Difference between revisions of "Week 3 Questions/Comments-327 09"
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== Complaint of Elizabeth Sprigs, indentured servant, 1756 == | == Complaint of Elizabeth Sprigs, indentured servant, 1756 == | ||
Elizabeth's Sprigs complaint to her father is pretty sad. I am not sure if all she says is true. She might be exaggerating bu then again maybe she is not. I really wish we knew what she did to get her father to throw her on a ship where she was indentured. I felt terrible for her as she asks for clothes and not something else she may have wanted. The short but vivid description really worked and if i were her father I would send her the clothes if not paying out so she would not be indentured. I never really thought about being indentured could be as bad as being a slave. -LeAnn Taggart | Elizabeth's Sprigs complaint to her father is pretty sad. I am not sure if all she says is true. She might be exaggerating bu then again maybe she is not. I really wish we knew what she did to get her father to throw her on a ship where she was indentured. I felt terrible for her as she asks for clothes and not something else she may have wanted. The short but vivid description really worked and if i were her father I would send her the clothes if not paying out so she would not be indentured. I never really thought about being indentured could be as bad as being a slave. -LeAnn Taggart | ||
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| + | The reading that stuck out to me the most was the Sprigs reading. Here we have a girl in Maryland writing a letter to her father in England asking for aid. Why is she doing this? Because he sent her away as an indentured servant as a punishment for bad conduct and disobedience! Huh. Um, I’m thinking this is maybe a bit of an overreaction on daddy’s part. Still, if that’s not an incentive to be well behaved I don’t know what is. Is this the 17th century equivalent of taking your kid into a jail cell to scare them straight? Whether or not Elizabeth is exaggerating her condition (which Wolach suggests she is not) is less important than the very fact that her father could make her an indentured servant in the first place. As his daughter, she’s essentially his property, and he has the power to sell her, rent her off, whatever. What happened if she survived her indenture? Was she free and left in the colonies or was she sent back to her father? How often did this happen to other girls? Would her father have sent a son away for misbehaving? And what ''exactly'' did she do to make him react like this? --Taylor Brann | ||
== Apprenticeship in PA, 1771-1773, Record of Indentures == | == Apprenticeship in PA, 1771-1773, Record of Indentures == | ||
