Continuing with the question of whether the First Colony members were indentured or not, we looked at how reliable Alexander Spotswood was as a witness. Our answer was that he was not very reliable. But, now that we know he is not reliable, let us take a look at what he did say on a few occasions. Here are a few phrases, all pertaining to the First Colony.
"they are still indebted for near two years"
"Charge of subsisting them"
"placing them as Tenants upon my Land"
"instead, they might have been my servants for five years"
"they have lived for two years upon this Land without paying any Rent"
"in the future, all which is demanded of them is twelve days' work a year for each Household"
"until they can be set to work"
"reimbursed by their labors"
This is a real grab bag of quotes, not all of which are consistent. He did describe them as tenants, but in the same letter he says that he had charged them no rent. That is a strange kind of tenant, one that does not pay rent. That is the situation which describes an indentured servant.
From time to time, Spotswood describes them as "my Germans". And, as he says above, "until they can be set to work" or "reimbursed by their labors." Again, all of these phrases suggest an indentured status. They were people who took their work assignments from another.
What do other contemporaries say? Graffenried was present with the Germans in London when they were discussing what could be done in the face of their own lack of capital and Graffenried's lack of money. Graffenried's suggestion was that they go back to Germany, but they could not accept that. It was their idea to agree to work for a period of time to pay the part of their transportation for which they did not have money. The decision was to work four years to pay about four pounds sterling for each of the passengers.
Usually, Germans agreed to work in exchange for all of their transportation costs, if they were using this means to pay for their transport. With the First Colony, there is a slightly different wrinkle; they were working for a part of the cost of their transportation. For the four years they were at Germanna, they were working for someone else to pay off the unpaid balance of their transportation. Most unbiased observers would call this being an indentured servant.
Their headrights were in a confused, or indeterminate, status. ,they went to the person who paid the transportation, but, in this case, no one paid for all of any one person. Hence, Spotswood could not collect the headrights. By default, the headrights went to the Germans. Several of them applied for theirs and got them. This act though does not make them "un-indentured".
(20 Jul 00)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.