Vocabulary & Key Terms:

• Chafferyman 
• Collier 
• Hostler 
• Indentured servant
• Lottery 
• Pig iron 
• Poythress 
• Wenches

Student Context:

Jamestown was founded on May 14, 1607  as the first permanent English settlement in North America. Jamestown was funded by the Virginia Company of London, a group of English investors who hoped to make money by setting up colonies in the New World. Jamestown was established in what is now the state of Virginia, on the banks of the James River in Virginia, named after King James I of England.

It was quickly realized that additional labor would be needed to work and develop the colony further. This need gave rise to Indentured servants. Indentured servants are people who sign a contract of “indenture” in order to receive something in exchange for work for a predetermined amount of time. Many Europeans, unable to afford the cost to travel to America, agreed to indentured servitude to pay for their passage, room and board. 

The colonies began to be filled by Europeans and Africans through both formal or informal indentured servitude, although not always by free will.  In England, children could be taken from parents who were considered indigent, or unable to support themselves and their family. If orphaned, children could be contracted from locally controlled workhouses. Africans began to arrive in Jamestown in 1619. In Africa, European merchants capitalized on existing systems of trade to purchase Africans. 

Though their freedoms were limited, indentured servants, both Black and White, initially  did have freedoms and laws to protect them. Black and White indentured servants could both earn their freedom and become landowners. However, as the needs for labor grew, the cost of having as many indentured servants as needed was not cost effective. The laws began to change, in order to support the economic interests of landowners, and subsequently taking away the freedoms of African and African American people. This included laws that not only enslaved those arriving from Africa but also enslaved their children creating a hereditary system of slavery. As a result, by the late seventeenth century, a race- based system of slavery was fully developed in the American colonies.