An Indentured Servant's Letter Home (1623)

Despite deteriorating relations with the natives, often miserable environmental conditions, and a high mortality

rate, Englishmen—along with some Englishwomen and, after 1619, some Africans—continued to colonize Virginia

by planting more settlements. Although the later colonists were still fundamentally adventurers, more and more of

them came prepared to seek their fortune through agriculture, specifically the cultivation of tobacco. Tobacco was

a labor-intensive crop; thus, success and profit depended upon the acquisition and utilization of enough workers.

Although Virginia planters would eventually come to rely on slaves, for most of the seventeenth century they

turned to indentured laborers: colonists who contracted to work for a master for a specified number of years in

return for passage to America along with room and board and other benefits as noted in the contract. Thousands

of men and women accepted that challenge of hard work in the hope of future reward, only to realize once they

were in America that they were not willing or able to work quite so hard in such conditions. Richard Frethorne was

one of them. He was an indentured servant working at Martins Hundred, a plantation a few miles away from

Jamestown, a year after the 1622 Indian attack that left hundreds dead there and in the surrounding area. This

was also a year before the royal government took over the struggling colony.

From "An Indentured Servant's Letter," in Major Problems in the History of American Workers, Eileen Boris and Nelson Lichtenstein

modernized. Editorial insertions that appear in square brackets are from the Boris and Lichtenstein edition.—Ed.]

Loving and kind father and mother:

My most humble duty remembered to you, hoping in God of your good health, as I myself am at the making

hereof. This is to let you understand that I your child am in a most heavy case by reason of the nature of the

country, [which] is such that it causeth much sickness, [such] as the scurvy and the bloody flux and diverse other

diseases, which maketh the body very poor and weak. And when we are sick there is nothing to comfort for us; for

since I came out of the ship I never ate anything but peas, and loblollie (that is, water gruel). As for deer or

venison I never saw any since I came into this land. There is indeed some fowl, but we are not allowed to go and

get it, but must work hard both early and late for a mess of water gruel and a mouthful of bread and beef. A

mouthful of bread for a penny loaf must serve for four men which is most pitiful. [You would be grieved] if you did

know as much as [I do], when people cry out day and night— Oh! that they were in England without their limbs—

and would not care to lose any limb to be in England again, yea, though they beg from door to door. For we live in

fear of the enemy [Powhatan Indians] every hour, yet we have had a combat with them on the Sunday before

Shrovetide [Monday before Ash Wednesday], and we took two alive and made slaves of them. But it was by

policy, for we are in great danger; for our plantation is very weak by reason of the death and sickness of our

company. For we came but twenty for the merchants, and they are half dead just; and we look very hour when

two more should go. Yet there came some four other men yet to live with us, of which there is but one alive; and

our Lieutenant is dead, and [also] his father and his brother. And there was some five or six of the last year's

twenty, of which there is but three left, so that we are fain to get other men to plant with us; and yet we are but

32 to fight against 3000 if they should come. And the nighest help that we have is ten miles of us, and when the

rogues overcame this place [the] last [time] they slew 80 persons. How then shall we do, for we lie even in their

teeth? ...

And I have nothing to comfort me, nor there is nothing to be gotten here but sickness and death, except [in the

event] that one had money to lay out in some things for profit. But I have nothing at all—no, not a shirt to my

back but two rags (2), nor no clothes but one poor suit, nor but one pair of shoes, but one pair of stockings, but

one cap, [and] but two bands. My cloak is stolen by one of my own fellows, and to his dying hour [he] would not

tell me what he did with it; but some of my fellows saw him have butter and beef out of a ship, which my cloak, I

doubt [not], paid for. So that I have not a penny, nor a penny worth, to help me to either spice or sugar or strong

waters, without the which one cannot live here. For as strong beer in England doth fatten and strengthen them,

so water here doth wash and weaken these here [and] only keeps [their] life and soul together. But I am not half a

quarter so strong as I was in England, and all is for want of victuals; for I do protest unto you that I have eaten

more in [one] day at home than I have allowed me here for a week. You have given more than my day's allowance

to a beggar at the door; and if Mr. Jackson had not relieved me, I should be in a poor case. But he like a father and

she like a loving mother doth still help me.

For when we go up to Jamestown (that is 10 miles of us) there lie all the ships that come to land, and there they

must deliver their goods. And when we went up to town, as it may be, on Monday at noon, and come there by

night, [and] then load the next day by noon, and go home in the afternoon, and unload, and then away again in

the night, and [we would] be up about midnight. Then if it rained or blowed never so hard, we must lie in the boat

on the water and have nothing but a little bread. . . . But that Goodman Jackson pitied me and made me a cabin to

lie in always when I [would] come up, and he would give me some poor jacks [fish] [to take] home with me, which

comforted me more than peas or water gruel. Oh, they be very godly folks, and love me very well, and will do

anything for me. And he much marvelled that you would send me a servant to the Company; he saith I had been

better knocked on the head. And indeed so I find it now, to my great grief and misery; and [I] saith that if you love

me you will redeem me suddenly, for which I do entreat and beg. And if you cannot get the merchants to redeem

me for some little money, then for God's sake get a gathering or entreat some good folks to lay out some little

sum of money in meal and cheese and butter and beef. . . . But for God's sake send beef and cheese and butter, or

the more of one sort and none of another. But if you send cheese, it must be very old cheese; and . . . you must

have a care how you pack it in barrels; and you must put cooper's chips between every cheese, or else the heat of

the hold will rot them. And look whatsoever you send me—be it never so much—look, what [ever] I make of it, I

will deal truly with you. I will send it over and beg the profit to redeem me; and if I die before it come, I have

entreated Goodman Jackson to send you the worth of it, who hath promised he will. If you send, you must direct

your letters to Goodman Jackson, at Jamestown, a gunsmith. (You must set down his freight, because there be

more of his name there.) Good father, do not forget me, but have mercy and pity. ... I pray you to remember my

love to all my friends and kindred. I hope all my brothers and sisters are in good health, and as for my part I have

set down my resolution that certainly will be; that is, that the answer of this letter will be life or death to me.

Therefore, good father, send as soon as you can; and if you send me anything let this be the mark.

ROT Richard Frethorne,

Martin's Hundred

Review Questions

1. What sense of community did Frethorne note in this early settlement?

2. Although Frethorne worked primarily at the Martin's Hundred plantation, what other task did this company

servant commonly have to perform?

3. What were Frethorne's major complaints?

4. What did Frethorne want of his parents?