This form is a Release and Cancellation of Trust Agreement / Trust Indenture. All liens and encumberances created thereby are certified to be satisfied and released. Adapt to fit your circumstances.
This form is a Release and Cancellation of Trust Agreement / Trust Indenture. All liens and encumberances created thereby are certified to be satisfied and released. Adapt to fit your circumstances.
American sources identifying indentured servants include church registers, court records, deeds, servant contracts, journals and other personal narratives, land patents, merchant account books, newspapers, passenger lists, and probate records.
Indentures are agreements between two parties about long-term work. The length of servitude might be a specified number of years or until the servant reached a certain age. Some people indentured themselves in order to gain passage to America or to escape debt and poverty.
Historical Society of Pennsylvania Indentured servants signed contracts that exchanged labor for passage to the North American colonies. The laborer and contractor would agree to a set number of years of service, which varied depending on skill and demand.
American sources identifying indentured servants include church registers, court records, deeds, servant contracts, journals and other personal narratives, land patents, merchant account books, newspapers, passenger lists, and probate records.
Most workers who became indentured servants were males, generally in their late teens and early twenties, but women also entered into these agreements and often worked as household employees or domestic servants.
Children, many poor and/or orphaned, were contracted and bound as indentured servants because parents could not afford to care for them or the children were destitute. These children were forced to work until they reached legal age (dependent on the state), at which time, they were to be released from service.
The external websites listed below can be useful in broadening your research and locating your ancestors who may have entered this country as indentured or imprisoned ancestors. American Philosophical Society Library and Museum. Apprentices. Convicts. Convicts from England to America. Criminal transportation. FamilySearch.
The average property in southeastern Pennsylvania in 1700 was six hundred acres, making most early tracts plantation-sized; by 1765 the average holding was still 135 acres. In many ways, there were few differences between the smaller farms and the larger plantations. Both were family-run operations.
In the mid-1700s, the colony attracted many German and Scots-Irish immigrants.
Indentured servants and slaves were present in Pennsylvania from the founding of the colony. The highly labor intensive task of carving farms from the wilderness made unfree labor an efficient labor force.