1681, Robert Hodges of Lower Norfolk left two breeding sows by will to his servant Dorothy Rowell, and also granted her the right to dwell on one of his plantations during a period of seven years without paying rent.[1] The bounty of masters was not restricted to live stock and land; it also extended to coin.[2] Nor were the acts of generosity confined to the employer. In 1631, Robert Healing of Accomac, who was bound by indenture to Thomas Young, gave his master a man-servant, whom he had probably purchased from a merchant or shipowner.[3] Other instances of equal liberality and good-will might be mentioned.
A large number of the servants, as has been pointed out, upon the expiration of their terms became either overseers or renters, if they were lacking in the means to sue out patents to estates of their own. In the seventeenth, as in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the position of an overseer furnished many opportunities to the incumbent for the improvement of his condition by the accumulation of property. His share in the crops which he produced for his employer was invested in the purchase of laborers of his own to obtain the basis of head rights for the acquisition of land by public grant, or it was used in buying a plantation which had already been cleared. The number of renters among those who had been servants was probably small, for the reasons upon which I have already dwelt at length.
There are many evidences that it was common for servants upon the close of their terms to earn a subsistence
- ↑ Records of Lower Norfolk County, original vol. 1675-1686, f. p. 106.
- ↑ Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., bequeathed ten pounds sterling to one of his servants. Records of York County, vol. 1690-1694, p. 155. See also Ibid., vol. 1664-1672, p. 239, Va. State Library; also Records of Henrico County, original vol. 1677-1692, p. 139.
- ↑ Records of Accomac County, original vol. 1632-1640, p. 46.
