It is hard to think about people being treated as property. They could be bought and sold. The owners could treat them as harshly as they wanted.
In 2010, Maryland Archives published Volume 822, “Servants and Slaves: Status, Runaways, Punishments. This volume documents how owners treated indentured servants and slaves. While it seems to be common knowledge that slaves were chained and shackled, we are not taught that the same happened to all categories of indentured servants.
Owners were rarely punished for the mistreatment of their indentured servants or slaves. So it was quite a shock to come across the name John Parr as one of the few fined for the “rigorous treatment” of several of his servants in 1741. John was also in court in 1740, being forced to release his indentured servant as he had already served more than the allowed time. John Parr was my 6th great-grandfather, but I hope the John mentioned was his son.
Colonial Auctions
In the American Colonies, auctions were commonplace. Planters would auction off their crops. Others would auction off animals or crafts. Ships coming in would auction off people.
The first recorded auction of people was in 1619. A ship carrying slaves stopped at a port for food. They traded some of their human property (slaves) as indentured servants for food. There is no record of why they sold these people as indentured servants instead of selling them as slaves.
There is a great deal of controversy right now over this particular auction because today we have a distorted and “whitewashed” view of indentured servitude. The indentured servants who survived and turned their lives around wanted to wash away the taint of being human property. And they did. But now historical researchers are finding the truth.
This first auction sold people who were kidnapped and intended by their captors to be sold as slaves. But they were sold as indentured servants. Did that reduce their pain or improve their position in life? Maybe. Many indentured servants died before their term was complete. If they lived long enough to emerge free from indenture, they joined a small but real community of free blacks in the colonies.
The large land and business owners bought mostly slaves. The smaller land or business owners bought indentured servants. Slaves were considered a better investment at the time, but one that the less prosperous could not afford.
Slaves – Property
In modern times, slaves are the people who were kidnapped from Africa and sold to planters, farmers, and other businesses for perpetuity. These people and all their future descendants belonged to their owners and could be treated as the owner liked, sold when the owner wanted, or even freed from bondage with a court order. And most of the time this was legal, or at least semi-legal.
Unless a particular owner had already paid for the slaves, they were sold at a Slave Auction at a local market near the port.
Indentured Servants – Also Property
Indentured servants came in a variety of categories. No matter what category they fell in, they were human property for a specified time. The owners could extend the time at will for a variety of real or spurious reasons. If the indentured servant became pregnant, then of course her term of indenture would be extended because of the time she couldn’t work at full capacity. She also would have to face the probability of indenturing her child to the owner for food.
The owners could also sell their servants to someone else as these people were just property for the term of their indenture.
Voluntary Incentivised Indenture
Signing a contract of servitude with a colonial owner before leaving Europe was the best option for a potential servant. These contracts came with large quantities of land for the owner and for the servant when the indentured servant completed the term of the indenture contract. The British Crown was the one granting the new land and was incentivizing colonists to pay for populating the land.
Semi-Voluntary Human Property
England was seeing too many people, especially poor people, in their cities. Sending the unwanted off to America was seen as a good way to clean up the cities. On these indentures, the ship owners took on the cost of transporting the people to America. When the ship arrived, someone would schedule a Slave Auction. (Who scheduled the auction depended on a variety of circumstances.)
These servants would be paraded at the market and sold, just as slaves were. But the servant would sign an indenture for whatever amount of time agreed to at the auction and the owner would pay the ship owner’s representative.
The poor of the British Isles were swept up, voluntarily or involuntarily, into these ships. Those who fought the involuntary deportment usually ended up in the last group of indentures – the convicts.
Convict Indentured Servants
The convicts were a motley group: orphaned children living on the streets, poor people, prostitutes, and murderers. Stealing items valued 40 pence or above was a hanging offense. According to OfficialData.org, that 40 pence would be less than $15 today.
Depending on the time period, the amount of money a ship owner earned carrying convicts to the colonies varied. For the ship that took the convict and orphan Thomas Featherston to the colonies, the owner was paid by the courts and paid again at the Slave Auction. The only responsibility was for the ship owner to return the sales records from the auction. The courts were primarily interested in making sure their unwanted population was really gone.
Convicts had their term of servitude assigned by the court. On July 19, 1774, Duncan Campbell, Alexander Mackenezie, and John Ogilory signed the contract for the transport of convicts from the Court of Middlesex, England, called Old Bailey. The contract covered transporting and selling the convicts at auction in the British colonies. The terms of indenture were:
- 54 Convicts for seven years
- 14 convicts for fourteen years
- 2 convicts for life
I still haven’t found the sales record for this shipload of convicts.
