Geneaology

[MORTARDUDE]

On my mother's side some research indicates that we are related to the Sheriff of Nottingham and also that there is an ancestor who was an LT to William the Conqueror in 1066 ( this was deduced by the modern name Willoughby being apparently a form of Willowby or by the Willows...) ....I guess this means I am French ( Normans )..............OH LORD !!!!!

It also means my father's side of the family were on William Wallace's side and my mother's side were with the hated English...

go figure


Larry

[Keith_Hixson]

Larry,

So much intermal turmoil. No wonder you are a pyschovet.


Keith

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.history.pdx.edu/hst201/headrts.htm

In return for passage to Virginia :

7 years of labor ( and by convention an expectation of loyalty
from the servant to the Master )

At the end of the term, Master agrees ( in indenture ) to Supply Servant
with "Freedom Dues:"
suit of clothes
Tobacco seed
Perhaps some tools
Perhaps ( unlikely) a small parcel of land


It appears my original ancestor on my father's side probably did this....

Considering the short life expectancy in those days...7 years was a long time...


http://www.history.pdx.edu/hst201/mort3.htm

White indentured Servitude ( High mortality ) 1607 - 1650
Labor System Shift ( declining Mortality ) 1650 - 1725
Racial Slavery ( "normal" mortality ) 1725 -


Larry

[MORTARDUDE]

http://college.hmco.com/history/read...denturedse.htm INDENTURED SERVITUDE
The Virginia Company devised the system of indentured servitude in the late 1610s to finance the recruitment and transport of workers from England to the colony. Those unable to afford an Atlantic passage could "borrow" the needed funds. In return for their passage, maintenance during their service, and certain "freedom dues" at the end of the term, servants signed contracts or "indentures" to work for their masters for a fixed number of years. Servitude played a major role in the settlement of the colonies. During the colonial era, some 200,000 to 300,000 servants came to British mainland North America, accounting for one-half to two-thirds of all European immigrants.

Indentured servitude is sometimes thought of as an adaptation of apprenticeship, but it more closely resembled "service in husbandry," a major source of agricultural labor in early modern England. Typically, farm servants were boys and girls from poor families who left home in their early teens to work for more prosperous farmers until they married. They usually lived in their master's household, agreed to annual contracts for wages, food, and lodging, and changed places frequently, often every year. Given the pervasiveness of this form of life-cycle service, it is a likely antecedent for the indenture system and was a major source of recruits for American plantations.

But indentured servitude was harsher and more restrictive than apprenticeship or service in husbandry. It was not, however, a form of slavery. Servants entered into their labor contracts voluntarily, and they retained some legal rights: they could bring suit and testify, own property, and turn to colonial courts for protection against abusive masters. On the other hand, they could not marry without their master's consent, and they had little control over the terms or conditions of their labor and living standards, although custom and local law did set limits and provide for certain minimums. Terms varied substantially, from four years for skilled adults to a decade or more for unskilled minors. And all could find their terms extended if they ran away or became pregnant. Servants could be sold without their consent, a necessity given the distance and terms involved. To sell an English youth "like a damn'd slave" at first shocked some contemporaries, but it was essential to the success of the indenture system.

That servants were willing to serve so long under such restrictive conditions testifies to their expectations of the opportunities in America. We do not know whether most did better than they would if they had stayed at home. A few joined the ranks of the colonial elite; more died in poverty, often while still servants. For most, a modest "competence" and a respectable position defined the limits of possibility. How many reached those limits is uncertain, but the high wages, cheap land, and rapid growth of the colonial economy remained sufficiently enticing to persuade successive generations of migrants to take the chance and endure the hardships.

There were four forms of immigrant servitude, three of them voluntary. Under the most common, servants signed an indenture before departure, which was sold to a master when the servant reached the colonies. Many servants arrived without written contracts, however, and they were to serve according to "the custom of the country." Customary servants were usually younger than those with indentures, and they served longer terms. The third form of voluntary servitude appeared in the eighteenth century with the German migration to the Mid-Atlantic colonies. "Redemptioners" agreed to pay passage upon arriving in the colonies, thus shifting much of the risk in the trade from merchants to the migrants. If unable to pay, they were sold as servants to satisfy their debt. In addition to these voluntary systems, penal servitude became an important source of labor in the eighteenth century when some fifty thousand convicts were shipped to the colonies.

The types of people who came to the colonies as servants varied over time and by region, although the several migrant streams shared a few common characteristics. Most were male, young, in their late teens and early twenties, and single, traveling alone rather than with family members. In the seventeenth century they were also chiefly English, although as opportunities and wages in England improved, more came from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and Germany. Details of the individual migrations are now largely lost, but most seem to have entered the national labor market at home before signing on as servants, hitting the road in search of work and better prospects. Once on the road, detached from home and family, they became candidates for migration overseas in a process that made America an extension of the labor markets first of England and later of Britain and the Rhine Valley.

Servants played a critical role in the colonial economy. Although they worked in all regions at a wide range of tasks throughout the colonial period, there were clear patterns. Initially, servants were concentrated in the staple-producing colonies, working as field hands to produce sugar in the West Indies and tobacco along the Chesapeake Bay. As demand for labor grew and servant prices rose, planters found that they could employ African slaves more profitably in their fields but continued to use servants as plantation craftsmen and domestics and in supervisory positions. As slaves learned English and plantation work routines, they eventually displaced servants in those positions as well. By the early eighteenth century, indentured servants played only a marginal role in the plantation districts. Thereafter, they were concentrated in a few industries in the Mid-Atlantic region demanding particular skills?chiefly iron making, shipbuilding, and construction?and in the several colonial towns where they worked in various service trades and at precision or semiartistic crafts.

Isolated cases of indentured servitude among European immigrants appear as late as the 1830s, but the institution was unimportant in the United States after 1800. It flourished in the British West Indies after the abolition of slavery in the 1830s, when planters used indentures to finance the migration of Asians to work the sugar crop. And echoes of it appear in subsequent movements to the United States, especially in the debt contract schemes that financed Chinese and Japanese migration to California. Why such arrangements were rarely used to finance European migration after 1800 is unclear. Perhaps falling transatlantic passenger fares simply made indentured servitude unnecessary. Perhaps, too, a growing racism and the identification of blacks with bondage made any type of servitude seem inappropriate for whites. As so often happened in America, freedom and slavery progressed together.

Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution (1986); David W. Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America: An Economic Analysis (1981); Abbot Emerson Smith, Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607-1776 (1947).

[MORTARDUDE]

What was the life expectancy
of a typical colonial resident?

The life expectancy of a colonial was short. As many as 50% of all women died in childbirth or from childbed disease. The infant mortality rate was also high. If a child could reach the age of eleven, they stood a better chance at survival. Individuals in their forties and fifties during the 17th century were considered "old." Statistics peering back to the 18th century indicate the average life expectancy was the age of 45!

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Any citizen over 35 can be senator. Some of them come and stay for years and years. Maybe we should have term limits to turn over the personnel in government faster.

Alternative: When the Constitution was written, age 35 was old. The life expectancy at the time was much shorter than it is today. Male life expectancy was about 47 at the time, so age 35 actually meant "dead minus twelve years." In modern terms, an equivalent age limit (dead minus 12) would be over 60.

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[Jerry D]

Well that is interesting to find out Andy thanks