Escaping Servitude

Antonio T. Bly is associate professor of history at Appalachian State University.Tamia Haygood is a graduate teaching fellow at Appalachian State University.

• ContentsPart 1Half Slave, Half Free: A Study of the Runaway Servant in Eighteenth-Century VirginiaPart 2A Documentary HistoryNotice on NoticesNote on NewspapersVirginia Notices, 1738-1789GlossaryAppendix AReprintsAppendix BTablesAppendix BImages Appendix CJames Revel, The Poor Unhappy Transported Felon's Sorrowful Account of His Fourteen Years Transportation, at Virginia, in America. In Six Parts.Subject IndexName IndexAbout the Authors

Newspaper notices of fugitive slaves are relatively common fare in history texts and in the broader US historical consciousness. Lesser known are contemporaneous published newspaper notices of runaway servants of mainly European descent who fled to escape bondage. This study by historians Bly and Haygood provides a rich source of primary documents in the form of chronologically arranged transcriptions of all notices of runaway servants appearing in the Virginia Gazette and other newspapers over more than six decades of the 18th century. Although limited to Virginia, the work presents a unique perspective on an era of American history when men and women who were either indentured, apprentices in servitude, or convicts managed to escape their plight. The resultant notices provide rich details about the lives of these bondmen and bondwomen. There is an extensive introduction to the topic of servitude as well as a glossary of 18th-century vocabulary. . . .The authors do provide tables of aggregated data describing various characteristics of the servants. . . .A good addition to all academic libraries. Summing Up: Recommended. Undergraduates through researchers/faculty.