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Immigrant Servants Database

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• Centre for Barbados Studies in History and Genealogy
  • This site includes lists of the indentured servants who signed contracts to voyage to Barbados from Bristol, England, as well as a variety of other lists of inhabitants of the West Indies dating from the 1670s, 1680s, and 1690s.
• Chester County Archives: Indentured Servant and Apprenticeship Records, 1700-1855
  • Staff at the Chester County, Pennsylvania Archive have created a database of indentured servants listed in public records in their collection.
• Colonial House
  • 2004 television series on Kentucky Educational Television that portrays what life was like for colonial indentured servants. Website includes images of actors performing jobs typically assigned to indentured servants .
• Delmarva Settlers
  • Faculty and students in the History Department at Salisbury University are compiling information about early settlers of Somerset County, Maryland. Includes biographical profiles of indentured servants and masters, and indexed abstracts of seventeenth-century sources.
• Distribution of Families in England and Wales in 1891
  • This useful tool plots the distribution of surnames in England and Wales based on the 1891 Census of England and Wales. This is very useful for tracing the origins of immigrant servants with uncommon surnames.
• Dr. Lois Green Carr’s Biographical Files of 17th and 18th Century Marylanders
  • Dr. Carr’s project sought to identify all of the colonists who settled in St. Mary’s County, Maryland and to reconstruct their careers (i.e. lives). Several thousand indentured servants are included.
• Early Modern Bibliographies: Servants and Apprentices
  • This site contains an excellent bibliography for researchers who wish to learn more about the context of their immigrant servant ancestors’ lives and also the origins of the indentured servant labor system.
• Early Settlers of Maryland (Maryland State Archives)
  • Database of nearly 35,000 colonial immigrants who settled in Maryland. Includes thousands of indentured servants. Also read about sources that typically refer to immigrant servants in Colonial Maryland.
• Estimated Immigration, 1607-1819
  • Columbia University’s Columbia American History Online contains statistics regarding pre-1820 slave, convict and prisoner, indentured servant, and free immigrant arrivals to the United States of America.
• Exploring Maryland’s Roots: Classroom Resources
  • This fascinating interactive simulation brings the struggles our immigrant ancestors endured to life. It guides viewers through the process of being sent to Colonial America as a convict servant.
• The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders
  • Novel by Daniel Defoe (1661-1731) portraying what life was like for a prostitute from London shipped to Colonial America as an indentured servant. Project Gutenberg has made this fictional account available for free online.
• Free African Americans
  • In this mammoth study, Paul Heinegg identified all free African Americans known to have lived in Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia before 1820 and reconstructed their lives and families. Many of these individuals were freed from slaverly because their mothers were white indentured servants.
• Genealogical Publishing Company Name Search
  • The Genealogical Publishing Company has made a name search engine available for thousands of genealogical and biographical books in print. This index is especially useful to tracking indentured servants that migrated to new places.
• Georgia Salzburger Society
  • This society collects information about early Germans who settled in Georgia. Several of the families they have traced financed their voyages to America as immigrant servants.
• Hampton National Historic Site (National Park Service)
  • Dr. R. Kent Lancaster wrote an excellent article describing British indentured servants employed by Baltimore County, Maryland’s Hampton farm and Northampton iron works during the colonial period.
• Hening’s Statutes at Large
  • Volumes I-XIII (1619-1792) of the laws of Colonial Virginia are available for free on this site.  Numerous legislative acts governing the practice of indentured servitude are included.
• History Detectives, Feature – Indentured Servants in the U.S.
  • Discussion of indentured servants and investigative techniques used to learn more about them from the popular PBS television series History Detectives.
• Immigrant Ancestors Project
  • This project is creating a database of European emigrants listed in documents in European archives.
• Immigrant Arrivals: A Guide to Published Sources (Library of Congress)
  • Includes a select bibliography of books treating indentured servants.
• Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild
  • This project is making immigrant passenger lists available for free online.
• The International Centre for Convict Studies
  • A trans-national and multi-disciplinary consortium of scholars engaged in research on penal transportation and convict experience within the British Empire from 1600-1940. It includes researchers from Australia, United States, South Africa and Europe working in the disciplines of history, textual studies, archaeology, economics and sociology.
• International Genealogical Index
  • This massive database contains millions of entries taken from European parish registers. Using ages and years of arrival in the American Colonies listed in the Immigrant Servants Database, researchers can develop lists of possible infant baptisms for indentured servants in the old countries and initiate research to document their immigrant origins.
• Irish Ancestors
  • This useful tool plots the distribution of surnames in Ireland based on Griffith’s Evaluation (1848-1864) and births recorded by the civil registry in 1890. This is very useful for tracing the origins of immigrant servants with uncommon surnames.
• London Inhabitants Within the Walls 1695
  • As a result of the marriage act tax, a quasi-census was taken in 1695 that has survived for most of London and groups people into family units. Courtesy British History Online.
• London’s Past Online
  • This site contains an excellent bibliography concerning London history.
• Lusty Beggars, Dissolute Women, Sorners, Gypsies, and Vagabonds for Virginia
  • This article, published in the Journal of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation explains what life was like for Scottish indentured servants in Colonial Virginia. Don’t miss the slide show.
• Many Pasts
  • This feature contains primary documents in text, image, and audio about the experiences of ordinary Americans throughout U.S. history.
• Mitchell’s West Indian Bibliography: Caribbean Books and Pamphlets
  • “An immensely valuable product for which all who work or play with West Indian non-fiction will be deeply grateful, even the academics.” Quoting KO, Laurence, Emeritus Professor of History, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine.
• The Palatinate Project
  • The Palatinate Project aims to reconstruct passenger arrival lists for Colonial Americans from Germany.  These lists often contain crucial information needed to successfully trace overseas origins; includes redemptioners.
• Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900s
  • Ancestry.com has made this multi-volume publication available in an online database. It contains references to 4.5 million American immigrants who appear in published material, includes thousands of immigrant servants. A fee is required to view this site.
• Peter’s Row Publications Surname Search
  • This genealogical publisher has created a surname search for books in print. They principally cover the Eastern Shore of Virginia and surrounding areas. This search engine is particularly useful for tracing migrations of indentured servants who left their places of servitude.
• The Poor Unhappy Transported Felon’s Sorrowful Account of His Fourteen Years Transportation, at Virginia, in America. In Six Parts. Being a Remarkable and Succinct History of the Life of James Revel …
  • Poem written by James Revel, a felon transported to Colonial America, about his experience. Revel’s account was published in England in 1800 and has been made available for free online by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s project Documenting the American South.
• Port Cities UK
  • Voyages, ports, history, people, origins and much more!  Discover the maritime histories of UK port cities; includes Bristol, Liverpool, London, and Southampton, ports of departure for hundreds of thousands of immigrant servants.
• Probing the Past: Virginia and Maryland Probate Inventories, 1740-1810
  • See a white person inventoried as personal property alongside black slaves by searching for the term “servant.”
• Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly of Maryland
  • All volumes of Maryland’s colonial laws are available on this site.  Numerous legislative acts governing the practice of indentured servitude are included.
• The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London 1674 to 1834
  • Digitized proceedings of London’s principal criminal court. Several thousand transportation sentences appear in these cases, which are searchable by several fields, including name or punishment.
• Redemptioners and Indentured Servants in the Colony and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
  • Dr. Karl Friedrick Geiser’s 1901 history, published by Yale University Press.
• Slavery and Servitude in the Colony of North Carolina
  • 1896 article published by John Spencer Bassett (The Johns Hopkins Press), available for free online via the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s project Documenting the American South.
• Stratford Hall Plantation, birthplace of Robert E. Lee
  • Visit Gen. Robert E. Lee’s ancestral estate in Virginia, where slaves, indentured, and convict servants worked side-by-side during the colonial period. Includes background information on servants and slaves.
• Surname Profiler: Surnames as a Quantitative Resource
  • This site includes a tool that plots the distribution of English, Welsh, and Scottish surnames in 1881 and also 1998. It is useful for tracing the origins of immigrant servants with uncommon surnames.
• They Lived in Somerset: 17th Century Marylanders
  • Digitized book containing details on seventeenth-century residents of Somerset County, Maryland. Many indentured servants appear.
• Transportation to America and the West Indies, 1615-1776
  • This research guide, produced by The National Archives (England), describes records produced about convicts sent to Colonial America. See also leaflets “America and the West Indies: Calendars of State Papers Colonial, 1574-1739” and “America and West Indies: Colonies before 1782.”
• Virginia Gazette
  • Colonial Williamsburg has indexed and scanned images of the eighteenth-century Virginia Gazette; includes topical index to indentured servants.
• Virginia Land Office Grants
  
  • Colonists registered thousands of indentured servants in Virginia in order to acquire headright grants. This database contains the actual images to the land grants, but lacks an index to the persons entering the Colony. In order to find immigrants in this online collection, first consult Nugent et al’s Cavaliers and Pioneers, which is available at Ancestry or in book format.
• Virginia Runaways
  • Includes digital reproductions and abstracts of runaway servant advertisements from the eighteenth-century Virginia Gazette.
• Virtual Jamestown
  • This project created a database of over 10,000 indentured servants from Bristol and London servant registers and also includes historical background on indentured servants.
• The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy, 1450-1700
  • Prof. David Harris Sacks discusses indentured servants who embarked from Bristol for the New World in section three of this free online book.