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THE EXPERIENCE OF INDENTURED SERVANTS FROM GERMANY AND IRELAND: GUARANTEED EMPLOYMENT, EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY, OR LAST RESORT? By MARIANNE S. WOKECK Indentured servitude has been a historical topic of interest for a long while. First centered on the discovery that a substantial number of immigrants to the New World began their life here as servants, scholarship has more recently focused on questions about the transition of the labor force from servants to slaves in the Chesapeake Bay colonies and servants to wage labor in the middle colonies, and also on models that explain the mechanisms of indentured servi- tude in economic terms.¹ Close study of indentures recorded for newly arrived immigrants from Germany and Ireland, however, suggests a picture of contract labor whose characteristics reveal major "ethnic" differences which were de- termined by the nature of the two immigration flows and the organization of the two respective, distinct trades that provided transatlantic passage for Ger- man and Irish emigrants.² Consequently, the paper begins with a description of how the systems of indentured, known in migration to North America since the middle of the seventeenth century, evolved in response to the particular composition and flow of the German immigration, the business practices of the merchants in London, Rotterdam, and Philadelphia who provided the trans- portation, and—apparently—the preferences which allowed many purchasers to pay more to get German help. The focus then shifts to the role of contract labor in the migration flow to the middle colonies from southern and northern Ireland. As conclusion I will suggest how the observed differences in the way indentures were negotiated and renegotiated in terms of price and length of service indicate that the Delaware Valley market was distinctly segmented among potential masters. A simple theory to cover all kinds of purchases, all forms of trade, and all kinds of servants is likely to be on dangerous ground. We need to know more about the structure of demand—who wanted what kinds of servants and why. The first group of settlers from Germany arrived in 1683. This vanguard of settlers in William Penn's colony came from a region along the Rhine in which many residents had only recently established their homes and among whom the tradition to migrate in response to political upheaval, economic instability, and religious persecution was strong. The Germantown pioneers were people of dissenting religious convictions and yet they had sufficient economic inde- pendence to finance the move to the New World. Moreover, a variety of ties [57] connecting co-religionists with their families, friends, and former neighbors was essential to lure more immigrants later, after trustworthy reports of religious toleration, a good quiet government, and ample opportunity in the Delaware Valley had singled out Pennsylvania as the preferred overseas destination for Germans willing or pressed to leave their homelands. The Germantown settlers maintained links with those sympathatic to their endeavor, including contacts with prominent Friends and Mennonites in Rotter- dam and Amsterdam. In particular, the dual role of Benjamin Furly, Penn's continental agent, as a leader in the Rotterdam Quaker community and as in- fluential merchant with wide-ranging business interests and connections led to the emergence of Rotterdam as the principal port of embarkation for German immigrants to the American colonies. This commercial aspect of the pioneer- ing migration resulted in the development of a transatlantic transportation system for emigrants as a regular business. Like the Germantown pioneers, continental Protestants responded to a variety of oppressive conditions at home that made relocation desirable. Meanwhile, potential emigrants from Germany were alternately attracted or discouraged as news reached them of improving or worsening conditions in the Delaware Valley and elsewhere. But these forces of "push" and "pull" were separated by three thousand miles of dangerous ocean and by weeks of difficult and expen- sive travel to reach the seacoast in the first place. Thus an essential force in determining how the migration first flowed and then ebbed, who came and when, and what expectations and resources they brought to the New World was the trade organized by merchants who found profit in the business of moving large numbers of people from Europe to America. To understand better the complex relationship between the different factors that combined to initiate and maintain German immigration to colonial Penn- sylvania, it is useful to bear in mind the basic shape and characteristic of the immigrant flow. After the initial settlement of the Germantown pioneers in 1683, only occasionally did groups of German immigrants—often traveling to- gether in families and groups or congregations—land in Philadelphia before 1727.³ After this date, with emigration from the Rhine lands to the colonies established, large numbers began to come regularly. Thereafter the German immigration continued to swell more or less gradually until an immense wave of migrants (about thirty-seven thousand) reached Philadelphia during the years 1749-54, when each fall on average six thousand Germans landed in Philadelphia—a city of about seventeen thousand inhabitants, including South- wark and the Northern Liberties, in 1756. In this rising stream of German new- comers the proportion of families at first continued high, but increasingly heads of households were younger and proportionally more single people landed on the Delaware. Though transatlantic relocation resumed in 1763 after the French and Indian War, the renewed flow of arrivals from continental Europe was now but a retreating ebb (about twelve thousand) in the twelve years before the Revolution. Among those who undertook the voyage in the years 1763 to 1776, [58] the proportion of single men was large and many of the immigrants were poor. The "push factors" for emigration from Germany were many and intricately related. Recurrent agrarian crises and war, high taxes and oppressive regula- tions of all spheres of life affected particularly farmers, artisans, and laborers with little resources in their efforts to make and maintain a "decent living"— conditions that prompted many inhabitants of the Rhine lands (including the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland and Alsace-Lorraine) to move tem- porarily or permanently well before the migration to North American began from this part of Europe. Given political and economic instability, and religious intoleration throughout southwestern Germany, migration was familiar to many people in this region. 4 In offering attractions to new settlers, the American colonies, and especially Pennsylvania, compared very well with other colonizing opportunities in Europe. The lasting attraction first of the Delaware region and, later, of the vastly expanding backcountry of the more southern colonies was composed of a variety of ingredients. The opportunities open to newcomers determined not only what immigrants were most likely to be attracted to a place but also their chances at being successfully integrated into a new life. When in the 1720s Germans first began to arrive in Pennsylvania in large numbers, toleration for Protestants of different backgrounds and lifestyles generally existed, land could be obtained at low cost, wages as well as prices for the products of one's work were considered high; but the cost of relocation had to be paid in cash, largely in advance. Given these circumstances, Pennsylvania particularly attracted settlers who arrived with some starting capital (mostly in the form of Euro- pean goods brought over for resale) and could avoid the costs for labor by bringing family members and even servants along with them. A prospective settler with enough means to "come here at his own expense and [who] reaches here in good health" was assured by his friends that "he will be rich enough, especially if he can bring his family or some manservant, because servants are dear here. People bind themselves out here for three or four years' service for a great price. . . ." 5 These conditions early in the history of the migration also favored immigrants who could sell skills and labor profitably to acquire the means to purchase a farm or set up shop after a few years. As such favorable opportunities became more widely known in Germany, Pennsylvania lured relatives, friends, and neighbors of those already settled in the colony, who were often willing and able to help others make the transition. At a time when newspapers were just beginning to appear regularly in the largest cities and when postal service was practically unavailable to common men and women, networks of personal communication—letters delivered by trustworthy messengers or occasionally even visits by relatives or friends—were immensely important in conveying news about opportunities far away. 6 After the attractive reputation of the Delaware Valley had been established, however, the rapidly accelerating rate of immigration could be sustained only through the initiative of enterprising merchants who provided transatlantic passage on [59] credit, thereby expanding the pool of potential emigrants considerably, reach- ing even those who did not have substantial resources or relatives to help them move. The combined effect of the persuasive recruiting of new settlers by former migrants, so-called newlanders, and the credit extended by merchants to expand their profits produced the brief but massive inflow of Germans to the colonies in the late 1740s and early 1750. The development of the German passenger trade reveals much about how the merchants tried to capitalize on the changing flow and composition of the migration and why indentured servitude became such an integral and important part of the business of transporting immigrants to Philadelphia. Relatively few merchants, together with their agents and correspondents, managed the provi- sion of transatlantic transportation of large numbers of German colonists to Pennsylvania. 7 English merchants in Rotterdam chartered ships to transport German passengers from ship owners and merchants interested in filling their vessels with profitable freight for the route from Europe to the American colonies on which cargo space was often, if not regularly, underutilized. Infor- mation about the flow of emigrants enabled the Rotterdam merchants to manipulate the supply of shipping from England effectively and profitably. Providing passage for immigrants was, however, at all times firmly embedded in the prevailing structure of ties between business partners on both sides of the Atlantic. Participants in the trade took advantage of that structure for their own use by shifting the weight and readjusting the balance among part- ners to capitalize on current opportunities for carrying passengers. At the be- ginning of regular German immigration to Philadelphia, when London provided the bulk of all shipping to the American mainland colonies, German emigrants took passage to Pennsylvania on London-owned and operated ships, which then preceded on their way from Philadelphia to the southern colonies and the West Indies, or both, and from there back to England. 8 At the height of the German immigration wave, most of the vessels carrying immigrants still followed this itinerary, but now the number of ships owned in and operated out of Phila- delphia had increased. After the disruption of the French and Indian War, as the trend toward greater colonial ownership continued, more of the ships freighted with immigrants, after debarking their passengers, went straight back across the Atlantic, reflecting Philadelphia's new direct link with Britain and southern Europe. The services the Rotterdam merchants provided fell into two categories. One was the securing of freights for the ship's run and the other was the outfitting and provisioning of the vessel. 9 In their quest to recruit emigrants more effi- ciently, the merchants in Holland mainly adopted two strategies. They made arrangements with the Rhine boatmen—with whom they already maintained a proven network of business contacts—to provide river transportation to Rotter- dam on special terms and they engaged recruiting agents—often newlanders— to solicit emigrants. Specific recruiting efforts often combined both methods. 10 Regardless of the degree to which the Rotterdam merchants tried to active- [ 60 ] ly channel the German emigration flow, their main function in the emigrant trade was to provide transatlantic transportation on vessels dispatched from London and for the most part destined to Philadelphia. Their profits depended on their role as middlemen in the manipulation of the supply of shipping ac- cording to the demand for transatlantic passage. The size of their profit mar- gins was closely linked to the ratio of passengers per ship: the larger the num- ber of emigrant freight on a ship, the more profitable the return. The scope of the emigration flow—and to a lesser extent the degree of competition among merchants involved in the trade—determined when profits increased. Philadelphia's role in this trade was shaped by its function as the receiving port. As the trade developed, the Philadelphia merchants evolved from passive to active participants because, as the century progressed, they both managed and owned more and more ships that carried immigrants. 11 The change from being simply consignees to becoming actual owners of the ships made it neces- sary for those Philadelphia merchants who were regularly involved in the Ger- man immigrant trade to alter how they managed ships and cargo. Two different developments contributed to this shift in function. Initially, many of the Ger- man emigrants seeking passage had paid at least half of their fare in advance and the remainder upon arrival. In other words, the Rotterdam merchants re- ceived a substantial amount of renumeration for their services promptly in ad- vance payments from the emigrants. This kept credit lines short—an attrac- tive aspect in overseas trade where much of the risk was the extension of long- term credit. The Rotterdam merchants could therefore count on recouping their outlays for procuring, outfitting, and loading immigrant vessels. As the transportation of a growing number of emigrants required more ships, the Rot- terdam merchants had increasing difficulties in meeting the various costs in- volved in the charter and provisioning of ships directly out of the funds collected from the emigrants. Advance payments now covered a smaller proportion of the expenses necessary to provide immigrant transportation, because a larger absolute, if not relative, number of German emigrants chose to "charge" all of their fare at least until arrival in Philadelphia. On the one hand, the widely exploited opportunity of postponing payment for passage substantially increased the number of emigrants and was therefore largely welcomed because of the potential for continued high profits. On the other hand, this practice also led to complicated and prolonged lines of credit among the participants in the trade. Philadelphia merchants assumed many of the additional responsibilities that arose from a wider use of deferred payment for passage. Consequently, they became more intimately and intensely involved in the German immigrant trade. In addition to their increased investment in shipping they developed a grow- ing expertise in gauging the market for German servants because indentured servitude became the most common form of redemption of passage debts. In the early years of German immigration, emigrants with insufficient funds to finance the move across the Atlantic had two options. Some of the Ger- [ 61 ] mans already prepared to travel to Philadelphia were willing to pay for the passage of such poor emigrants as an investment on terms agreed upon indi- vidually and privately. Lacking such "sponsorship," emigrants with little capi- tal could take passage from London where merchants offered contract labor in exchange for the fare to Pennsylvania—a well-established English custom of transporting servants to the colonies. 12 As regular immigration to Pennsylvania increased in the 1720s and 1730s, both merchants and passengers involved in the transatlantic transportation of Germans adjusted this system to their own particular circumstances and needs: They took a variable debt accumulated for fare and related expenses as a given and made the length of term adjustable to cover the amount involved rather than conforming to what was usual for the British: four years of bondage or, for minors, until the servant reached the age of twenty-one or eighteen respectively. The need to settle, or "redeem," the variable amounts of passage money still owed became the basis for negotiations for indentured servitude by Germans and the distinguishing mark of the German servant trade as opposed to previ- ously known service for passage from Britain, when fixed terms had been the rule for servants. 13 This distinct German system of indentured servitude evolved in the 1730s. By then, the number of Germans eager to go to Penn- sylvania but with insufficient funds to do so on their own and without the help from relatives or friends already settled in the colonies could no longer be easily matched with the number of other Germans willing and able to finance the passage of one or more countrymen as a personal investment. Innovative merchants familiar with the passenger trade and the consistent demand for labor in Pennsylvania therefore devised a system that matched supply and de- mand: Based on the conviction that the labor potential of German immigrants was sufficient, if not profitable, security they extended credit for passage—in part or for the full amount, first to single men and women and subsequently to whole families. Many emigrants seized this opportunity of financing their move across the Atlantic. They formed a regular, highly seasonal stream of servants which grew as a proportion of the total as the flow of German immigrants first peaked and then declined in the middle years of the century. The distinctive flexibility of terms in the German redemptioner system be- came necessary and remained desirable because the German immigration was one of the flows of new people to the colonies which continued to contain a substan- tial proportion of families. For arriving Germans, indentured servitude became an option especially for dependent adolescents, who could serve until they were of age, at terms which brought a price exceeding the cost of their own fare, enough to help pay the costs as yet unmet for the rest of the family. Employers with long-range labor needs apparently welcomed the opportunity of purchas- ing servants for more than the two or three years customary for adults, (who might also learn new ways more slowly than still untrained teenagers) and were willing to pay for that advantage. Families, on the other hand, looking at their collective financial resources as a unit, perceived binding out teenage children [62] as a way to ease the adjustment period financially for the whole family, or more fundamental still, to make migration of the total family possible in the first place. "There are few houses in the city or country where the people are at all well off, that do not have one or two such children in them" reported an early immigrant in a letter home. 14 The custom obviously took hold and endured; as late as 1773, German families could still easily and regularly rely on their chil- dren to share the cost of the move to the New World by becoming indentured servants. 15 Indenture, which immigrants viewed originally as an option for education and adjustment to New World life for dependent children also brought an added financial advantage for the relocation of the family. The practice became more generally, however, a response to financial necessity as the flow of newcomers increasingly included families without sufficient funds to pay for the passage. Similarly, it became a not very optional last resort for those reduced in their resources during the voyage during the peak years of the immigration as the more unscrupulous merchants and newlanders devised schemes to exploit passengers and as the crowded conditions on board at this-time increased the toll of theft, illness, and death among family members who might have sup- ported each other. 16 Once the custom of coordinating the passage debt with the length of service had been established, merchants began to exploit the potential of the continued strong market for German servants aggressively. They did so first by liberaliz- ing their credit policies upon embarkation and then by tightening their stan- dards for granting long-term credit upon arrival, encouraging an increased flow of immigrants but assuring prompt returns in their investment by pushing im- mediate indentures as a form of debt settlement. 17 Merchants were increasing- ly interested in disposing quickly of immigrants on credited fares not only in an effort to regain their own investment in the cargo, but also to reduce the ship's turnaround time in port. They had little patience with newcomers searching for alternative modes of payment and pressured passengers who could not pay up into agreeing to indentured servitude when a purchaser could be found. 18 When merchants in Rotterdam first offered credit for part or all of the fare, Philadelphia merchants were not prepared to handle the complicated accounts of variable debts accumulated by German newcomers efficiently and effectively. The consignees of German immigrant vessels in Pennsylvania simply trusted the informal or even formal promises of immigrants to settle their accounts duly once landed; but this resulted in merchants' lists of outstanding debts which offered little hope of eventual recovery. 19 Once passengers had left the ship with the intent, or under the pretence, of obtaining the necessary cash from relatives or friends, through the sale of imported goods, or from wages of their labor, they often failed to return to settle their accounts or to make binding arrangements to do so. Thus, as the proportion of passengers with credited fares grew and as merchants depended increasingly on exploiting the market for indentured serv- ants, procedures soon developed for preventing immigrants traveling on credit [63] in any amount from leaving the boat until payment, or dependable arrange- ment for it, was made. By the middle of the eighteenth century, negotiations for indentures had be- come the major focus of the landing ritual: Every day Englishmen, Dutchmen, and High Germans come from Philadelphia and other places, some of them from very far away, . . . and go on board the newly arrived vessel that has brought people from Europe and offers them for sale. From among the healthy they pick out those most suitable for the purposes for which they require them. Then they negotiate with them as to the length of the period for which they will go into service in order to pay for their passage. . . . 20 Moreover, the speed and orderliness in which German immigrants were re-, deemed indicate the interplay between the demand and supply of the labor market. For those unattached, healthy, young men and women who had in- tended from the start to rely on their labor potential to obtain cash to settle their accounts, debarkation was delayed only as long as it took to negotiate the particulars of the indentures. Agreements for the indenture of dependent teen- age children tended to take longer because balancing the time and price of. the service contract with the family's financial needs and desires was often complicated. When the family owed relatively large amounts and many family members were involved, settling accounts could be drawn out even further. Debarkation was often slow and inauspicious for the remainder of the immi- grants with passage debts. Most of those had either themselves suffered loss of health or property or were directly affected by the sickness or death of one or more members of the group with whom they traveled and undercut plans they had for paying their way. In those circumstances, flexibility for settling accounts was lost and the landing process delayed. Redemption of these highly disadvantaged newcomers was unlikely within the first few weeks after landing in Philadelphia. First, those immigrants stayed on board, then, when the ship was readied for departure, they were moved to boarding houses. Merchants, who were required by law to provide those un- fortunate colonists with food and shelter for thirty days (at the immigrants' expense), found that they had little in hand with which to force payment from these destitute people. Although the number of immigrants in this most dis- advantaged group was relatively small, their hard to resolve debts added up to a much larger proportion of the total fares credited on a given vessel. In response to such potential losses from some of their passengers, merchants re- distributed the amount they expected to lose from these uncollectable debts as extra or hidden charges onto those accounts that they had reason to believe would be paid off upon arrival, in effect inflating the fare. They added in par- ticular to the debt of those who negotiated indentures. 21 The importance of flexible indentures for German immigrants is evident from the substantial proportion of passengers who, especially in the late years, opted for or resorted to this form of temporary bound labor in an effort to alleviate the financial burden of a new beginning or to square unmet passage debts. In- [64] dentures were recruited from two substantially different groups arriving from Germany. The majority negotiated their contracts willingly. They accepted this system of temporary servitude either as an educational opportunity for learning a particular skill or more broadly an initiation into New World life, or welcomed it as a means to finance an otherwise unaffordable relocation. Other newcomers, however, were only pressed into signing indentures, often on un- favorable terms, because they had suffered unanticipated difficulties along the way. The distinction between immigrants who willingly accepted and often profited from the system of indentured servitude and those who were unexpectedly forced to make use of it is a significant one in understanding the history of the German immigration. A careful reading of contemporary comments concerning the system's role in the lives of German immigrants reveals that commentators like Christopher Sauer, Gottlieb Mittelberger, and Henry Melchior Muhlen- berg never questioned the rightful existence of the system nor the use of formal contracts. In fact, they pointed to the financial and educational advantages that could be gained if masters were chosen wisely. 22 Yet these commentators also saw the seamier side of servitude and displayed sympathy, indignation, and anger when the system was used to unduly exploit newly arrived Germans. 23 By the middle of the eighteenth century, when the wave of German immigra- tion crested and the proportion of financially independent passengers began to decline significantly, more and more arrivals turned to indentured servitude as their only means for financing the passage. As a consequence, purchasers of German immigrants assumed a substantial portion of the risk for merchants who had extended credit in Rotterdam. Not surprisingly, under those condi- tions cooperating merchants in Philadelphia sought to profit from the situation by cutting back offers to immigrants of alternative options for long-term pay- ment and instead asked for instant cash from the sale of indentures to pay any outstanding passage. Against this background of negotiating indentures it is important to re- member that varying the length of time to fit the size of debt distinguished the indenture system of the German trade. Contracts were, however, modified fur- ther to allow for special skills or particular handicaps. Thus, variations of sev- eral months, even years, in the length of bound service were common among German immigrants to account for the needs and qualifications of particular individuals. In summary, three major features critically shaped the system of indentured servitude for German immigrants before the Revolution. The first was the de- velopment of flexible terms of the price and length of service for indentures. The substantial proportion of families among the immigrants in the early decades of German immigration and the willingness of the merchants in Rotterdam to credit fares against a strong demand for labor in Pennsylvania were largely responsible for this feature. [ 65 ] The second decisive characteristic was the keen interest the Rotterdam merchants had in the transatlantic transportation of passengers for profit. It filled a valuable niche in their total operations. Although the business of gather- ing and provisioning cargoes of German emigrants was a very specialized ac- tivity, the Rotterdam merchants involved in it had typically a wide variety of trading interests. Providing overseas passage on vessels involved in trades carry- ing bulky commodities from the American colonies to Europe, the English merchants in Holland profitably filled under-utilized carrying capacity from Europe to North America. Their success in this German emigrant trade, how- ever, depended on a certain passenger per ship ratio; also the merchants learned to mix secure fares paid upon embarkation with higher-risk ones credited until debarkation. In other words, their objective was a set number of freights per ship's run. Their offer of credited passages—redeemable upon arrival, with in- terest—assured a reasonably steady demand for overseas passage as long as the opportunities for Germans with limited financial resources remained favorable in the colonies. The incentives—or the perception of incentives—for relocation to the New World constituted the third factor that gave the German redemptioner system its characteristic shape. Although the returns from bound service changed in the course of the eighteenth century, and were always somewhat dependent on individual circumstances, the majority of young adult men and women from Germany took advantage of this means to finance their move to the American colonies. By it they often gained guaranteed employment and convenient initiation into a new way of life at a time when such support and help were crucial. The range of possible gains from bound service was even broader for teenagers, especially if formal training was part of their contract. Yet even if the agreement between master and servant worked out sufficiently satis- factory in the majority of cases, the number of immigrants who were pressed into servitude by adverse circumstances rather than by inclination or accord- ing to expectations was large enough to attract much attention and bad press, which has formed the basis for much of the negative stereotype in the literature about the experience of indentured servants at this time. By comparison, the features that shaped indentured servitude for emigrants from Ireland were quite different from those of the German redemptioner sys- tem. The differences in the trade that brought the Irish to the Deleware Val- ley accounted for much of the "ethnic" distinction. Immigrants from both countries depended on transatlantic transportation on vessels employed in Britain's overseas trade. In contrast to Germany, Ireland had close and regu- lar commercial links to colonial Pennsylvania. Moreover, Irish emigration fluctuated more directly in response to conditions at home without govern- mental restrictions frequently encountered in German states. Passage from any of the Irish ports was cheaper, shorter, and less traumatic than the voyage from Rotterdam. A modern reader, for instance, must realize the cost in time, provisions, and often health of passengers in the process of clearing a southern [66] English port and beating out the Channel. This could be equivalent to the total Atlantic voyage after clearing the Scilly Isles. Throughout the colonial period a steady, though moderate, flow of immigrants from Ireland landed in Philadelphia. Twice, in the late 1720s and early 1770s, this stream swelled sub- stantially. 24 Overall, however, Irish migration to the Delaware Valley remained at about half the level of that from Germany. In the years of relatively light immigration (1730s through early 1760s), the distribution of newcomers from southern and northern Ireland was roughly equal, the number of passengers on each ship small, and the proportion of indentured servants—mostly young, single men—large. During the two peak periods of Irish immigration (the late 1720s and early 1770s), the majority of passengers embarked in Ulster, paid their fare in advance, traveled in family groups, and often disembarked in New Castle, Delaware, before the vessels made port in Philadelphia. The last decade before the Revolution was the most crucial for the Irish immigration to Penn- sylvania. More than half of all the Irish arrived during those years—a period after the vast majority of German immigrants had already become settlers in the province or had moved farther south. Unlike the German immigration to colonial America, emigrants from Ireland could make use of the close geographic and economic connections between the Irish seaports and their hinterlands. These ties linked virtually all of Ireland regularly and directly with many parts of the North Atlantic commercial com- munity, in particular England, the west Indies, and the middle colonies of British North America. Often built on personal contacts, these ties also pro- vided dependable lines of communication. 25 Such networks allowed both pro- moters and prospective emigrants to react swiftly to pertinent news. Irishmen considering migration could use this information to choose among distinations and shippers. Correspondingly, merchants desiring to transport passengers and servants across the Atlantic took advantage of communication networks to gather information about prospective passengers and to publicize their opera- tions in the trade. Good local knowledge permitted them to balance mixed cargoes of freight, passengers, and servants in the Irish trade. Some of the ports of embarkation in Ireland had special roles in the overseas trade. Four of the ports, namely Dublin, Cork, Belfast, and Londonderry, car- ried the majority of Irish emigrants to Philadelphia because vessels sailed from them to Pennsylvania frequently and regularly. Emigrants could always secure passage from those ports. Dublin and Cork, moreover, served as stopover points for vessels of many origins on their way across the Atlantic. Dublin was a vital link in the commercial credit chain while Cork specialized in victualing ships. Because several ships from Ulster stopped in these southern ports for these pur- poses—and probably gained passengers while there—it is not always possible to differentiate emigrants from northern and southern Ireland according to the ship's port of embarkation. In contrast, the Ulster ports of Newry, Lame, and Portrush, and the southern ports of Ligo, Limerick, Galway, and Waterford sent vessels to Pennsylvania less frequently and more irregularly. (About one-fifth [67] of all Irish emmigrant ships destined for Philadelphia came from those places between 1750 and 1775.) Merchants with interests in the transatlantic trans- portation of immigrants were primarily concentrated in Dublin, Cork, Belfast, and Londonderry. From there they branched out to neighboring ports by means of local agents and advertising campaigns in efforts to satisfy the demands of an overseas labor market and to capture and maintain a share in the Irish passenger trade. The predominance of Philadelphia as the destination of vessels leaving with passengers and servants from at least four major ports in Ireland reflects both the popularity of colonial Pennsylvania for Irish emigrants and the strength of the commercial ties that linked the Delaware Valley with much of Ireland. 26 Both aspects contributed to the distinct regional and seasonal characteristics that marked the Irish immigration to Philadelphia. Throughout the eighteenth century, the provision trade—mainly beef, pork, and butter for re-export—con- stituted the bulk of Irish cargoes destined for Pennsylvania. Especially after mid-century, Dublin and the Ulster ports added linen to their shipments while Cork sent wines and other re-export goods from southern Europe, the West Indies, and England. In return, Philadelphia supplied most of the flax seed that Ireland imported in the second half of the eighteenth century, supplemented grain and flour supplies in years when Ireland had poor harvests, and con- tributed to the Irish provision trade by exporting ship biscuits and barrel staves. After 1763, the rhythm of the flax seed trade largely determined the seasonal sailing pattern. In early fall the flax seed fleet assembled in Philadelphia to take cargo. Depending on weather conditions, the size of the fleet, and the volume of the trade the ships left in December for Ireland. There, the choice of Irish destination was governed by the home port of each vessel, the cargo she carried besides flax seed and the plans for the return voyage. Ships sailing from Ireland to Philadelphia made the voyage in spring and summer and early fall. About one-quarter of all departures—evenly distributed between the northern and southern regions—occurred in March and April, while over one-half of the ves- sels set sail in July through September. Ships from Ulster generally preceded those originating from the south but eventually joined the convoy leaving Philadelphia with flax seed. The regularity and frequency with which ships sailed from Ireland was a de- cisive advantage for prospective emigrants. Whether or not would-be immi- grants to Pennsylvania had the sophistication to take advantage of these choices and obtain the best possible fares or situations can only be surmised by indirect evidence. The manner by which emigrants who were too poor to pay the fare in advance, secured passage as indentured servants cannot be ascertained in great detail from the scanty evidence currently available. The little that is known concerns the procedure by which indentures were legally contracted. 27 Indentures for servitude that bound emigrants to merchants or captains were made before the mayor of the port of embarkation, whose responsibility it was [68] to insure that minors were committed only with the consent of their parents or guardians and that all contracts were entered into voluntarily.  Unfortu- nately, only a few of those indentures have survived—altogether too few to allow the kind of analysis that has been so fruitfully applied to the surviving lists of servants departing from England. At present, a profile of the servants   (their ages, occupations, and former places of residence) cannot be constructed nor can the Irish investor in servants for the overseas market be characterized further in any detail. The occasional remarks and scattered pieces of information that speak to these questions fit the general picture of recruitment of servants for the American colonies as we know it from England. Skilled men and teenage boys headed the list of requests from Philadelphia merchants involved in the Irish servant trade.   In 1745- 1746—the only year for which such data survive—only 10.9% of 542 indentures recorded for Irish immigrants were for women or girls. 28   The vast majority of servants arrived in "parcels," averaging between one or two dozen per ship. This observation  together with  evidence that at times protective measures against the coercion of emigrants were called for and the fact that vessels re- peatedly postponed their departure in the hope of obtaining a full cargo suggest that demand for servants generally exceeded their supply.   Consequently, in- vestment in Irish servants was on a rather modest scale for those merchants and captains with interests in this particular aspect of the provision trade. Moreover, it is unclear whether the servants signed on for overseas employment because  they wanted to immigrate to  Pennsylvania  and  thereby had their passage paid, or whether they consented to indenture only as a last resort be- cause they could not find work elsewhere.   Undoubtedly, persons leaving for both reasons could be found in any shipload of servants.   It is less certain however, whether overall fluctuations occurred in the desire or the necessity to go overseas as bound emigrants.   Emigration peaks observed in response to local circumstances of trouble, such as raised rents and bad harvests, point toward the latter mechanism of necessity. Generally, the demand for Irish servants in Pennsylvania outpaced their supply; numbers of individual shipments tended to be small; persons of marginal age, experience, or skill could find places; and competition among shippers was brisk. 29 As the price of the indenture was the only term of the contract nego- tiable upon arrival, captains and merchants with vested interest in the sale of indentured servants from Ireland tried to match supply and demand as closely as possible. Yet not all servant cargoes fitted the specification of their consignees in Philadelphia perfectly or corresponded well to market conditions prevalent at the time of their arrival, and so some individuals brought low net prices. 30 Most servants, however, could be sold profitably, within a couple of weeks or months, except in late summer and early fall, when most of the German immigrant ships arrived, and in the mid-1750s, when few employers risked in- vestment in bound labor for fear their servants would join the King's army. [69] The role of the servant in most of the negotiations was rather passive. In Ire- land, he or she may have had considerable choice among destinations and ship- pers, but upon arrival in Philadelphia, compatibility between the employer and servant was usually the master's prerogative. The rather steady and regular influx of indentured servants in small install- ments from southern Ireland—at an average of over one hundred servants annually—was augumented, quite likely doubled, by a similar flow originating in Ulster. The mechanisms of procurement and sale of servants from northern Ireland were comparable to those practiced in the servant trade from southern Irish ports because of the commercial links between Ulster and the Delaware Valley resembled those connecting southern Ireland and Philadelphia to a degree that some of the sailing patterns, and trading partners overlapped. Overall, the labor market of colonial Pennsylvania was supplied with relatively small shipments of one or two dozen servants from ever-changing and shifting labor reservoirs in several Irish seaports and their hinterlands. Depending largely on local conditions in Ireland, these sources of labor for Philadelphia fluctuated around over two hundred bound servants per year, which was enough to allow some specialization among shippers regularly involved in the trade with Ireland but was well below the capacity of the colonial Pennsylvania market. Despite the similarities of the influx of servants from both parts of Ireland, the emerging overall pattern of Irish immigration to colonial Pennsylvania reveals distinct differences between streams originating from northern and southern Irish ports as well as indicating considerable variation from the pat- tern established for the German immigrant trade. The overall flow of Irish immigrants can be divided in three distinct periods and was dominated by two peaks (late 1720s and late 1770s). The total number of emigrants from southern Ireland was small and the proportion of servants among them large, compared to a high total emigration from northern Ireland of which only a relatively small percentage were indentured servants. The yearly importation of Irish servants was probably about 200 in the late 1720s and early 1730s. The majority of immigrants at that time, however, were not servants and thus immediately became settlers. Their success fueled future immigration and it colored reports home to relatives, friends, and neighbors who, at a later time when life in Ire- land was difficult, might be persuaded to choose the Delaware River ports over other American destinations. Furthermore, as these immigrants gained success, they became employers of servants regularly imported from Ireland. When Irish immigration decreased to a relatively low level in the 1730s through early 1760s, the number of indentured servants held steady. Probably two-thirds of all Irish immigrants to Philadelphia during those years were servants. Annual immigration fluctuated around four hundred with about one- half of the emigrants embarking in Ulster the other half in southern Irish ports and a seizable proportion of immigrants debarking in New Castle, Del- aware, before the ship reached Philadelphia. The evidence for this tenta- tive: The average number of passengers and servants taking passage on vessels [70] leaving from southern Irish ports to the Delaware Valley was forty-five. For the years 1745-1746., for which data on the number of indentured servants from Ireland has survived, the average number of Irish servants on vessels coming up the river without delay was thirty. In the thirteen years before the Revolution, when Irish immigration to the Delaware Valley soared to a total of about eleven thousand from Ulster, the annual average of immigrants from southern Irish ports was less than two hundred, which, given the regular trade during those years, meant about an average of only twenty passengers per ship of those carrying immigrants. Among those passengers the percentage of family groups was small (15%) and the proportion of indentured servants was over one half (55.2% for the brief period from October 1771 to May 1772, when passengers lists could be matched with the lists of indentures). 31 The bulk of the other thirty percent were apparently individuals paying their passage in adavnce, since, they do not appear as redemptioners in Philadelphia. By comparison, in the years prior to the Revolution, immigration from Ulster not only outpaced the flow from southern Ireland by a large margin; the proportion of family groups was almost half the total number of people and the percentage of indentured servants and redemptioners was low (9.7%). Among this group of poor newcomers some made their own contract arrangements in Philadelphia as a "redemptioners" while others arrived with the customary four-year indenture contracted in Ire- land, which was sold upon arrival to the highest bidder. Comparing the length of time and the relative price of the two types on contractual agreements re- veals that the redemptioners had more flexibility, probably as a result of specific skills and experience they could use as a basis for bargaining, while the servants arriving with indentures established in Ireland had little active part in nego- tiations about the price of their contract in Philadelphia. It is also possible that prospective masters were willing to pay higher prices and agree to generally better terms with redemptioners arriving from Ulster. Overall in the decade before the Revolution, the proportion of servants among Irish newcomers was maybe one-quarter, at most one-third—significantly smaller than the literature has implied.. Throughout the colonial period, indentured servants comprised the majority of emigrants embarking in southern Irish ports for Philadelphia and a distinct, relatively stable but small, minority of newcomers from Ulster. Already in the late 1720s, the pattern of their importation conformed to that of the commo- dities trade between those ports because the usual parcels of one or two dozen servants complemented other cargoes, mainly provisions, on ships regularly em- ployed on the route. Since virtually all of the indentures were contracted in Ireland, local merchants and captains there were the primary investors in the transportation of southern Irish servants for overseas markets. Some of them worked for their own accounts, while others worked as brokers or on commis- sion for merchants in Philadelphia. The procurement of servants for employ- ment across the Atlantic depended on the overflow or reserve of suitable and [ 71 ] willing poor artisans, laborers, their sons, or adventurers resident or vagrant in the southern seaports and their hinterlands. Subsequently, the original con- tractual agreement followed local customs and regulatory requirements. As a consequence specialization in the servant trade was possible in so far as the parcels of servants were one part of a trade where the main pattern was mixed cargoes of provisions, flax seed, linen, and passengers. The purchase of an indentured servant from Ireland, however, was as much a question of choice—determined by individual needs, preferences, and financial circumstances—as a function of supply, given alternatives among servants with a variety of personal backgrounds and national origins, and against a background in which other types of labor were available. 32 Generally, market conditions for newly arrived servants in southeastern Pennsylvania were rarely poor, but some kinds of indentures sold better than others. Viewed from the perspective of the indentured servants from Ireland, employment opportunities in the Delaware Valley were not merely a function of a variable demand for labor as determined by economic conditions but were also dependent on the extent and type of competition from other sources of labor. As the potential labor pool increased and diversified throughout the colonial period as a con- sequence of natural population growth, continuous immigration, and the im- portation of servants or slaves, opportunities for boundservants were eroded by competition accordingly, so that despite widely varied labor demand prospects for employment under indenture or otherwise were considerably poorer at the time of the extended peak of Irish immigration in 1771-1773 than when the first migration wave from Ireland crested in 1729. The feature of indentured servitude contracted in Philadephia that was dis- tinctively Irish then, was the relatively small but steady supply of mostly young, poor men transported to Pennsylvania—comparable to the immigration of serv- ants to the Chesapeake Bay colonies in the seventeenth century. Moreover, the Irish servants constituted part of a mixed cargo in a regular commodities trade between Ireland and the Delaware Valley. The emigrants chose Phil- adelphia over other destinations in England and America because they know through reliable lines of communication that transportation was frequent and dependable, that employment upon landing was basically guaranteed, and that opportunities for freed servants were reasonable. Comparing the system of indentured servitude for Irish immigrants with the redemptioner system developed for newcomers from Germany reveals the dif- ferent interests shippers had in the transportation of servants and the diverse expectations immigrants hoped for when binding themselves out. These differ- ences are manifest not only in the "ethnically" distinctive mechanisms of nego- tiating contracts for bound servitude but foremost in the difference in price for what seem comparable circumstances and terms in Philadelphia. Com- parison of records of indentures show that German servants fetched consist- ently higher prices per year than Irish servants, among whom those from Ulster seemed more desirable to employers than those from the southern Irish coun- [72] ties. 33 Analysis of the two trades responsible for the transportation of immi- grants from Ireland and Germany respectively, suggests, however, that the best explanation is simpler than the models of investment in human capital or in the efficiency of forward-labor contracting which have recently been pre- sented in the literature. 34 Neither of these models adequately accounts for the facts that the primary interest of the merchants in the German passenger trade centered on the transportation of emigrants—quite irrespective of the fact that a substantial number of those passengers ended up as bound servants in order to pay their fare—and that the servants on ships carrying linen, pro- visions, and flax seed between Philadelphia and Ireland were just one part of a mixed cargo.   Consequently, the basic price differential between Irish and German servants in Philadelphia was more a function of the differences in the cost of the voyage to the merchant. It is therefore not surprising that—assum- ing comparable profit margins—merchants involved in the Irish trade saw little gain in demanding more than the price set according to custom in the port of embarkation because that price not only assured them competitiveness in the market when signing on servants but also covered their expenses adequately and constituted a healthy profit. 35   By comparison, merchants involved in the Ger- man immigrant trade were seemingly at a disadvantage in their reliance on indentured servitude to redeem passage debts because the overall transpor- tation costs from Rotterdam to Philadelphia were higher than those from Ire- land. 36    The profits of the Rotterdam and Philadelphia merchants, however, were not directly dependent on the net profit from the cost of the voyage and the price of the indenture. The money that could be made in the German im- migrant trade was the result of transporting a large number of passengers per ship and indentured servitude was simply one way of receiving payment for such transportation costs.  Because they calculated fares shrewdly and generally re- ceived about half of the passage money in advance, virtually all passage money received upon arrival in Philadelphia was profit for the Rotterdam merchants and their Philadelphia partners.   Against this background of extreme differ- ences in the price for passage from Ireland and Germany respectively, which formed the basis for negotiations for indentured servitude, it is very surprising indeed that German newcomers found masters at all.  Yet the readiness with which Pennsylvania invested much in the future labor of immigrants from Germany suggests that the cultural or "ethnic" component of the patterns and mechanisms of the Pennsylvania labor market need to be explored in much greater detail than previously and that only close attention to the characteristics of the masters willing to pay the higher prices will afford the insights we have so far sought from the analysis of the record of the indentures. Given the great variety of terms among the indentures of immigrants willing or pressed to serve in return for their passage, the next step of inquiry has to be matching employers and servants in southeastern Pennsylvania systemati- cally and with sufficient detail in order to gain new insights into the structure of the colonial labor market, the differentiation of local demand that made certain [73] kinds of more expensive servitude possible, and the experience of immigrants who started life in the middle colonies as servants. NOTES 1 For a recent summary of the literature on servitude, see John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1985), 242-44; see also, Parley Ward Grubb, "Immigration and Servitude in the Colony and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania: A Quantitative and Economic Analysis," unpubl. Ph. D. dissertation, (University of Chicago, 1984). 2 For the colonial period, two sets of indentures for servants have survived: George W. Neible, ed., "Servants and Apprentices Bound and Assigned before James Hamilton Mayor of Philadelphia, 1745," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography [hereafter PMHB] 30-32 (1906-1908); "Records of Indentures of Individuals Bound Out as Apprentices, Servants, Etc. and of Germans and Other Redemptioners in the Office of the Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, October 3, 1771, to October 5, 1773," City Archives of Philadelphia. 3 For more detail, see Marianne Wokeck, "The Flow and the Composition of German Immigra- tion to Philadelphia, 1727-1775," PMHB 105 (1981): 249-78. 4 Historians of other, later transatlantic migrations have found that the combination of a strong tradition to migrate with any one or more push factors nearly always result in substantial levels of emigration. See, for example, Sten Carlsson, "Chronology and Composition of Swedish Emigration to America," From Sweden to America: A History of the Migration. A Collective Work of the Uppsala Migration Research Project, eds. Harald Runblom and Hans Norma (Minne- apolis, 1976), 140. 5 Joris Wertmuller, 16 March 1684, quoted in Samuel W. Pennypacker, "The Settlement of Germantown," Pennsylvania. German Society: Proceedings and Addresses 9 (1899), 102. 6 For more detail on the communication networks and recruiting mechanisms that shaped emi- gration from Germany, see Marianne Sophia Wokeck, "A Tide of Alien Tongues: The Flow and Ebb of German Immigration to Pennsylvania, 1688-1776," unpubl. PH. D. dissertation (Temple University, 1982), chaps. 2 and 4. 7 For further details, see Marianne S. Wokeck, "Promoters and Passengers: The German Immi- grants Trade, 1683-1775," The World of William Penn, eds. Richard S. Dunn and Mary Maples Dunn, (Philadelphia, 1986); "A Tide of Alien Tongues," chap 4. 8 The custom house notices published in the Pennsylvania. Gazette provide information on the sailing routes of vessels that landed German immigrants in Philadelphia. 9 The "charterparties" or contracts between the merchants and the captains which have sur- vived in the old notarial archives (ONA) in the municipal archives of Rotterdam and Amsterdam allow many insights into the workings of this business. The other important sources for the management of the trade are merchants' letterbooks, for example the Hunt & Greenleafe letter- book in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania [HSP], and the accounts such as the ones bundled in "Redemptioners, Philadelphia, 1750-1880, Society Miscellaneous Collections, box 7a, folder 7, HSP. 10 Johann Philip Buch, for instance, was a boatman of Wertheim and also an emigrant agent. Don Yoder ed., Pennsylvania German Immigrants, 1709-1786: Lists Consolidated from Yearbooks of The Pennsylvania German Folklore Society (Baltimore, 1980), pp. 168-70. 11 Philadelphia merchants involved in the German immigrant trade can be identified systemati- cally only for the years after 1750. By this date the headings of the ship lists (Ralph B. Strass- burger, Pennsylvania German Pioneers: A Publication of the Original Lists of Arrivals in the Port of Philadelphia, from 1727-1808, ed. William J. Hinke [1934; reprint Baltimore, 1966]) included the name of the merchant to whom the immigrants were consigned; John J. McCusker, "Ships Registered at the Port of Philadelphia before 1776: A Computerized Listing" (typescript, 1970), HSP, has information about the ownership of immigrant vessels; the "Tonnage Duty Book" [ 74 ] (1764-75), 3 vols., Cadwalader Collection, Thomas Cadwalader Section, HSP, lists the consignees and/or owners of ships entering Philadelphia. 12 Only indirect evidence, describing both of these options, survives but neither "private" con- tracts between Germans leaving from Rotterdam nor records of indentures agreed upon in London have been found. 13 Legally there was no difference between indentures contraced before embarkation in exchange for overseas passage and indentures agreed upon in Philadelphia in order to redeem fare debts. The role of the servant, however, may have been very different in these negotiations. The already indentured servant was limited to re-negotiation of basically fixed terms while the "redemptioner" had considerably more say in the particulars of length of service and freedom dues. 14 Johannes Naas to Jacob Wilhelm Naas, 17 October 1783, published in Der Deutsche Pionier 12 (1880), 349. 15 See, for example, the accounts of the families Daagen, Eberhard, Jongh, Knor, and Reinhard on the ship Britannia (1773), "Redemptioners, Philadelphia, 1750-11830," Society Miscellaneous Collections, box 7a, folder 7, HSP. 16 For details, see Wokeck, "A Tide of Alien Tongues," chap. 4. 17 See the proviso in the contract of the passengers on the ship Pennsylvania Packet (16 Febru- ary 1773, "Redemptioners, Philadelphia, 1750-1830"), which stipulated a limited time of two weeks within which the immigrants had to come up with the fare payment—thereafter the captain or the owner of the vessel could dispose of the delinquent newcomers as they saw fit. 18 Those immigrants who had hoped to be met upon arrival but were disappointed in their ex- pectations were most likely to be in this position. While awaiting the aid of friends, uncertainty of how to pay the balance due became more difficult to bear as time passed and winter set in, expenses owed to the ship continued to rise, and pressures mounted to land. In this situation, indentured servitude could seem the only way out, unless the merchant agreed to extend credit for a still longer time in the form of a promissory note or a long-term bond. 19 See "Lists of Outstanding Debts on Sales of Palatines on the ships Pennsylvania and Chance" and "Lists of Promissory Notes and Bonds," in Redemptioners, Philadelphia, 1750-1830," HSP. 20 Gottlieb Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania, ed. Oscar Handlin, trans. John Cline (Cam- bridge, Mass., 1960), 16. 21 For examples of the merchants' creative accounting, see Wokeck, "A Tide of Alien Tongues," 225. 22 See, for example, Sauer's comments in Pennsylvanische Berichte, 1 December 1754; Mittel- berger, Journey to Pennsylvania, p. 18; Nachrichten van den Vereinigten Deutschen Evangelisch- Lutherischen Gemeinden in Nord-America, absonderlich in Pennsylvania, eds. W. J. Mann and W. German, vol. 1, (Allentown, 1886), 461; for other assessments of indentured servitude for German immigrants, see Wokeck, "A Tide of Alien Tongues," 240, n. 45. 23 The German Society of Pennsylvania—founded in 1764—considered it part of their mission to protect newly arrived Germans against abuses in the trade and exploitation through the sys- tem of indentured servitude but they never questioned the existence of bound labor in principle. 24 For details, see Wokeck, "A Tide of Alien Tongues," chap. 6, especially Table 3 and Figures 9-10. 25 The following description is based on Robert J. Dickson, Ulster Emigration to Colonial America, 1718-1775 (London, 1966) . 26 For a complete list of sources, see Wokeck, "A Tide of Alien Tongues," Table 3. 27 Most of the surviving evidence is for Dublin and Cork, Dickson, Ulster Emigration, p. 89; Audrey Lockhart, Some Aspects of Emigration from Ireland to the North American Colonies be- tween 1660 and 1775 (New York 1976) 74-75; Pennsylvania Gazette, 17 November 1729. 28 "Servants and Apprentices Bound ... 1745." 29 Merchants involved in the trade had, for instance specific requests for servants, presumably to give them a competitive edge. See "Extracts from the Letter-Book of Benjamin Marshall," PMHB 20 (1896), 209-10; James & Drinker to Captain Enoch Story, 6 May 1769, Letterbook of James & Drinker, HSP. [75] 30 See, for example, the sequence of sales of servants recorded in the accountbook of Richard Neave Jr. 1773-1774 HSP. 31 "Passenger list [1768-1772], " HSP. 32 The records of indentures attest to the diversity among bound servants and apprentices— wage laborers and slaves cannot so easily be measured. 33 For a breakdown of all indentures by port of embarkation, see Grubb, "Immigration and Servitude," 171-72, 269-70; "The Market for Indentured Immigrants: Evidence on the Efficiency of Forward-Labor Contracting in Philadelphia, 1745-1778," Journal of Economic History 45 (1985), 855-68; my own comparison of the "Records of Indentures (1771-1773)" and the "List of Pass- engers [1768-1772]" shows the same differentiation. 34 These economic explanations for indentured servitude have been offered by Robert Owen Heavner, Economic Aspects of Indentured Servitude in Colonial Pennsylvania, 1771-1773 (New York, 1978); David W. Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America (Cambridge, Mass., 1981); and Grubb, "The Market for Indentured Immigrants." None of these scholars has attempted to explain the coexistence of what appear to be quite separate markets for redemptioners and in- dentured servants, although both types o{ bound servants found employment in the same regional market. 35 The full fare from Ulster was about £4 sterling; the cost about £3 sterling; and indentures in Philadelphia ranged from £8 to £13 sterling. Dickinson, Ulster Emigration, 203; "Records of In- dentures." 36 The full fare from Rotterdam was on average about £8 sterling but credit arrangements and additional expenses could swell the price for passage significantly. The cost of the voyage was probably about £5 sterling, although no direct evidence has been found. Against this back- ground, both the importance of flexible terms for indentures and the comparatively higher level at which German indentures were priced, are no longer surprising. The prices of fares for the transatlantic voyage were culled from accounts of ships; for details, see Wokeck, "A Tide of Alien Tongues," chap. 5. [76]