This site includes lists of the indentured servants who signed contracts to voyage to Barbados from Bristol, England, as well as a variety of other lists of inhabitants of the West Indies dating from the 1670s, 1680s, and 1690s.
2004 television series on Kentucky Educational Television that portrays what life was like for colonial indentured servants. Website includes images of actors performing jobs typically assigned to indentured servants .
Faculty and students in the History Department at Salisbury University are compiling information about early settlers of Somerset County, Maryland. Includes biographical profiles of indentured servants and masters, and indexed abstracts of seventeenth-century sources.
This useful tool plots the distribution of surnames in England and Wales based on the 1891 Census of England and Wales. This is very useful for tracing the origins of immigrant servants with uncommon surnames.
Dr. Carr's project sought to identify all of the colonists who settled in St. Mary's County, Maryland and to reconstruct their careers (i.e. lives). Several thousand indentured servants are included.
This site contains an excellent bibliography for researchers who wish to learn more about the context of their immigrant servant ancestors' lives and also the origins of the indentured servant labor system.
Database of nearly 35,000 colonial immigrants who settled in Maryland. Includes thousands of indentured servants. Also read about sources that typically refer to immigrant servants in Colonial Maryland.
Columbia University's Columbia American History Online contains statistics regarding pre-1820 slave, convict and prisoner, indentured servant, and free immigrant arrivals to the United States of America.
This fascinating interactive simulation brings the struggles our immigrant ancestors endured to life. It guides viewers through the process of being sent to Colonial America as a convict servant.
Novel by Daniel Defoe (1661-1731) portraying what life was like for a prostitute from London shipped to Colonial America as an indentured servant. Project Gutenberg has made this fictional account available for free online.
In this mammoth study, Paul Heinegg identified all free African Americans known to have lived in Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia before 1820 and reconstructed their lives and families. Many of these individuals were freed from slaverly because their mothers were white indentured servants.
The Genealogical Publishing Company has made a name search engine available for thousands of genealogical and biographical books in print. This index is especially useful to tracking indentured servants that migrated to new places.
This society collects information about early Germans who settled in Georgia. Several of the families they have traced financed their voyages to America as immigrant servants.
Dr. R. Kent Lancaster wrote an excellent article describing British indentured servants employed by Baltimore County, Maryland's Hampton farm and Northampton iron works during the colonial period.
Volumes I-XIII (1619-1792) of the laws of Colonial Virginia are available for free on this site. Numerous legislative acts governing the practice of indentured servitude are included.
Discussion of indentured servants and investigative techniques used to learn more about them from the popular PBS television series History Detectives.
A trans-national and multi-disciplinary consortium of scholars engaged in research on penal transportation and convict experience within the British Empire from 1600-1940. It includes researchers from Australia, United States, South Africa and Europe working in the disciplines of history, textual studies, archaeology, economics and sociology.
This massive database contains millions of entries taken from European parish registers. Using ages and years of arrival in the American Colonies listed in the Immigrant Servants Database, researchers can develop lists of possible infant baptisms for indentured servants in the old countries and initiate research to document their immigrant origins.
This useful tool plots the distribution of surnames in Ireland based on Griffith's Evaluation (1848-1864) and births recorded by the civil registry in 1890. This is very useful for tracing the origins of immigrant servants with uncommon surnames.
As a result of the marriage act tax, a quasi-census was taken in 1695 that has survived for most of London and groups people into family units. Courtesy British History Online.
This article, published in the Journal of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation explains what life was like for Scottish indentured servants in Colonial Virginia. Don't miss the slide show.
"An immensely valuable product for which all who work or play with West Indian non-fiction will be deeply grateful, even the academics." Quoting KO, Laurence, Emeritus Professor of History, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine.
The Palatinate Project aims to reconstruct passenger arrival lists for Colonial Americans from Germany. These lists often contain crucial information needed to successfully trace overseas origins; includes redemptioners.
Ancestry.com has made this multi-volume publication available in an online database. It contains references to 4.5 million American immigrants who appear in published material, includes thousands of immigrant servants. A fee is required to view this site.
This genealogical publisher has created a surname search for books in print. They principally cover the Eastern Shore of Virginia and surrounding areas. This search engine is particularly useful for tracing migrations of indentured servants who left their places of servitude.
Poem written by James Revel, a felon transported to Colonial America, about his experience. Revel's account was published in England in 1800 and has been made available for free online by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's project Documenting the American South.
Voyages, ports, history, people, origins and much more! Discover the maritime histories of UK port cities; includes Bristol, Liverpool, London, and Southampton, ports of departure for hundreds of thousands of immigrant servants.
All volumes of Maryland's colonial laws are available on this site. Numerous legislative acts governing the practice of indentured servitude are included.
Digitized proceedings of London's principal criminal court. Several thousand transportation sentences appear in these cases, which are searchable by several fields, including name or punishment.
1896 article published by John Spencer Bassett (The Johns Hopkins Press), available for free online via the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's project Documenting the American South.
Visit Gen. Robert E. Lee's ancestral estate in Virginia, where slaves, indentured, and convict servants worked side-by-side during the colonial period. Includes background information on servants and slaves.
This site includes a tool that plots the distribution of English, Welsh, and Scottish surnames in 1881 and also 1998. It is useful for tracing the origins of immigrant servants with uncommon surnames.
This research guide, produced by The National Archives (England), describes records produced about convicts sent to Colonial America. See also leaflets "America and the West Indies: Calendars of State Papers Colonial, 1574-1739" and "America and West Indies: Colonies before 1782."
Colonists registered thousands of indentured servants in Virginia in order to acquire headright grants. This database contains the actual images to the land grants, but lacks an index to the persons entering the Colony. In order to find immigrants in this online collection, first consult Nugent et al's Cavaliers and Pioneers, which is available at Ancestry or in book format.
This project created a database of over 10,000 indentured servants from Bristol and London servant registers and also includes historical background on indentured servants.