There was a steady flow of emigrants to the American colonies, including transported convicts and indentured servants.
In 1756, indentured servants in America were allowed to volunteer as soldiers in the British army serving in America.
The evil of the system of indentured servants lay for the most part in the ease with which inconvenient people were got rid of, and in the kidnapping of harmless children.
The small independent landowners being free from this danger, at first, lived happy and contented lives, but they were gradually crushed out of existence by large estate-holders working with gangs of indentured labourers.
The English-born planter depended upon slave labour or indentured servants; he lived upon a large estate in a magnificent and often too lavish manner.
Below these classes were the indentured servants and negro slaves.
There were many indentured servants, and rough fishermen and sailors have always been unruly.
Then came the unskilled laborer and a step lower was the indentured servant.
To be sure there were large numbers of indentured servants and the rough fishermen along the coastline have always been unruly.
There was anindentured servant, Thomas Downs, to help cultivate the land and care for the stock, and a maid, Ann Towle, who not only helped with the housework but also worked in the fields.
There were flaxen sheets for Mrs. Dillingham's bed and coarse sheets for the beds of the maid and the indentured servant.
The Governor may at any time, without assigning any cause, cancel the indenture of any immigrant, or remove any part or the whole of the indentured immigrant labourers from any estate; and this has been done ere now.
Furthermore, there was no slave population or indentured servant class to be confined to the lowest rung of the social ladder.
However, both indentured servitude and Negro slavery existed in the "New Purchase" of 1768 in nearby Muncy.
Clark notes that indentured servitude appeared in Muncy, where Samuel Wallis' great holdings made such service feasible.
There were also many indentured servants at the South, where the dividing lines between the different classes were most strongly marked.
Mr. John Hart, a druggist, generously advanced the sum, and James was indentured to him for the term of five years.
He was soon after indentured to Mr. Jacob Downing a respectable merchant of Philadelphia, who agreed to pay one hundred and twenty-five dollars for his services.
But to make those riches actual there must be labour, and, over and above any question of imported and indentured workmen, to secure labour there must be reasonable cheapness in the necessaries of life and work.
The railways, indeed, furnish a fine experimenting-ground for the importation of indentured foreign labour under a short-time contract and a condition of repatriation.
The regular tutors referred to above were largely indentured servants who then constituted probably the majority of the teachers of the colonies.
When sending out packs of indentured coolies the Indian government apportions one woman to three men; this may explain the monthly hangings.
Often the indenturedparties became the victims of cruelty.
I made so miserable a figure, too, that I found, by the questions asked me, I was suspected to be some runaway indentured servant, and in danger of being taken up on that suspicion.
Instead of seeing in me a brother, he saw only an apprentice, indentured to him until I was twenty-one, over whom he held the iron rod of a master, and from whom he expected the most servile obedience.
A sporadic importation of slaves continued during the Commonwealth period, but still the number was insignificant, still the bulk of the labor in the tobacco fields was done by indentured servants and poor freeholders.
Indentured workers met his needs in part, but they were expensive, hard to acquire, and served for only four years.
However this may be, it is evident that by far the larger part of the newcomers at all periods must have been indentured servants intended for service in the tobacco fields.
From its very nature it was impossible that the system of indentured servants should long remain the chief factor in the industrial life of the colony or supply most of the labor.
It is but natural that they should have turned early from the indenturedservant to stock their plantations with the cheaper and more remunerative African workers.
The population of the colony was but the aggregate of the population of the plantation--the owner, the wage earners, the indentured servant, a few slaves.
It must again be emphasized that the indentured servants were not slaves, and that at the expiration of their terms there was no barrier, legal, racial or social to their advancement.
Apparently, then, the restored prosperity of the colony was not shared by the poorer classes, the increased market for tobacco did not better materially the chances of the incoming flood of indentured servants.
In the third class were those called indentured servants, which is much the same as if I said apprentices.
This section of the population was constantly being recruited from the ranks of the indentured servants.
Still less is it confined to the particular class of Indians who emigrate asindentured labourers to South Africa.
Instead they hired indenturedslaves who came from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, etc.
Heretofore this land had, as stated, been occupied mostly by indentured slaves.
In our prosperity we have strayed away from Him who hath redeemed us, and these broken down aristocrats and poor white indentured slaves are the Philistines sent to scourge us.
These indentured slaves and their descendants were always considered with contempt by the upper classes.
He is now as poor as the poorest indentured slave, seeking to feed at the public crib by appealing to the passions and prejudices of the masses.
As the introduction of African slavery caused the indentured slave to depreciate in value as bond men, they were converted into overseers, patrolmen, Negro drivers to look for and to return runaway Negroes to their masters.
This was a little better than slavery but it actually gave the Negroes a status ranging between serfdom and indentured service.
In 1685 William Penn directed his steward at Pennsbury to secure blacks for work "since they might be held for life," which was not true of indentured servants.
He had come into the house with startling abruptness soon after Cyril left school and was indentured to the head-designer at "Peel's," that classic earthenware manufactory.
An indentured pupil is not strapped to the wheel like a common apprentice.
To go back to the matter of the poll tax and the system of indentured slavery, the bosses mapped out every part of the city and province in wage areas.
The system was really one of indenturedslavery till the immigration authorities went after it.
All whites, except the indentured servants and a mere handful of freemen whose indolence doomed them to poverty, lived in comparative comfort and ease.
The indentured servants, upon whose labor the wealthy planters had relied for so many years, were practically slaves, being bound to the soil and forced to obey implicitly those whom they served.
Thus it will be seen that the number of indentured servants that were brought to the colony of Virginia is very large.
The bulk of the immigrants during the first half of the 17th century were indentured servants, brought over to cultivate the tobacco fields.
Now, if we consider the growth of population in conjunction with these facts, it becomes evident that the indentured servant was the most important factor in the settlement of the colony.
When the negro slave had supplanted the indentured servant upon the plantations of the colony a vast change took place in the pride of the middle class.
But disease was not the only danger that the indentured servant faced in those days.
Even in the early years of the century this state of affairs prevailed, and we find planters complaining of the excessive cost of hired labor and making urgent requests for indentured servants.
Most of them, indentured workers and freemen alike, sooner or later acquired small plantations and became members of a yeoman class.
Later the pay was regulated by the number of persons under his management, slaves as well as hired and indentured servants forming the basis of the calculation.
The increase in population noted here was due chiefly to the stream of indentured servants that came to the colony at this period.
The evidence is conclusive that on many occasions indentured servants that had served their term of bondage and had acquired property were elected by the people to represent them in the House of Burgesses.
Having examined the various types of men that entered Virginia as indentured servants, it now remains to determine to what extent these types survived and became welded into the social life of the colony.
Equally without foundation is the statement that the indentured servant could desert his master with impunity.
Also any person employing an indentured servant, without permission of the master, was subject to a very heavy fine.
The territorial legislation admitted a few negroes from the slave States asindentured servants.
Under that law, in violation of the Ordinance of '87, but without any enforcement of the Ordinance to overthrow the system, there had been a small number of slaves introduced as indentured persons.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "indentured" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
