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Notes
Joshua
Peck was born Abt. 1756 in England, and died 24 February
1825 in Newcastle, NSW, Australia. He married Mary Frost on 1791 in Norfolk
Island, NSW, Australia, daughter of Richard
Frost and Ann
Unknown.
Previous Notes for Joshua
Peck:
The earliest reference to JOSHUA PECK comes from records held at Kew in London
which indicate that Joshua Peck, aged 18, occupation Hair Dresser, departed
England for Maryland USA on the Russia Merchant. United States passenger list
show him arriving in Maryland in 1774.
Revolutionary
War records make mention of a Joshua Peck of Maryland who served from 1777
until 1779 when he was discharged as a deserter. A Helen Peck, wife of Joshua
Peck sought a military pension in Connecticut, which means her husband could
have died, deserted or been taken prisoner of war. Assuming that Joshua may
have been taken prisoner of war may explain his return to England. There was a
Mill Prison at Plymouth where prisoners of war were held during the war with
America.
It was at nearby Exeter where, on 20 March 1786,
Joshua Peck was sentenced to be transported for 7 years to "lands beyond
the seas" for theft of three linen shirts, two cloth coats and other goods
(a total value of 35 shillings) from three owners, and a second count of
housebreaking and stealing three silver castors and other goods, although found
not guilty of the housebreaking.
In the same court on the same day, Mary Brand
was convicted of highway robbery and sentenced to death. Her death sentence was
later commuted and she was also to be transported to Australia. Mary married
Will Bryant shortly after arriving in Botany Bay and, on 28th March 1791,
together with their two children and several other convicts, they escaped from
Botany Bay in a stolen government boat. Although illiterate and uneducated,
Mary showed remarkable courage and leadership both before and during their
escape and it was Mary’s strength which saw them all survive the marathon
voyage of over 3000 miles to arrive safely in Batavia where they were captured
and placed on the HMS Gorgon to be returned to England. William Bryant perished
during their return voyage to England along with Mary’s 2 children and some of
the other escaped convicts. Somehow Mary survived it all to be returned to
England where, thanks to the persistence of lawyer James Boswell, she was
released and later pardoned, and allowed to return to her family in Fowey,
Cornwall. More about Mary’s incredible escape can be read in Judith Cook’s book
“To Brave Every Danger”
Whilst awaiting transportation to Australia,
Joshua (along with Mary Brand) was placed on the Dunkirk Hulk which was moored
in Portsmouth. In addition to housing "local" prisoners it also
served as a collection point for prisoners from various goals as they were
assembled for the First Fleet. Conditions there were so bad at one time that
the officer in charge complained "many of the prisoners are nearly if not
quite naked." The women prisoners held on board were brutalised by the
marines supposed to be guarding them. The superintendent of the Dunkirk hulk
wrote a shocked protest to the authorities on 25 August 1784, which resulted in
a Code of Orders being drawn up to protect the women. Joshua’s behaviour whilst
on the Dunkirk Hulk was reported as being “tolerably decent and orderly”.
In order to provide alternative information, facts need to be obtained.
Helen Peck was the wife of the previously researched Josiah
Peck, which has been translated as Joshua Peck.
The reference is not to Joshua Peck Convict.
Mill Prison lists the prisoners who were jailed there,
however the list is in 1776.
A search has not produced any reference to Joshua Peck.
Joshua Peck did though, mention that he worked on tobacco
plantations in America.
A Joshua Peck left London
12th March 1774 as an Indented Servant, to Maryland
The ship was the Russia Merchant, which had been up for sale on 15th March 1774, according to the Newcastle Chronicle of 12th March 1774
file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/38469-Article%20Text-45705-1-10-20140403.pdf
Records
indicate that very often the indented servants were the young nephews of those
who owned lands, and were sent there to work on the property.
Joshua
Peck convict maintained he worked on tobacco plantations.
His
indenture was for either 4, 5, 6 or 8 years.
During that time, they worked for free.
Unfortunately
for Joshua, a tea party in Boston, changed his future.
Indentured Servitude
in British America
Indentured servitude in
British America was
the prominent system of labor in British American colonies until it was
eventually overcome by slavery. During its time, the system was so
prominent that more than half of all immigrants to British colonies south of
New England were white servants, and that nearly half of total white
immigration to the Thirteen Colonies came under indenture.[2] By the beginning of the American
Revolutionary War in
1775, only 2 to 3 percent of the colonial labor force was composed of indentured
servants.[
The consensus view among
economic historians and economists is that indentured
servitude became
popular in the Thirteen Colonies in the seventeenth century because
of a large demand for labor there, coupled with labor surpluses in Europe and
high costs of transatlantic transportation beyond the means of European
workers. Between the 1630s and the American
Revolution, one-half to
two-thirds of white immigrants to the Thirteen
Colonies arrived under indentures. Half a million Europeans, mostly young
men, also went to the Caribbean under indenture to work on plantations. Most indentures were voluntary,
although some people were tricked or coerced into them. A debt peonage system similar to indenture was
also used in southern New England and Long Island to control and assimilate Native Americans from the 1600s through the American Revolution.
Indentured servitude
continued in North
America into the
early 20th century, but the number of indentured servants declined over time. Although
experts do not agree on the causes of the decline, possible factors for the
American colonies include changes in the labor market and the legal system that
made it cheaper and less risky for an employer to hire African
slave labour or
paid employees, or made indentures unlawful; increased affordability of travel
to North America that made immigrants less likely to rely on indentures to pay
travel costs; and effects of the American Revolution, particularly on
immigration from Britain.
North America
Between
one-half and two-thirds of European immigrants to the Thirteen Colonies between the 1630s and the American
Revolution came
under indentures. The practice was sufficiently common that the Habeas
Corpus Act 1679, in
part, prevented imprisonments overseas; it also made provisions for those with
existing transportation contracts and those "praying to be
transported" in lieu of remaining in prison upon conviction. In any case,
while half the European immigrants to the Thirteen Colonies had been indentured servants at
some time, actively indentured servants were outnumbered by non-indentured
workers, or by those whose indenture had expired. Thus free wage labour was
more common for Europeans in the colonies. Indentured persons were
numerically important mostly in the region from Virginia north to New Jersey. Other colonies saw far fewer of them.
The total number of European immigrants to all 13 colonies before 1775 was 500,000–550,000; of these, 55,000
were involuntary
prisoners. Of the
450,000 or so European arrivals who came voluntarily, Tomlins estimates that
48% were indentured. About 75% were under the age of 25. The age of legal
adulthood for men was 24 years; those over 24 generally came on contracts
lasting about 3 years.
Regarding
the children who came, Gary Nash reports that, "many of the servants were
actually nephews, nieces, cousins and children of friends of emigrating
Englishmen, who paid their passage in return for their labour once in
America."
Farmers,
merchants, and shopkeepers in the British colonies found it very difficult to
hire free workers, primarily because it was easy for potential workers to set
up their own farms.[ Consequently, a common solution
was to transport a young worker from Britain or a German state, who would work
for several years to pay off the debt of their travel costs. During the
indenture period the servants were not paid cash wages, but were provided with
food, accommodation, clothing and training. The indenture document specified
how many years the servant would be required to work, after which they would be
free. Terms of indenture ranged from one to seven years with typical terms of
four or five years.
In southern
New England, a variant form of indentured servitude, which controlled the labor
of Native Americans through an exploitative debt-peonage system, developed in the late 17th
century and continued through to the period of the American Revolution.
Not all
European servants came willingly. Several instances of kidnapping for transportation to the Americas
are recorded, though these were often indentured in the same way as their
willing counterparts. An illustrative example is that of Peter Williamson (1730–1799). As historian Richard
Hofstadter pointed
out, "Although efforts were made to regulate or check their activities,
and they diminished in importance in the eighteenth century, it remains true
that a certain small part of the white colonial population of America was
brought by force, and a much larger portion came in response to deceit and
misrepresentation on the part of the spirits [recruiting agents]."
Many white
immigrants arrived in colonial America as indentured servants, usually as young
men and women from Britain or Germany, under the age of 21. Typically, the
father of a teenager would sign the legal papers, and work out an arrangement
with a ship captain, who would not charge the father any money. The
captain would transport the indentured servants to the American colonies, and sell
their legal papers to someone who needed workers. At the end of the indenture,
the young person was given a new suit of clothes and was free to leave. Many
immediately set out to begin their own farms, while others used their newly
acquired skills to pursue a trade. A few became sufficiently prosperous that
they were eventually able to acquire indentured servants of their own.[
Given the
high death rate, many servants did not live to the end of their terms.
In the
18th and early 19th century, numerous Europeans, mostly from outside the
British Isles, travelled to the colonies as redemptioners, a particularly harsh form of
indenture.
As Joshua
Peck began his service in 1774, he would have been eligible to be free by 1782.
He fought
the war until 1779. Perhaps he was
employed on a relative’s tobacco farm, and was thus repatriated.
Indentured Servitude
in British America
Indentured servitude in
British America was
the prominent system of labor in British American colonies until it was
eventually overcome by slavery. During its time, the system was so
prominent that more than half of all immigrants to British colonies south of
New England were white servants, and that nearly half of total white
immigration to the Thirteen Colonies came under indenture.[2] By the beginning of the American
Revolutionary War in
1775, only 2 to 3 percent of the colonial labor force was composed of indentured
servants.[
The consensus view among
economic historians and economists is that indentured
servitude became
popular in the Thirteen Colonies in the seventeenth century because
of a large demand for labor there, coupled with labor surpluses in Europe and
high costs of transatlantic transportation beyond the means of European
workers. Between the 1630s and the American
Revolution, one-half to
two-thirds of white immigrants to the Thirteen
Colonies arrived under indentures. Half a million Europeans, mostly young
men, also went to the Caribbean under indenture to work on plantations. Most indentures were voluntary,
although some people were tricked or coerced into them. A debt peonage system similar to indenture was
also used in southern New England and Long Island to control and assimilate Native Americans from the 1600s through the American Revolution.
Indentured servitude
continued in North
America into the
early 20th century, but the number of indentured servants declined over time. Although
experts do not agree on the causes of the decline, possible factors for the
American colonies include changes in the labor market and the legal system that
made it cheaper and less risky for an employer to hire African
slave labour or
paid employees, or made indentures unlawful; increased affordability of travel
to North America that made immigrants less likely to rely on indentures to pay
travel costs; and effects of the American Revolution, particularly on
immigration from Britain.
North America
Between
one-half and two-thirds of European immigrants to the Thirteen Colonies between the 1630s and the American
Revolution came
under indentures. The practice was sufficiently common that the Habeas
Corpus Act 1679, in
part, prevented imprisonments overseas; it also made provisions for those with
existing transportation contracts and those "praying to be
transported" in lieu of remaining in prison upon conviction. In any case,
while half the European immigrants to the Thirteen Colonies had been indentured servants at
some time, actively indentured servants were outnumbered by non-indentured
workers, or by those whose indenture had expired. Thus free wage labour was
more common for Europeans in the colonies. Indentured persons were
numerically important mostly in the region from Virginia north to New Jersey. Other colonies saw far fewer of them.
The total number of European immigrants to all 13 colonies before 1775 was 500,000–550,000; of these, 55,000
were involuntary
prisoners. Of the
450,000 or so European arrivals who came voluntarily, Tomlins estimates that
48% were indentured. About 75% were under the age of 25. The age of legal
adulthood for men was 24 years; those over 24 generally came on contracts
lasting about 3 years.
Regarding
the children who came, Gary Nash reports that, "many of the servants were
actually nephews, nieces, cousins and children of friends of emigrating
Englishmen, who paid their passage in return for their labour once in
America."
Farmers,
merchants, and shopkeepers in the British colonies found it very difficult to
hire free workers, primarily because it was easy for potential workers to set
up their own farms.[ Consequently, a common solution
was to transport a young worker from Britain or a German state, who would work
for several years to pay off the debt of their travel costs. During the
indenture period the servants were not paid cash wages, but were provided with
food, accommodation, clothing and training. The indenture document specified
how many years the servant would be required to work, after which they would be
free. Terms of indenture ranged from one to seven years with typical terms of
four or five years.
In southern
New England, a variant form of indentured servitude, which controlled the labor
of Native Americans through an exploitative debt-peonage system, developed in the late 17th
century and continued through to the period of the American Revolution.
Not all
European servants came willingly. Several instances of kidnapping for transportation to the Americas
are recorded, though these were often indentured in the same way as their
willing counterparts. An illustrative example is that of Peter Williamson (1730–1799). As historian Richard
Hofstadter pointed
out, "Although efforts were made to regulate or check their activities,
and they diminished in importance in the eighteenth century, it remains true
that a certain small part of the white colonial population of America was
brought by force, and a much larger portion came in response to deceit and
misrepresentation on the part of the spirits [recruiting agents]."
Many white
immigrants arrived in colonial America as indentured servants, usually as young
men and women from Britain or Germany, under the age of 21. Typically, the
father of a teenager would sign the legal papers, and work out an arrangement
with a ship captain, who would not charge the father any money. The
captain would transport the indentured servants to the American colonies, and sell
their legal papers to someone who needed workers. At the end of the indenture,
the young person was given a new suit of clothes and was free to leave. Many
immediately set out to begin their own farms, while others used their newly
acquired skills to pursue a trade. A few became sufficiently prosperous that
they were eventually able to acquire indentured servants of their own.[
Given the
high death rate, many servants did not live to the end of their terms.
In the
18th and early 19th century, numerous Europeans, mostly from outside the
British Isles, travelled to the colonies as redemptioners, a particularly harsh form of
indenture.
As Joshua
Peck began his service in 1774, he would have been eligible to be free by 1782.
He fought
the war until 1779. Perhaps he was
employed on a relative’s tobacco farm, and was thus repatriated.
Indented Servants to
Maryland
The
purchase of servants undoubtedly varied with the level of tobacco prices. These
rose sharply in the late 1730s following the introduction of paper currency in
Maryland in 1734. This provided the planters with ready money and generated
mild inflation. Although tobacco prices rose 100 percent, slave prices rose
only 25 percent. Merchants in Oxford, Maryland, sold twice as many slaves (600)
in the years 1739 to 1743 as they had done in the preceding fifteen years. However,
during the same period, they sold just as many servants as they did slaves. 21
The Maryland Assembly passed a tobacco inspection act in 1747 which Jed to
higher prices because it improved the quality of the product, but as the
population figures from 1755 demonstrate, the increased revenues did not
eradicate the demand for indentured servants. The best evidence of the
continued demand for servants is that price levels for servants remained
remarkably steady throughout the eighteenth century. David Galenson reports the
average price of males with four years to serve as £8.95 with a median price of
£9. For a nineteen-year-old female the average price for the same period was
£7.75 with a median of £8. 22 In the early 1770s a Parliamentary Committee was
informed that the average price received for convict servants (who served for
seven years) was £10, with women bringing £8-9 and skilled men £15-25. 23 As
convicts were considered the least desirable category of servant, these figures
can be regarded as the lower bound of servant prices and when taken together
with the moderate inflation which took place in Maryland towards the end of the
colonial period, they support the contention that price levels for servants,
and therefore the demand, remained stable and constant
Email: collections@plymouth.gov.uk
Mills Prison Records
What Is Indentured Servitude?
Indentured
servitude refers to a contract between two individuals, in which one person
worked not for money but in exchange for the price of passage to America.
Indentured servitude—popular in the United States in the 1600s—was essentially
a kind of barter system. For example, someone who sought a new life in America,
but who could not afford the expensive steamship fare from another country,
would contract with a wealthy U.S. landowner to perform a type of work for a
fixed period in exchange for the price of the boat ticket.
Indentured
servitude in the U.S. began in the early 1600s in Virginia, not long after the
settlement of Jamestown. Many early American settlers needed cheap labor to
help manage their large estates and farmland, and plenty of landowners agreed
to fund the passage of European immigrants to Virginia in exchange for their
labour. Approximately 300,000 European workers immigrated to the American colonies in
the 1600s as indentured servants, and indentured servitude continued throughout
much of the 1700s—albeit at a slower pace.
Other
parts of the world also engaged in some version of indentured servitude at
around the same time that it was happening in the United States. For example, a
great many people left Europe for the Caribbean to work as indentured servants
on sugar plantations.
How Did Indentured Servitude
Work?
Under
indentured servitude, the contract stipulated that the worker was borrowing
money for his transportation and would repay the lender by performing a certain
kind of labor for a set period. Skilled labourers were usually indentured
for four or five years, but unskilled workers often needed to remain under
their master’s control for seven or more years. Most workers who became
indentured servants were males, generally in their late teens and early
twenties, but thousands of women also entered into these agreements and often
worked off their debts as household employees or domestic
servants.
Indentured Servants Did Not Have
Much Personal Freedom
During
its heyday, the indentured servitude system allowed landowners to provide only
food and shelter for indentured servants, as opposed to wages. Some landowners, however,
offered their servants basic medical care, but typically labor contracts did
not provide for this. In general, indentured servants enjoyed little personal
freedom. Some contracts allowed landowners to extend the work period for
servants who were accused of behavior that was deemed improper. If a servant
ran away or became pregnant, for example, a master was legally entitled to
lengthen the worker's term of service.
The Word "Indenture"
Historically
An indenture is a legal and binding
agreement, contract, or document between two or more parties. In the case of
indentured servants, these contracts contained "indented" marks along
the sides of the document. When the document was finalized, two copies were
made. One copy was placed over the other and the edges of the pages were
defaced or marked with indented characters. The servants of this era often were
uneducated and could be cheated by unscrupulous masters who might forge new
contracts with terms more favourable to themselves. So, this way of marking the
two original copies helped to ensure a lasting means of authenticating the
contract.
During its heyday, the indentured servitude system allowed
landowners to provide only food and shelter for indentured servants, as opposed
to wages. Some
landowners, however, offered their servants basic medical care, but typically
labour contracts did not provide for this. In general, indentured servants
enjoyed little personal freedom. Some contracts allowed landowners to extend
the work period for servants who were accused of behavior that was deemed
improper. If a servant ran away or became pregnant, for example, a master was
legally entitled to lengthen the worker's term of service.
Indentured
servitude refers to a contract between two individuals, in which one person
worked not for money but in exchange for the price of passage to America.
The
system of indentured servitude was popular during the wave of European
immigrants to the U.S. in the 1600s.
In
finance, an indenture is an agreement between a bond issuer and bondholder,
which contains important features of the bond.
Other
masters treated their slaves more humanely than their servants because slaves
were regarded as a lifetime investment, whereas servants would be gone
in a few years. Servants also fared better than slaves in other respects: they
had access to the courts and were entitled to own land. However, masters
retained their right to prohibit their servants from marrying. and had the
authority to sell them to another master at any time.
A
specific similarity between slavery and indentured servitude is that indentured
servants could be sold, loaned, or inherited, at least during the duration of
their contract terms. As a result, some indentured servants performed little
work for the landowners who paid for their passage across the Atlantic.
A Joshua
Peck served in the 3rd Regiment of the Continental Army 1776 – 1779
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