Why were indentured servants called indentured servants? Indentured servants received their name from the tradition of using indented paper to record a debt or purchase obligation.
HIghlights:
– Indentured servants named after indented legal paperwork
– Indented or irregular edges were used on legal documents for authentication purposes
– The word “indenture” became a general word to describe a document handling a debt or a purchase obligation
– Legal documents documenting workers selling their labor for a designated period of time became known as indentures and the laborers indentured servants
Before the term “indenture” came about, medieval Europeans used legal documents called chirographs. Sometime before the year 1000, legal transactions involving multiple parties were recorded sheets of vellum. Details of the transaction were recorded twice on the sheet and then the sheet was cut in half with each piece going to each party involved in the transaction. Sometimes the cut was made along a word making it easier to verify the authenticity of the document. The below document from 1201 is an example of a chirograph cut along a word.
Later, instead of cutting a straight line along a word, people started to make indented or irregular edges on legal documents so could each side could be matched for authentication. This is where the term “indentured” comes from. The following is an example of an indenture from 1235.
Eventually, the word “indenture” became a general word to describe a document handling a debt or a purchase obligation.
Indentured Servants
During the colonization of the Americas, laborers sold themselves for a designated period of time. The obligations of the buying and selling of this labor were memorialized in legal documents called indentures, and the sellers of the labor became known as indentured servants. Below is an example of an indentured servant contract from 1766. Note the continuation of the indented page at the top
Indentured servants were called indentured servants because of the tradition of using indented paperwork for legal handling of debt and purchase obligations.
Other Types of Indentures
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, indented paper was not just reserved for the paperwork of indentured servants. The following is an indenture dated 1619 where King James I appointed Robert Johnson and William Easington as to oversee his personal alum works.
The indented paper below is an inventory of the goods from Edward Wilson’s apothecary shop taken upon Wilson’s death in 1661.
