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The following is an instance of the revolting horrors connected with this trade: In 1793, when the yellow fever prevailed in Chester, a cargo of Redemptioners was sent thither, and a market for nurses opened. Quakers and other "friends of liberty and humanity" exploited the system.
"First," says the man, "let me tell you that I never before clapped eyes on the long piece of rascality you were seeking. He looked like one that had cheated the gallows." "He was a man I knew in Scotland," I said grumpily. "Likely enough. There's a heap of Scots redemptioners hereaways. I'm out of Scotland myself, or my forbears were, but my father was settled in the Antrim Glens.
Mittelberger, who, in 1750, brought to America the organ built at Heilbronn for the Lutheran church in Philadelphia, and served Muhlenberg also as schoolteacher in Providence, describes, in substance, the sad lot of the Redemptioners as follows: "Healthy and strong young people were bound to serve from three to six years, young people from their tenth to their twenty-first year.
And he was about to rebuke me hotly, when I told him I had come from Maryland, where I was born. "Why, ye speak like a gentleman!" he exclaimed. "I was informed that all talk like naygurs over there. And is it not so of your redemptioners?" I said that depended upon the master they got. "Then I take it ye are looking for the lawyers, who mostly represent the planters.
And he was about to rebuke me hotly, when I told him I had come from Maryland, where I was born. "Why, ye speak like a gentleman!" he exclaimed. "I was informed that all talk like naygurs over there. And is it not so of your redemptioners?" I said that depended upon the master they got. "Then I take it ye are looking for the lawyers, who mostly represent the planters.
Not a ship arrives either with redemptioners or convicts, in which schoolmasters are not as regularly advertised for sale as weavers, tailors, or any other trade; with little other difference, that I can hear of, excepting perhaps that the former do not usually fetch so good a price as the latter....
Some of the terms of service were very long, even for ten years. These indentured servants were in three classes: "free-willers," or "redemptioners," or voluntary emigrants; "kids," who had been seduced through ignorance or duplicity on board ships that carried them off to America; and convicts transported for crime. The latter expatriated vagabonds were sent chiefly to Virginia.
And the different senses in which the same word is used in the two states, puts no man in a quandary, whose common sense amounts to a modicum. By voluntary contract they engaged to work for their purchasers a given time to pay for their passage. This class of persons called "redemptioners," consisted at one time of thousands.
This does not take into account the great number of people who could not be recorded under that head, as it is known there were many thousand Irish "redemptioners" in Maryland prior to the taking of the census, and while no precise data exist to indicate the number of Irish immigrants who settled in Maryland, I estimate that the number of people of Irish descent in the State in 1790 was not far short of 40,000.
Upon this appointed day we whom they call Oliverians, and the great majority of the redemptioners, are to rise throughout the colony. We " "Are to do no damage to property nor offer any unnecessary violence to masters and overseers," said Landless firmly. "We are simply to arm ourselves, seize horses or boats, and resort to this appointed place." "Yes." "Calling upon the slaves to follow us?"
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