1677 King Charles II 17th Century Handwritten Indentured Servant Contract on Vellum

What are indentured servants? Indentured servants were men and women who agreed to serve for a set period of time in the new America in exchange for transportation, subsistence, clothes, and housing. With the majority of them working in the tobacco fields, adults often served for four to seven years, while youngsters occasionally served for much longer. The headright system in 1618 lured planters and merchants to incur the cost with the promise of land, as opposed to the Virginia Company in London, which paid to ship servants over the Atlantic. The General Assembly created regulations that governed the terms of contracts as well as how servants should be treated, limiting their rights while still permitting them to file lawsuits if they had any grievances. By the end of the seventeenth century, Virginia had fewer new servants, and most of the colony's labor requirements were filled by African slaves.