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Being An Indentured Servant Essay

970 Words4 Pages

Life of an Indentured Servant Life was not easy in my hometown as there was poverty and hunger everywhere. At a young age of 14, I have seen many difficult times as I saw my parents and siblings going without food for days. My name is Paul, a 14 years old English boy from Bristol, England. There were a bunch of traders who came in our town and offered us jobs in America. “Earning wages at all was difficult in England since job opportunities were shrinking” (The American Promise 65). It was the job of being an indentured servant. “Unable to pay for their trip across the Atlantic, poor immigrants agreed to a contract called an indenture, which functioned as a form of credit. by signing an indenture, an immigrant borrowed the cost of transportation …show more content…

He was a black negro and was considered worse than some cattle. His story was worse than mine. He was kidnapped from his home and thrown in the ship. He never was promised of any wage. He arrived to America in a ship called Leverpool. It was the most horrendous thing I had ever heard. “This ship, though a much smaller ship…. took on board at least six hundred Negroes . . . By purchasing so great a number, the slaves were so crowded that they were obliged to lie one upon another. This caused such a mortality among them that without meeting with unusually bad weather or having a longer voyage than common, nearly one half of them died before the ship arrived” (Alexander Falconbridge's Account of The Slave Trade, Module 5). Usually, the master of other plantations were nice but not my master. He was the cruelest and heartless human being I had ever seen. Every servant or slave was punished vey harshly on this plantation for very minor mistakes. It was like living in hell. Some of my friends were sold to other planters without even their knowledge. None of us were allowed to marry, if we did or if any girl got pregnant, our servitude was increased by many

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