Project
Intro

What is
Indentured
Servitude?

The Journey to Indenture

Gendered
Indenture

Length of
Indenture

About
the
Data

What Do
You
Think?

Introduction

One of many historical treasures of the American Philosophical Society Library & Museum is a book recording the details of over 5,000 indenture contracts registered between 1771 and 1773. These entries contain a lot of information about working people and immigrants who came to Philadelphia in the lead up to the American Revolution.

This exhibit uses interactive visualizations of data from the book to examine indentured servitude in Colonial British North America through three themes: distance, gender, and time. Included alongside them are personal stories of individuals who entered into contracts in the record to work as servants and apprentices. This exhibit has been created to inspire users to learn more about indentured servitude in the hopes that they will explore the dataset for themselves.

Click the arrows to learn more about the project and navigate to each section of the site.

What is Indentured Servitude?

This section provides a brief overview of frequently asked questions including:
  • What is indentured servitude?
  • How and why did people enter into contracts of indenture?
  • What was life like for an indentured servant?
  • How does indentured servitude compare to slavery?

The Journey to Indenture

This section uses visualizations of the data to explore:
  • Why did indentured individuals come to Colonial Philadelphia?
  • Where did they come from?

Gendered Indenture

This section visualizes the data in our records to explore:
  • Did men and women experience life differently as indentured servants? As apprentices? As masters?
  • How were their experiences different?

Length of Indenture

In this section we examine the data to find out:
  • What was the average amount of time that people were indentured?
  • Why were some people forced into longer contracts?

About the Data

Like all historical records, data are not objective. When we create data sets, we make many decisions about what to include, what to leave out, how to categorize words or locations and more. Transparency about these decisions is important to us and to anyone who wants to analyze the data. Find out more about how we created this data set in this section.

What Do You Think?

Our work with the indenture record open data set is just beginning! To learn more about our work and to assist in the growth of this project visit this section and fill out our user survey.

Introduction

One of many historical treasures of the American Philosophical Society Library & Museum is a huge book recording the details of over 5,000 indenture contracts registered between 1771 and 1773. These entries contain a lot of information about working people and immigrants who came to Philadelphia in the midst of the American Revolution.

The Project

To make the information in the book easier to use, APS staff digitized, transcribed, and sorted the entries creating a large dataset. Now this data can be visualized in many ways. Each map, graph, and diagram can tell us more about the individuals in the book.

Unpacking the Data

The sections in this gallery explore the concept of indentured servitude and how it was used to populate Colonial America. We examine different themes - distance, gender, and time – through interactive visualizations paired with stories of individuals found within the record. You can download the data for yourself in the "About this Data" section, where we also address larger concepts of historic open data and the importance of data transparency.