Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T21:14:34.328Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fatherless and Friendless: Factors Influencing the Flow of English Emigrant Servants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Farley Grubb
Farley Grubb
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of economics at the University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The incidence of fatherlessness among English emigrant servants was measured using contracts recorded in London between 1682 and 1686. This incidence was relatively high and systematically related to the servant's age, gender, county of origin, occupation, and father's occupation. Many emigrant servants were youths who had lost their fathers and lacked alternative support in England. Fatherlessness helps explain why the short-run supply of emigrant servants was relatively inelastic, and why some unskilled servants continued to migrate to America in spite of competition from slave labor.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , March 1992 , pp. 85 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bailyn, Bernard, The Peopling of British North America (New York, 1986).Google Scholar
Bailyn, Bernard, Voyagers to the West (New York, 1986).Google Scholar
Bean, Richard N., and Thomas, Robert P., “The Adoption of Slave Labor in America,” in Gemery, Henry A. and Hogendorn, Jan S., eds., The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1979), pp. 377–98.Google Scholar
Beckles, Hilary McD., and Downes, Andrew, “The Economics of Transition to the Black Labor System in Barbados, 1630–1680,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 18 (Autumn 1987), pp. 225–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beier, A. L., Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England, 1560–1640 (London, 1985).Google Scholar
Campbell, Mildred, “Social Origins of Some Early Americans,” in Smith, James Morton, ed., Seventeenth-Century America (Chapel Hill, 1959), pp. 63–89.Google Scholar
Campbell, R., The London Tradesman (New York, 1969, orig. 1747).Google Scholar
Coldham, Peter Wilson, The Bristol Registers of Servants to Foreign Plantations, 1654–1686 (Baltimore, 1988).Google Scholar
Coldham, Peter Wilson, Child Apprentices in America (Baltimore, 1990).Google Scholar
Cressy, David, Coming Over: Migration and Communication Between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1987).Google Scholar
Curtin, Philip D., The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, 1969).Google Scholar
Dunlevy, James A., “Regional Preferences and Migration Settlements,” Research in Economic History, 8 (1983), pp. 217–51.Google Scholar
Dunn, Richard S., Sugar and Slaves (New York, 1972).Google Scholar
Ekirch, A. Roger, Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718–1775 (New York, 1987).Google Scholar
Engerman, Stanley L., “Servants to Slaves to Servants: Contract Labor and European Expansion,” in Emmer, P. C., ed., Colonialism and Migration; Indentured Labor Before and After Slavery (Boston, 1986), pp. 263–94.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert William, Without Consent or Contract (New York, 1989).Google Scholar
French, Elizabeth, List of Emigrants to America from Liverpool, 1697–1707 (Baltimore, 1983).Google Scholar
Galenson, David W., “Middling People or Common Sort? The Social Origins of Some Early Americans Reexamined, with a Rebuttal by Mildred Campbell,” William and Mary Quarterly, 35 (07 1978), pp. 499–540.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galenson, David W., “The Social Origins of Some Early Americans: Rejoinder with a Reply by Mildred Campbell,” William and Mary Quarterly, 36 (04 1979), pp. 264–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galenson, David W., White Servitude in Colonial America (New York, 1981).Google Scholar
Gemery, Henry A., “Markets for Migrants: English Indentured Servitude and Emigration in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Emmer, P. C., ed., Colonialism and Migration; Indentured Labour Before and After Slavery (Boston, 1986), pp. 33–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gemery, Henry A., and Hogendorn, Jan S., “The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Tentative Model,” Journal of African History, 15, no. 2 (1974), pp. 223–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ghirelli, Michael, A List of Emigrants From England to America, 1682–1692 (Baltimore, 1968).Google Scholar
Greenwood, Michael J., “Research on Internal Migration in the United States: A Survey,” Journal of Economic Literature, 13 (06 1975), pp. 397–433.Google Scholar
Grubb, Farley, “The Incidence of Servitude in Trans-Atlantic Migration, 1771–1804,” Explorations in Economic History, 22 (06 1985), pp. 316–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grubb, Farley, “The Market for Indentured Immigrants: Evidence on the Efficiency of Forward-Labor Contracting in Philadelphia, 1745–1773,” this Journal, 45 (12 1985), pp. 855–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grubb, Farley, “Colonial Labor Markets and the Length of Indenture: Further Evidence,” Explorations in Economic History, 24 (01 1987), pp. 101–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grubb, Farley, “The Market Structure of Shipping German Immigrants to Colonial America,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 111 (01 1987), pp. 27–48.Google Scholar
Grubb, Farley, “British Immigration to Philadelphia: The Reconstruction of Ship Passenger Lists from May 1772 to October 1773,” Pennsylvania History, 55 (07 1988), pp. 118–41.Google Scholar
Grubb, Farley, “The Auction of Redemptioner Servants, Philadelphia, 1771–1804: An Economic Analysis,” this Journal, 48 (09 1988), pp. 583–603.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grubb, Farley, “Review of Sharon V. Salinger, To Serve Well and Faithfully,” this Journal, 48 (09 1988), pp. 772–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grubb, Farley, “The Long-Run Trend in the Value of Adult Indentured Servants: 1654–1831,” (working paper #90–25, Economics Dept., Univ. of Delaware, 1990).Google Scholar
Grubb, Farley, and Stitt, Tony, “The Liverpool Immigrant Servant Trade, 1697–1707: Market Adjustments to War and Peace” (working paper #90–22, Economics Dept., Univ. of Delaware, 1990).Google Scholar
Horn, James, “Servant Emigration to the Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century,” in Tate, Thad W. and Ammerman, David L., eds., The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1979), pp. 51–95.Google Scholar
Kaminkow, Jack, and Kaminkow, Marion, A List of Emigrants from England to America, 1718–1759 (Baltimore, 1964).Google Scholar
Klepp, Susan L., and Smith, Billy G., eds., The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, An Indentured Servant: Or the Infortunate (University Park, forthcoming, orig. 1743).Google Scholar
Kulikoff, Allan, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680–1800 (Chapel Hill, 1986).Google Scholar
Kussmaul, Ann, Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (New York, 1984).Google Scholar
Laslett, Peter, The World We Have Lost Further Explored (3rd edn., London, 1983).Google Scholar
Le, Bras Herve, “Parents, Grand-parents Bisaieux,” Population, 28 (1973), pp. 11–38.Google Scholar
Lebergott, Stanley, The Americans: An Economic Record (New York, 1984).Google Scholar
Main, Gloria L., “Maryland and the Chesapeake Economy, 1670–1720,” in Land, Aubrey C., Carr, Lois Green, and Papenfuse, Edward C., eds., Law, Society, and Politics in Early Maryland (Baltimore, 1977), pp. 134–52.Google Scholar
McCusker, John J., and Menard, Russell R., The Economy of British America (Chapel Hill, 1985).Google Scholar
Menard, Russell R., “From Servants to Freeholders: Status Mobility and Property Accumulation in Seventeenth-Century Maryland,” William and Mary Quarterly, 30 (01 1973), pp. 37–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menard, Russell R., “From Servants to Slaves: The Transformation of the Chesapeake Labor System,” Southern Studies, 16 (Winter 1977), pp. 355–90.Google Scholar
Morgan, Edmund S., American Slavery American Freedom (New York, 1975).Google Scholar
Morris, Richard B., Government and Labor in Early America (Boston, 1981).Google Scholar
Nicholson, Cregoe D. P., Some Early Emigrants to America (Baltimore, 1965).Google Scholar
Perkins, Edwin J., The Economy of Colonial America (2nd edn., New York, 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piore, Michael, Birds of Passage (New York, 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rappaport, Steve, Worlds Within Worlds: Structures of Life in Sixteenth-Century London (New York, 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rutman, Darrett B., and Rutman, Anita H., “‘Now-Wives and Sons-in-Law’: Parental Death in a Seventeenth-Century Virginia County,” in Tate, Thad W. and Ammerman, David L., eds., The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1979), pp. 153–82.Google Scholar
Rutman, Darrett B., and Rutman, Anita H., A Place in Time, Middlesex County, Virginia 1650–1750 (New York, 1984).Google Scholar
Rutman, Darrett B., and Rutman, Anita H., A Place in Time Explicatus (New York, 1984).Google Scholar
Salerno, Anthony, “The Social Background of Seventeenth-Century Emigration to America,” Journal of British Studies, 19 (Fall, 1979), pp. 31–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Abbot E., Colonist in Bondage (New York, 1947).Google Scholar
Souden, David, “Rogues, Whores and Vagabonds? Indentured Servant Emigrants to North America, and the Case of Mid-Seventeenth-Century Bristol,” Social History, 3 (01 1978), pp. 23–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steckel, Richard, “The Economic Foundations of East-West Migration During the 19th Century,” Explorations in Economic History, 20 (01 1983), pp. 14–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walsh, Lorena S., “Servitude and Opportunity in Charles County, Maryland, 1658–1705,” in Land, Aubrey C., Carr, Lois Green, and Papenfuse, Edward C., eds., Law, Society, and Politics in Early Maryland (Baltimore, 1977), pp. 111–33.Google Scholar
Wareing, John, “Some Early Emigrants to America, 1683–4, A Supplementary List,” Genealogists Magazine, 18 (03 1976), pp. 239–46.Google Scholar
Wareing, John, “Migration to London and Transatlantic Emigration of Indentured Servants, 1683–1775,” Journal of Historical Geography, 7, no. 4 (1981), pp. 356–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Peter H., Black Majority (New York, 1974).Google Scholar
Wright, Gavin, Old South New South (New York, 1986).Google Scholar
Wrigley, E. A., and Schofield, R. S., The Population History of England 1541–1871: A Reconstruction (Cambridge, MA, 1981).Google Scholar