Bound for Maryland or Virginia, Part 2: Convicts

By Barbara Farner
Gunston Hall Docent's Association

Convicts or “King’s Passengers” were the third group of white indentured servants who came to the colonies with time to serve. As punishment for crimes committed in England, more convicted transported felons were sent to Maryland and Virginia than other American or Carribean colonies. The primary purpose of transportation was to free Britain, Scotland and Ireland of non-capital felons rather than to bolster the labor force in British colonies. Exiling the convicts from Britain for their time to serve also enforced the power of judges to intimidate through penal transportation. Approximately 50,000 felons were transported to the Chesapeake between 1718 and 1775.

Maryland Gazette, June 16, 1767

Their crimes were varied and although women and children were convicted and transported, the majority were minimally skilled young men. Only about 27% of the convicts were skilled craftsmen and tradesmen. Felons served a term of seven years for non-capital offenses while those convicted of capital offenses served 14 years. Purchasers did not pay freedom dues when terms expired. This group of servants, when not running away, proved to be useful workers in a diversifying economy. In his study of the felon trade, Kenneth Morgan states that “by the late 1760s, male convicts sold for about a third of the price of young male slaves in the Chesapeake, and were employed in plantation work, in the craft and construction trades and at iron works. Some convicts were unskilled laborers but others had, or acquired, occupational skills as they served their sentences."

Lightly loaded ships sailing to Maryland and Virginia to pick up tobacco could be filled with convicts. The chain of ownership for the servant-convict was jailer - merchant - ship captain - local dealer - and finally the buyer. British jurisdictions paid a flat fee to the merchant to take all prisoners, regardless of their physical condition, the jailer received a kickback for choosing a particular merchant, and thereafter each on the chain received a cut of the final sale price. Henry Piper, Robert Adam, and John Fitzgerald of Alexandria, and John Graham of Dumfries, among many other Northern Virginian merchants, dealt in convict servants. On Mason Neck, the agents were Barnes & Ridgate at Colchester. The local dealer could be assured that he would receive 7.5% of the selling price, or about 10 to 20 shillings per convict. [note: 20 shillingsƒ equaled pound £]. Generally, men sold for about £10, women for £6-8, and skilled craftsmen about £15.
This could be a profitable enterprise.

When Barnes and Ridgate went bankrupt in 1771, they transferred all of their debt at their Colchester store to George Mason and Martin Cockburn, acknowledging their indebtedness to Mason and Cockburn in the deed. As well as being in the tobacco trade as consignment merchants the company also dealt in African slaves and British convicts.

Of course there were circumstances that interfered with the profits, such as loss of the ships at sea, on board deaths of some of the King’s passengers, or inability to sell old or infirm convicts. While on some ships the mortality rate was as high as 50%, the average was about 10%. Ships were quarantined for a short time before the servants were sold. Most often the sales took place on board the ship. Some servants were purchased by so called “soul drivers” who came on board, bought a quantity of prisoners, shackled them together, and marched them towards the Valley of Virginia where, in the words of free-will indentured servant John Harrower, they were “drivin [sic] through the country like a parcell [sic] of Sheep until they can sell them to advantage . . .”5 A way station on the road to the valley for both convicts and slaves was what is now Centreville, then called Newgate.

While many on both sides of the Atlantic thought buying convict servants was profitable, many including the Virginia legislature did not. The legislature tried unsuccessfully several times to tax and thereby limit both the convict and slave trade and each time they were defeated by the British government. Benjamin Franklin observed that the returning convict ships should be filled
with rattlesnakes to make the trade equitable. The Maryland and Virginia Gazettes alerted colonists of the arrival in the Chesapeake of ships carrying convict or seven year servants. The trade stopped during the war, although the British attempted to send convict ships to Virginia after the Revolution, they were turned back.

Virginia Gazette, Rind, June 15, 1769

There are many advertisements for return of individual runaway convict servants. William Buckland, while living and working in Richmond County, Virginia in 1769, placed a runaway add in the Virginia Gazette for his convict servant, a house joiner by trade, Samuel Bailey. Another advertisement appeared in 1771 for John Ewig. When servants were returned, additional time was
added to the indenture to compensate for time lost and cost of recovery. Samuel Bailey appears in Buckland’s 1774 probate inventory with a value of £16. As a indentured servant of Buckland’s, Bailey was considered valuable property.

Because there is no surviving probate inventory, if indeed one was even taken, for George Mason, of Gunston Hall, it is unknown if at his death, in 1792, he had any type of indentured servants. By the time of Mason’s death, Irish redemptioner servants, Hanly and Conner’s time of service was complete. However, indentured servants, with time to serve, are listed in the 1735
inventory of his father, George Mason III. It is interesting to note that Pamela duPont Copeland in her study, The Five George Masons, notes that George Mason III’s principal income was derived from leases and the tobacco produced on leased land rather than his own worked plantations.

By looking at the names of some of the servants, with time to serve, in the accounts of George Mason III’s 1735 inventory, we are able to identify two men whose names are recorded as King’s Passengers. The inventory lists John Webb (John S. Webb) who was most likely transported in 1731 on the Forward to Maryland or Virginia and John Davis who was transported in 1728 on the Elizabeth to the Potomac. In the inventory, Davis is listed with three months to serve, making him a seven year servant.

There are several “King’s Passengers” who are associated with George Mason, although we do not know if he purchased them individually, or if they were contracted to him by another purchaser, or how he came to know them during their servitude to someone else. The outstanding one is William Bernard (sometimes Barney or Barnabe) Sears, a twenty year old carver from Middlesex
England who was found guilty of grand larceny for stealing several items of clothing and trying to pawn them. He and his accomplice, also a carver were sentenced to transportation for 7 years, leaving London on the ship Tryal bound for Maryland in August 1752. We do not know if Sears was purchased by Mason or by another person. We do know that Sears was responsible for the intricate wood carvings at Gunston Hall and that he and William Buckland worked together in 1759 when both of their indentures were completed. In 1772, with newly acquired gilding tools, he was working on two churches, one of which was Pohick Church, the other most likely Payne’s Church. Payne’s Church, on the Ox Road, was destroyed during the Civil War.8 Sears was doing the wood carvings and painting George Washington’s little dining room at Mount Vernon in 1775. Sears’ 1818 obituary states that “Mr. Sears lived for a considerable time in the family of Col. George Mason of Gunston, who ever spoke of him in terms of highest respect, and his good name is yet upheld by a large family of children.”

In conclusion, from the scant evidence available, it appears that George Mason had contact with some convict servants, either through the property acquired with the bankruptcy of Barnes and Ridgate or the association with William Bernard Sears. At least six other former convict servants appear to have been leaseholders on Mason’s scattered Northern Virginia properties. Part 3 will examine that aspect of his business arrangements. In keeping with George Mason’s advice to Robert Carter, he most likely did not rent his lands to strangers. As an astute businessman, he placed known men on his land, not only to improve it but also for the extra rent income. By looking at some of the lease holders on Mason’s land, the words of former convict servant William Bernard Sears’s obituary sheds light on a few of those, who bound for Maryland or Virginia “left the oppressions of Europe.”

Acknowledgments:
This study would not have been complete without the work of:
Sherry F. Solow’s graduate school theses presented to George Mason University in 1977:
“Tenantry in Virginia: Fairfax County, 1742-1776.” (available in the Virginia Room of the Fairfax Library)

John Cantwell’s Master Thesis for George Mason University, 1986: “Imported Indentured White Servitude in
Fairfax and Prince William Counties, 1750-1800.” (available in the Virginia Room of the Fairfax Library).

Beth Mitchell’s extraordinary map and documentation in Fairfax County, Virginia in 1760 an interpretive Historical
Map. (available in the Gunston Hall Gift Shop)

Read More:
Defoe, Daniel. Captain Jack or Moll Flanders
Riley, Edward Miles, ed. The Journal of John Harrower, an indentured servant in the Colony of Virginia 1773-
1776. Williamsburg, VA: Colonial Williamsburg, 1963.

Resources Used:
Coldham, Peter Wilson. Emigrants in Chains . . . . Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1992.
--------- King’s Passengers to Maryland and Virginia. Westminster, MD: Family Line Publishers, 1997.
Copeland, Pamela duPont and Richard K. McMaster, The Five George Masons Patriots and Planters of Maryland
and Virginia. Lorton, VA: Board of Regents of Gunston Hall, 1975.
Ekrich, A. Roger. Bound for America: a Profile of British Convicts Transported to the colonies, 1718-1775.
London: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Morgan, Kenneth. Bristol and the Atlantic trade in the eighteenth century. London: Cambridge University, 1993.

Bound For Maryland or Virginia: Indentured and Convict Servants

By Barbara Farner
Gunston Hall Docents' Association

Labor was always in short supply in Virginia from the earliest days of the Jamestown settlement through and after the Revolution. Various schemes were used to encourage or send people from England to Virginia, glowing advertisements described the land and opportunities, sometimes adults and children were kidnapped, and a reward system, known as head-rights, for those already in the colony was used to entice additional people to cross the ocean. Many would-be Virginians, by their own choice, signed indentures, or contracts, in England, exchanging their freedom for a number of years of servitude. An indenture is a contract binding one person to another, be it an apprentice to a craftsman, a servant to a master, or a paid worker to an employer for a specific amount of time or purpose. In the context of this study, the indenture is between a servant and a master.

In the seventeenth-century, indentured servitude was an unregulated system of labor favoring master, who often found ways to retain the servant in extended bondage. The supply of white indentured servants was restricted by 1698 when the emphasis was placed on importing slaves to provide unskilled labor. After 1718, forced white indentured servitude resumed as a means of emptying British prisons, dealing with political prisoners and depopulating countries such as Scotland and Ireland. By the mid-eighteenth century, however, the trade indentured servants was regulated by the British government. Laws ensuring servants agreeability were enacted for those who chose of their own free will to go to the colonies. The length of service for those convicted of crimes and transported, primarily to Maryland and Virginia, was decreed by the court. Between 1700 and 1775, almost half of the emigrants to America were unencumbered by indentures, while 33% were indentured servants and 17% were transported convicts.

There are very few existing records about George Mason’s indentured servants. By examining Robert Rutland’s Papers of George Mason, we know of, perhaps, seven people who fit into that category. By using the research found in Historian Beth Mitchell’s study of land ownership in Fairfax County in 1760, as well as, county probate and land records we are able to identify, most likely, others who were formerly indentured servants. [See: “Fairfax County, Virginia in 1760: an interpretive Historical Map” prepared by Beth Mitchell, Office of Comprehensive Planning, Fairfax County, VA, 1987] Some who were tenants or leaseholders on Mason property may have arrived in Virginia as indentured servants or convicts. John Mason, in his Recollections, lists the work of slaves on his father’s plantation, mentioning only two white employees when during the Revolution it was necessary to produce cloth. John notes that his father “had in his service a white man, a weaver of the finer stuffs, to weave himself and superintend the black weavers and a white woman to superintend the Negroe spinning women.” Who these two people were and what their status on the plantation was remains a mystery.

By mid-eighteenth century, there were three principal types of indentured servants in the colony of Virginia. Each type is represented in the named group of servants owned by or tenants working for George Mason.

The most prevalent class of servants were the Free-Willers, those men and women who stepped onto the ship in England of their own free well, after signing a contract individually or with a merchant/captain as venture cargo. For those coming as venture cargo, their indenture was first paid for by a merchant/contractor in England. When they landed in America, it was incumbent upon the ship’s captain to make the best price for his cargo of servants, sending money to the merchant and keeping a tidy sum for his expenses and himself. Hundreds of advertisements in the Virginia and Maryland Gazettes of the time announce the arrival of ships carrying servants. Free-Willers generally faced a term of four years, a term computed by skill, cost of maintenance and passage, freedom dues and profit. For particularly skilled servants, a yearly salary was added.

Figure 1 Virginia Gazette, 18 March

1775Dixon & Hunter

George Mason had at least 4 men who came to Virginia of their own free will. The most notable was William Buckland, who signed a contract in England with Thomson Mason in 1755 to serve four years with a yearly salary of £20 per annum. Buckland, a carpenter/joiner by trade used his considerable skills to complete the interior of Gunston Hall.

Two of the Mason family tutors were apparently free-willers. John Davidson, then in Edinburgh, was recommended by Thomas Gordon in England who responded to Mason’s 1770 request for a tutor. Although no records exist, his term was most likely for three to four years. The second tutor, David Constable, a graduate of the College of Aberdeen, lived with the Mason family from 1774-1781. His beginning date, 1774, suggests that Davidson’s term was over. By the time Constable’s term expired, the country was at war. When Constable left Gunston Hall to assume his ill brother’s business in St. Kitts in 1781, Mason wrote to Governor Nelson, asking for passport for him. Mason mentioned the tutor’s expiration of engagement with the family.

The fourth Free-Willer was Thomas Spalding who was bound to serve four years. Arriving in 1754 he listed his occupation as brick maker and bricklayer. As part of his contract he was to receive a salary of £12 sterling. However, he was unable to fulfill these tasks and the Fairfax County Court awarded Mason his service for the full term without pay.

Redemptioners: Generally Germans or other Europeans, came, sometimes in whole families, and paid part of their passage. Upon arrival at American ports, the outstanding balance of their passage, was reflected in the length of their term of indenture. Usually, these passengers were given two weeks to “redeem their passage,” and if unable to make the payment, were sold to the highest bidder. Families were often separated, with children going to one master and parents to others. The majority of Redemptioners passed through the port of Philadelphia, although many entered the country through Alexandria. British servants did not generally arrive as redemptioners after the early colonial period because British law offered them protection from rogue merchants, captains and masters by being sure their term was set before sailing.

Historian Donald Sweig’s examination of a list of “Servants & Redemptions that has [sic] been Free’d and Redeemed” shows that in 1784 Mason, his son George, and George Washington, among others, purchased Irish servants who arrived in Alexandria. Mason purchased the two sawyers on the list. It was about this time that Hollin Hall, the home of Mason’s son Thomson was being build. Was this the reason Mason wanted skilled sawyers who could optimize timber to provide the boards for the house, as well as repairs for his son George’s house, Lexington? Or did he produce sawn logs on his plantation and needed skilled workers?

Both of Mason’s purchases, Tim[oth]y Hanly and Jerry Connor were sawyers. Conner’s wife was included in his term and cost. Hanly’s indenture for 18 month cost 10 Guineas while Conner and his wife, with a term of 3 years service, were redeemed for 20 Guineas, eight shillings and six pence. At the same sale, George Mason, Jr. purchased Tho[ma]s Tray a labourer for 3 years for ten Guineas. Sawyers were highly specialized wood cutters. They could examine a log and cut it to ensure there would be little waste. Using a pit saw, with one man standing on the top of the log to push the saw, and the other in the pit aiding gravity by pulling the saw down through the wood, boards could be cut straight and as thin as an inch and a half. This skilled work was highly regarded in England as well as the colonies.

Figure 2: Pit saw, Diderot Pictorial

Encyclopedia of Trades and Industry.

 Plate 292.

Figure 3:   photo: B. Farner; example of

pit sawn log, Canal Visitor Center,

Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio.

It is interesting to note that Spalding, the brick maker, Buckland the carpenter/joiner and the sawyers, Hanly and Conner were all indentured during times of building - Spalding when Gunston Hall was being built, Buckland working on the interior of Gunston Hall, and the sawyers when construction of Hollin Hall began. Evidently Mason sought out indentured servants to provide skills that were need at specific times

Mason acquired the remaining two years of service on a redemptioner, originally owned by Col. Fitzhugh of Maryland. This person was an unnamed German coachman. The coachman stayed with Mason on a yearly basis after his indenture expired in 1787, a fairly common arrangement with released servants. However, based on a recommendation that Mason wrote for him, it appears that neither he nor Mason were pleased with each other. The Coachman was paid £15 per year plus clothing. Since he worked as both a coachman and waiter at table, he likely would have been wearing livery or a uniform identifying him as Mason’s servant.

With one exception, we know nothing of what happened to Mason’s named free-will indentured and redemptioned servants once their terms expired. The exception is William Buckland who went on to become an independent contractor building houses and public buildings on the Northern Neck of Virginia and in Annapolis. Historians have noted that when servants were released from their indenture many went on to provide a source of competent labor while developing a class of free men [and women] who proved to be the backbone of the country. Historian John Cantwell posited that “the growth of the economy benefited from a steady supply of imported indentured white servitude.”

Part II will discuss the role of some convict servants and their part in George Mason’s land holdings.

Read More:
Indentured Servants:
Riley, Edward Miles, ed., The Journal of John Harrower, and indentured servant in the Colony of Virginia 1773-1776 (Williamsburg, VA: Colonial Williamsburg, 1963).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servant

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saw_pit

www.history.org/Almanack/places/hb/hbgrthopes.cfm

Redemptioners:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redemptioner

Resources:
Cantwell, John, “Imported Indentured White Servitude in Fairfax and Prince William Counties, 1750-1800" Master Thesis, George Mason University, 1986.
Dunn, Terry K. The Recollections of John Mason. (Marshall, VA: EPM Publications, Inc., 2004)
Foner, Eric and John A. Garraty. Indentured Servitude, The Reader’s Companion to American History
Morgan, Kenneth. Slavery and Servitude in colonial North America, a short history.(New York: New York University Press, 2000).
Rutland, Robert, ed. The Papers of George Mason 1725-1792.(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970).
Sweig, Donald. “White Indentured Servitude in Fairfax County: New Evidence is Discovered” in Fairfax Chronicles, Spring 1978; “A list of Servants & Redemptions that has been Free’s &; Redeemed, 1784. Gunston Hall Library and Archives. Research File, Indentured Servants.

This Month in 1785: The Mount Vernon Conference

By Lacey Villiva
Education Manager

On March 25, 1785, delegates from Virginia and Maryland met at Mount Vernon to discuss issues of commerce and navigation rights along the Potomac and Pocomoke Rivers and the Chesapeake Bay.  It is now referred to as the Mount Vernon Conference, and George Mason was one of the participants.  This was something that Mason had both a personal and a public stake in as the Potomac was the great waterway into much of Virginia and Gunston Hall, and properties he owned in Maryland, ran along the river.

The meeting was called together because the Articles of Confederation were proving to be a very loose form of government.  Congress, under the Articles, lacked the ability to regulate trade, particularly tariffs.  Newly formed states were treating each other as countries in and of themselves rather than the distinct, but joined bodies as they are recognized today.  The Maryland and Virginia governments saw this issue, and decided to take it upon themselves to create an agreement that defined the rights and usage of shared waterways.

This was one step in many that led to the downfall of the Articles of Confederation that would happen in the summer of 1787.  The fact that tariffs and taxes were one of very few ways that the early American government could bring in revenue only compounded the matter.  Other factors that would play into the collapse of the Articles would take place in the remainder of 1785 and 1786 before Congress called together the meeting in Philadelphia that would become the Constitutional Convention.

A selection of the objections discussing the composition of the legislature.

George Mason would bring ideas from this meeting, and his time as a delegate in the Virginia government to the Constitutional Convention.  In a letter to his oldest son, also George, he says that he "should be glad to have the Strictures I wrote some time ago on the Port Bill," clearly thinking of navigation and commerce in Virginia.  Subsequently, his most voluble objection to the completed Constitution was concerned with the ability of Congress to make such laws.  He thought that "By requiring only a majority to make all commercial and navigation laws, the five Southern States, whose produce and circumstances are totally different from that of the eight Northern and Eastern States, may be ruined." He was concerned that this might allow them to "demand exorbitant freight" and "monopolize the purchase of the commodities."

It is impossible to say for sure, but it is likely that Mason's concerns on this topic, especially the political, were colored by his participation in the Mount Vernon Conference in March of 1785.  For southern plantation owners like Mason, navigation and commerce would also have significant personal implications as they relied on northern states for shipbuilding and manufactured goods.  Virginia, specifically, shared significant waterways with Maryland, and those concerns would also need to be addressed under the newly structured government as laid out by the Constitution.

Is there Something You Want to Know About George Mason?

Is there something you have always wanted to know about George Mason? A burning question that has never quite been answered? We'd like to try to answer them for you over the course of our publishing year with the Blog. We'll do short posts based on the questions you ask us. Here's one as an example:

What is that ball and chain attached to the post in the Kitchen Yard?

The question is often asked with the thought that it might be a remnant of the institution of slavery at Gunston Hall.  However, that is not the case, it is part of an old mechanism to automatically close a gate that no longer exists here at Gunston Hall. The chain was attached to the gate, and the weight would have swung the door closed as soon as it was released.

Liberty Lecture Series: Friends and Rivals

The 2015 Liberty Lecture Series at Gunston Hall highlights the friendships and rivalries of Founding Fathers, exploring the dynamics of personal relationships and political differences that lead to the establishment of a more perfect union.

February 22: George Washington
The series kicked off on February 22 with Kathleen Bartoloni-Tuazon discussing her book, For Fear of an Elective King, George Washington and the Presidential Title Controversy of 1789. 

In the early days of George Washington’s presidency, a debate was sparked in the Senate and House of Representatives regarding how to address the president. Many, including John Adams and Richard Henry Lee, favored a grand title for the Presidency, suggesting options such as “Highness” or “Elected Majesty.” George Mason and others were opposed to a monarchial title for the president that would give the impression of the president being royalty. In discussing the title controversy, Bartoloni-Tuazon explores the views of both everyday citizens and the political elite and how finding a balance in the government’s power and the power of the people both affirmed and bolstered the legitimacy of the new republic.

Other early options for title that eventually became #POTUS? "Washington" "Highness" "Majesty"
— Gunston Hall (@GunstonHall) February 22, 2015

George Mason feared the president becoming "a tool to the Senate." Opposed to a grand, monarchial title for president. #Liberty #GunstonHall
— Gunston Hall (@GunstonHall) February 22, 2015

March 1: Madison and Monroe
This weekend, historian, author, and political strategist Chris DeRose will share details of

the political rivalry between Madison and Monroe, as explored in his book, Founding Rivals, Madison vs. Monroe, The Bill of Rights and the Election That Saved a Nation. 

In 1789, James Madison and James Monroe ran against each other for a seat in Congress, the only time that two future presidents have done so. But what was at stake was more than personal ambition. This was a race that determined the future of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the very definition of the United States of America.



March 8: Adams and Jefferson

Author and historian Gerard W. Gawalt joins us to discuss the relationship of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in the creation of the United States of America. 

In his book, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, Creating the American Republic, Gawalt reveals the thoughts and actions of two founding fathers who could hardly have been more dissimilar in background and personality. Both their friendship and rivalry were born in the cauldron of the American Revolution and nurtured by ambition and clashing political philosophies. Together they helped plan and plot a revolution and led its defining moment, the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Principle, ambition and pride were the mainstays of their successes and their failures.

We hope to see you at one (or both!) of the two final lectures in this series. Lectures are held in the Ann Mason Room at Gunston Hall, 10709 Gunston Road, Mason Neck, VA 22079. A light reception is offered at 2:30 pm and the program begins at 3:00 pm.

All three books are available for purchase in the Gunston Hall Museum Shop and authors will be available for signing after their lectures. This series is sponsored by the Kirkpatrick Family Fund. Up to six recertification points are available for teachers. For more information, email historic@gunstonhall.org or call 703-550-9220.