Social mobility in the 13 Colonies?

[myrionomos]

I have an idea for a story and the fate of the characters is to a greater or lesser extent affected by their place in pre- revolutionary American society. My research so far indicates that in the 18th century prior to 1775 emigration to the 13 colonies was as follows:-

Total 585000
Free Settlers 151000
Indentured Servants 96600
Slaves 278400(47%of total)
Convicts 52000(25% of migrants from UK between the passing of the Transportation Act in 1718 and 1783)

I am conscious that I might make some rash assumptions. For example I am assuming that a convict would be at the bottom of the scale only bettered by a slave until the formers release.

Secondly it seems to me that a skilled indentured servant might have significant chances for social/economic advancement wheras an unskilled say female domestic servant might be only marginally better off than a slave. It appears that many of the indentured servants and free settlers post 1745 resulted from the Scottish 'clearances' of the Highlands. On the whole these people were very poor with only farming and fishing skills.

I also suspect that many of the free settlers were also desperately poor but might be very concerned to preserve and differentiate their social status.

Are these assumptions reasonable and do you know of any good sources dealing with this issue?

My motivation for writing this story is that one of my ancestors was a Scottish Prebyterian Wheelwright who contracted to pay the debts of his elder brother. When he couldn't pay, in order to avoid the debtors prison he got a free passage as an indentured servant to New York.

To his horror his contract was sold to an American of French descent who even worse was a Catholic! Then his diaries tell he fell in love /lust with the Frenchman's daughter. The fact that he thought he would burn in hell for his desires is recorded in his diaries for two years but then nothing more for twenty four years by which time he was living with his second wife.

Any help or direction would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Weird Harold]

I have an idea for a story and the fate of the characters is to a greater or lesser extent affected by their place in pre- revolutionary American society. My research so far indicates that in the 18th century prior to 1775 emigration to the 13 colonies was as follows:-

Total 585000
Free Settlers 151000
Indentured Servants 96600
Slaves 278400(47%of total)
Convicts 52000(25% of migrants from UK between the passing of the Transportation Act in 1718 and 1783)

I am conscious that I might make some rash assumptions. For example I am assuming that a convict would be at the bottom of the scale only bettered by a slave until the formers release.

Secondly it seems to me that a skilled indentured servant might have significant chances for social/economic advancement wheras an unskilled say female domestic servant might be only marginally better off than a slave. It appears that many of the indentured servants and free settlers post 1745 resulted from the Scottish 'clearances' of the Highlands. On the whole these people were very poor with only farming and fishing skills.

I also suspect that many of the free settlers were also desperately poor but might be very concerned to preserve and differentiate their social status.

Are these assumptions reasonable and do you know of any good sources dealing with this issue?

My motivation for writing this story is that one of my ancestors was a Scottish Prebyterian Wheelwright who contracted to pay the debts of his elder brother. When he couldn't pay, in order to avoid the debtors prison he got a free passage as an indentured servant to New York.

To his horror his contract was sold to an American of French descent who even worse was a Catholic! Then his diaries tell he fell in love /lust with the Frenchman's daughter. The fact that he thought he would burn in hell for his desires is recorded in his diaries for two years but then nothing more for twenty four years by which time he was living with his second wife.

Any help or direction would be greatly appreciated.

The Outlander series mt Diana Gabaldon is a well-researched series that deals with Scottish rebels/immigrants in the time period you're looking at. The last couple of books especially deal with Scots in the 1770's.

Outlander is a time-travel/Romance series, but the background setting is completely accurate as far as I can determine. It does have the added benefit of portraying the 1770's through 20th century sensibilities

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

The Colonies were all about social mobility, and all of our crises were fomented by monopolies that obstructed social mobility. The bottom and the top push each other.

 

[3113]

Your assumptions all sound reasonable to me. One interesting book to read on the topic is Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe. Now most of the book is about Moll in England, but she does get deported to America after being convicted of theft, and Defoe is pretty good about detailing how that was. Keep in mind, by the way, that the debtor system was weird and corrupt. Those thrown in prison had to pay for things like food and clothes. And there was a huge amount of bribery with criminals paying off judges and others to transmute sentences from death to deportation.

America, in the meantime, really was a land of opportunity, and the settlements were still fairly small outside cities like Philadelphia. Without a doubt people maintained the social order; you knew your place and you'd better keep to it. But everyone had to work harder together to keep things going--winters were incredibly harsh and a lot had to be done to survive them (meaning you were cut off and people died); also just about everything had to be made in America as it took a long time for goods to get across the atlantic (including slaves which is why they cost a lot). And there were always new people arriving needing more--places to live, food, clothing, etc. So labor and laborers were valued, and there was less the feeling that you could easily replace a person, or that they were a waste.

So even if someone arrived with lower class skills those skills were of value; also, they might end up leaning other skills and upping their stature--as in America there just wasn't as many with those skills and/or a lot more with those skills might be needed. It was fairly easy for even the lowest convict to make good if they had a mind to. Better than they would have back home where there weren't many chances or new opportunities to do/be something different.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Which was one of the Colony's attraction. Yes, indentured servants were often treated at exactly the same level as slaves for the duration of their indenture. But once their passage was paid, they were free to make it as much as they wanted. It must be admitted that Franklin was the exception's exception but remember that he was poor as a boy and made himself the richest man in the country. (He was a partner to every printing establishment in America!) And it is true that Jefferson was a landed aristocrat from the get-go. But Washington was another self-made man as were most of the rest of the Founders. Even transported prisoners, once their sentence was up, could and occasionally did make it into the landed classes. Was it the general rule? Of course not. But it did happen and that's what made America golden to the rest of the world. Despite the angst of our chattering classes, it still does.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

http://www.amazon.com/Constitutiona...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264097774&sr=1-1

This book is an excellent source of arcana of British and American civil liberties from Magna Carta to our Civil War. Its much more than just a treatise of secession in America.

 

[trysail]

David Hackett Fischer wrote a seminal book on the topic: Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America ( New York, NY 1989 ) in which he examines colonial origins and their effect on various regions and their distinctive cultures. It might offer some insights.

With all the usual caveats respecting Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion's_Seed

 

[3113]

But Washington was another self-made man as were most of the rest of the Founders.

Ah, but he did marry into money there. Adams was, I think, more self-made.

 

[al_Ussa]

One thing to consider, social mobility probably varied from colony to colony. The British were notoriously inconsistent when it came to their North American colonies. Not only the 13 colonies which would later become the United States, but also Canada and the Caribbean.

I know that slavery was inconsistent in those areas. The British never came up with any blanket legal policies dictating the regulation of slavery in their colonies. Instead, EACH colony drafted its own laws. So Virginia had one set of laws, Georgia another, Jamaica another, Barbados yet another, and so forth. Its part of the reason that slavery was so weird with regard to slavery.

Knowing that much, I can assume that the de facto situation for most forms of social mobility was probably quite variable in the different colonies. That's actually good news for you, because it means you can do research on the specific colony without worrying too much about neighboring colonies.