"The U.S. was settled, in large part, by working indentured children... Over 1/2 the people who settled the Colonies south of New England came to America under contracts of indenture... The average age of an indentured servant was 14."
~Barbara Woodhouse, "Hidden in Plain Sight"
TIL that Fredrick Douglass saw my ancestors' journey ๐
the history of a social category 'child' gives context to the stories of these youths, bound to a master who paid their passage once they arrived alive & obliged to settle the debt with their labor
every man had a master & every woman had 2
