Resources and Further Reading

Glossary of Terms

• Apprenticeship: A person, usually a young male, would enter into a contract of indenture in order to learn a trade. The contract would last for a specified number of years during which time they would learn the skills necessary to be a fully fledged tradesperson. The apprentice would also promise to keep the secrets of the trade.
• Dataset (also Data set): A collection of units of information that can be analyzed computationally. In the case of the Record of Indentures, each record is a single unit. The 5,139 units (or records) comprise the data set.
• Data story: We have used maps, graphs, charts and diagrams as visual representation of the dataset created from the Record of Indenture. In combination with explanatory text, these form data stories.
• Indenture Contract: A legal document detailing an agreement between two parties (master and apprentice/servant) where one agrees to pay the debt of another in exchange for labor over a specified time period. Historically this type of contract applies to both servants and apprentices.
• Indentured Servant: A person - woman, man or child - who owes a debt to a master. The debt is typically paid by working a specified number of years for this master. The contract detailing the arrangement of payment of the debt was usually negotiated by the captain of the ship upon which the person traveled to Colonial America. The agreement would be signed before departure.
• Redemptioner: In historical terms, a redemptioner was a person who traveled to Colonial America without first negotiating an indenture contract. Upon arrival, a redemptioner would need to pay the captain of the ship on which they traveled for their passage. They could do this either by paying cash (perhaps borrowed by friends or family) or by negotiating their own contract of indenture.
• Transcription: The process of copying writing or text. In this case, the handwritten Record of Indentures volume has been transcribed into digital form which can then be analyzed in different software packages like Microsoft Excel or Tableau.
• Visualization: Representing data (or other information) in a graph, chart, diagram or other pictorial form.

Bibliography

• Enthoven, Victor. "'That Abominable Nest of Pirates:' St. Eustatius and the North Americans, 1680—1780." Early American Studies 10, no. 2 (2012): 239–301.
• Grubb, Farley. German Immigration and Servitude in America, 1709-1920. Routledge, 2013.
• ———. “The Auction of Redemptioner Servants, Philadelphia, 1771-1804: An Economic Analysis.” The Journal of Economic History 48, no. 3 (1988): 583–603.
• Gundersen, Joan R. To Be Useful to the World: Women in Revolutionary America, 1740-1790. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
• Heavner, Robert O. “Indentured Servitude: The Philadelphia Market, 1771-1773.” The Journal of Economic History 38, no. 3 (1978): 701–13.
• Levy, Barry. “Levelers and Fugitives: Runaway Advertisements and the Contrasting Political Economies of Mid Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 78, no. 1 (2011): 1–32.
• Salinger, Sharon V. “‘Send No More Women:’ Female Servants in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 107, no. 1 (1983): 29-48.
• Shammas, Carole. “The Female Social Structure of Philadelphia in 1775.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 107, no. 1 (1983): 69–83.
• Smith, Billy Gordon. The ‘Lower Sort’: Philadelphia’s Laboring People, 1750-1800. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994.
• Smith, Billy G., and Paul Sivitz. “Identifying and Mapping Ethnicity in Philadelphia in the Early Republic.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 140, no. 3 (2016): 393–411.
• Smith, Renda. “Philadelphia, PA 1790 U. S. Federal Census.” Accessed 27 June 2019.
• Snyder, Mark. “The Education of Indentured Servants in Colonial America.” The Journal of Technology Studies 33 (1 May 2007).
• Tomlins, Christopher. “Reconsidering Indentured Servitude: European Migration and the Early American Labor Force, 1600–1775.” Labor History 42, no. 1 (1 February 2001): 5–43.
• Veit, Richard, and David Orr. Historical Archaeology of the Delaware Valley, 1600-1850. University of Tennessee Press, 2014.
• Wojtowicz, Richard, and Billy G. Smith. “Advertisements for Runaway Slaves, Indentured Servants, and Apprentices in the Pennsylvania Gazette, 1795-1796.” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 54, no. 1 (1987): 34–71.

• All images copyright the American Philosophical Society unless otherwise noted below.
  Home page:
  "Clock-watch, ca. 1760" by Joseph Martineau Sr. is held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and is licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal.
  "Planiglobii Terrestris Mappa Universalis, 1746" by Johann Baptist Homann is held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and is licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal.
  "Scullery Maid, 1737" is held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and is licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal.
  
• "What is Indentured Servitude?":
  "Vue du Port de Philadelphia, undated" by Ambroise-Louis Garneray is held in the Prints Collection (Mss.Prints) of the American Philosophical Society Library & Museum and is subject to the APS Open Access Policy.
  "White, Elinor, Indenture to Barckly and Mitchell" is held in the North American Land Company ledger, 1795-1805 Collection (Mss.973.N75) of the American Philosophical Society Library & Museum and is subject to the APS Open Access Policy.
  "Nathan Sellers, Indenture to Henry Hale Graham, 1772 May 2" is held in the Peale-Sellers Family Collection (Mss.B.P31) of the American Philosophical Society Library & Museum and is subject to the APS Open Access Policy.
• "The Journey to Indenture":
  "St. Eustache une des Isles d'Antilles dans l'Amerique du Nord" is held in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress and has no known restrictions on publication in the U.S.
• "Gendered Indenture":
  "A Plan of the City of Philadelphia, 1777" is held in the Geography and Maps Division of the Library of Congress and has no known restrictions on publication in the U.S.
• "Length of Indenture":
  "Alms House in Spruce Street, 1799" by William Russell Birch is held in the Prints Collection (Mss.Prints) of the American Philosophical Society Library & Museum and is subject to the APS Open Access Policy.