for some number of years in exchange for that ride over.  When your ship arrived here with those new "servants", you would and usually did sell the terms of service of those folks to farmers and planters here who needed those laboring folks to work the crops, the sale price for those terms being sufficient to make the whole venture profitable for you.  

  It was said to cost about L10 (Pounds) to ship a person here, including the food and shelter in England for whatever time it took to round up a full shipload.  Thus, if you could sell those servants to a planter for L15, you had a net profit of L5 on the deal per head.         

  The rights to claim the years of service owing by each servant was called a "headright" (rights per head of people), and - as said - that headright brought to the new owner 50 acres of new land. Though it seems to us to be a stretch of the rules, the law took the view that the new owner really had "transported" that servant since that he had paid for the fare by reimbursing the ship's master in full, plus a profit.

  As you can now see, Nugent's list of servants transported does not reflect who really brought the person here, but rather who somehow later saw to the payment to the original transporter.  The last legal step was that, since if you owned a "headright", as with almost all other property, you could sell, mortgage, loan, give, trade, will or deal in those headrights as you chose.  

  Considering that state of the law, notice that you could pay a shipowner for a man and thereby gain that man-servant's duties, go downtown and sell that headright to a friend or give it to one of your kids, and those new "owners" could, in their turn, sell or otherwise again be rid of that servant and his work period.   

  Since each of those new owners had paid you, who had paid someone else, they had in fact "transported" that servant.  When the trades and sales all were finished, the final owner - the last fellow to "pay" for the fare over went down to the clerk and stated he had "transported" those people.  He then got his 50 acres per head.
     
  Thus, as is now obvious, any list of folks appearing in the records only reflects the name of those who ended up paying someone else for the headrights, and in no way reveals who bought and sold anyone.  Many made a lot of money by speculating in headrights, the servants all the while wondering and waiting to be told for whom they would work out their terms.  

  The matter is even more complicated, however I have told why I so stated.  Paul   


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