indentured servant

Definitions

A debt bondage worker who is under contract of an employer for a specified period of time, in exchange for transportation, food, drink, clothing, lodging, and other necessities.

historical

Equivalents

Examples

“He traced back to Alfred Standing, an indentured servant, or slave if you please⟳, who was transported from England to the Virginia plantations in the days that were even old when the youthful Washington went a-surveying in the Pennsylvania wilderness.”

“Probably the best known of these was John Harrower, whose journal provides a fascinating insight into the life of a schoolmaster and indentured servant in late colonial Virginia.[…]He arrived in London virtually destitute and, unable to find⟳ work⟳, soon contracted to work⟳ as an indentured servant in Virginia as a means of escaping unemployment and poverty.”

“Like⟳ the others, however, he owed the contractual time to his master, who could sell⟳ the indentured servant, along with any debts owed by the servant, to someone else.”

“The book detailed how the Irish, who had first come⟳ to North America as indentured servants and were reviled by the more settled populations of English and Dutch Americans, became, by the mid-19th century, accepted as white.”

CEFR level