The Life and Trials of Indentured Servants
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Set:

Objectives

1. The student will list and describe the motivations for indentured servants to come to the New World under the indentured servitude system
2. The student will state the reason why the economic and population fluctuations in the colony forced some freed indentured servants back into servitude.
3. The students will discuss in small groups of 4 how the larger tobacco plantations catalyzed the differentiation of class by looking at the consignment system.
4. The student will create a pamphlet to be circulated in 16th century England to encourage men to sign up as indentured servants to the New World in Jamestown.

Materials

• The background information for this lesson (and also for The Lives and Occupations of the Indentured Servants lesson) to distribute in class so that the students can have a visual reference.
• Primary Sources in the form of diaries and journals of the indentured servants, to gain access to their perspective.
• Clean printer paper and colored pencils to design the pamphlet
• Virginia: The New Domnion by Virginius Dabney
• http://www.whc.neu.edu/prototype/06/br2n1.html
• http://www.straffordhall.org/ed-servants.htm
• www.igc.apc.org/esp/chapvi.htm
• Background on Servitude and the Teacher Outline on Indentured Servitude

This lesson should be used in conjunction with the lesson plan of the Occupations of the Servants for maximum effectiveness. The study of the labour force of the colony is instrumental in understanding both our own economy today, and the formation of a tobacco economy. The colony paid and traded in tobacco as currency , and the indentured servants were the labour force that produced this cash crop. The students also need to understand how the fluctuations in an economy caused disparity between classes, and this fact is vital to understanding the social need for African slavery.

Involvement of the Learners

The teacher should begin the lesson by writing a compare/ contrast chart on the board. Tell the students they are going to, from previous knowledge and other lessons, compare and contrast slavery and indentured servitude. The students responses may not be exactly right, but the teacher should guide them to the point that indentured servitude allowed for mobility while slavery did not.

• Servants were quite often very sucessful after becoming freedmen, growing quantities of tobacco and serving a governmental role. Slaves were expected to grow large quantites of tobacco with no profit, and they had no opportunity for particiaption in government. Servants were both white and black, but slaves were only black. Both institutions allowed men to own labour.
• The teacher should allow room for discussion and new ideas. When the list is extensive, the teacher should give the background information in a lecture form, with question from students.

The teacher will then distribute narratives of indentured servants which the students will read. http://www.apva.org/history.orig.html , http://www.lib.virginia.edu/cataloging/vnp/gazette/serv1.htm, and also Tales of Indentured Servants by Joseph Raskin. They will discuss in groups how the servants felt about sevitude, if they hated or resisted it. If there is time, the teacher should explain that the next step is to design a marketing campaign trying to convince people to settle the newly discovered continenet of Atlantis, recently risen. What would your strategy focus on, with regards to employment, living conditions, payment of passage, expectations of government. What would the reasons be for leaving America: economic, population, creation of Utopia, religious/ lifestyle persecution? Your campaign needs to target working class men and women that would be willing to manually labour under the magistrates of this new colony in order to gain a stake in it. (Their situation will be much like the indentured servants of the 16th and 17th centuries)

The teacher can close the lesson with a statement on the importance of indentured servants for the economy of the colony, and also the differentiation of class, and the addition of black slavery to the colony. The teacher should ask these questions to assess student understanding.

1)Was indentured servitude resisted by those who journeyed to America?

2)What factors contributed to the factors above (ie treatment by masters, conditions, families, etc.)?

3) What are some reason for the decline and eventual disappearance of indentured servitude?

This page was last updated on and is maintained by the UVA's Program in Social Studies Education.
URL for this page: http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu.