Indentured Servitude in Early America

We seek to understand and illustrate the journeys and stories of indentured servants who traveled across the Atlantic from Europe to the Middle Colonies in Colonial America and arrived between 1600 to 1775, with a focus on demographics. Specifically, the statistics we included demonstrate relationships between class and gender. Our sources come from a range of backgrounds including topics on the Early American labor forces, studies on the transition from a British to American lifestyle, indentured servant migration patterns, and various first-hand accounts from colonial indentured servants. The combination of primary, scholarly, and statistical sources should lead us to answer our major research questions: Where did indentured servants typically come from and why? What did they leave behind in England and what did they find in their new lives in America? What were these immigrants looking for? This is where the demographics we found play in: What do the differences between class and gender look like for where indentured servants are coming from and looking for? We looked specifically at migration patterns, lifestyle, and census information from both England and the Colonies to supplement the initial research. This provided a wider view of the lives of indentured servants in the Colonies and how they compared to their previous lives in England.https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/freedom-movement-fall-2017/1005/thumbnail.jp