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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