5 These lists also tell us much about the timing of migration. The number of Bristol emigrants rose steadily through the 1650s, reached a peak in 1659, fell a little in 1660 when Charles II returned to the throne, rose again to high levels in the 1670s, and then dropped sharply and remained at a low ebb through the next 20 years. See Abbot Emerson Smith, Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607-1776 (Chapel Hill, 1947), 71, 308-9; David Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America: An Economic Analysis (Cambridge, 1981), 34-39.
Another rough indicator of the rhythm of migration (though not of its rate) in this period is the annual number of headrights in Virginia. This evidence also shows high values in the years from 1635 to 1640, a trough from 1640 to 1649, a great surge from 1650 to 1664, and a decline thereafter. Headrights tended to lag behind migration, and cannot be used to estimate annual immigration. But they are valuable as an indicator of general trends; for a discussion see Craven, White, Red and Black, 1-37, which also reports the raw data. See also Edmund Morgan, “Headrights and Head Counts,” VMHB 80 (1972), 361-71; and Menard, “Immigration.”
6 Horn, “Social and Economic Aspects of Local Society in England and the Chesapeake,” 61. On this question a controversy has developed. Marcus Jernegan described Virginia’s servants as “dissolute persons of every type,” and Abbot Smith took them to be “rabble of all descriptions.” But Mildred Campbell argued the contrary proposition that most came from the “middling classes.” Mediating positions are taken by David Galenson, who estimated that low to middling occupations predominated, and by Horn, who concluded that they were a “broader cross section.”
Horn’s thesis includes an interesting comparison between Bristol emigrants and Gloucester militia. He finds that emigrants with listed occupations were more agrarian and less skilled than the militiamen of Gloucester as a whole. Further, no occupations were recorded for 30 to 60% of emigrants; Galenson has argued persuasively that many of these people of unknown origin were in fact unskilled farm laborers.
Servants who sailed from London were more skilled and more urban in their occupations than their Bristol counterparts, but less so than emigrants to New England in the period 1629-40.
7 Several studies have yielded the following occupational results for Chesapeake immigrants by port of departure:
Occupation |
Bristol |
London |
Farmers |
|
|
Laborers |
|
|
Artisans |
|
|
Gent. & Prof. |
|
|
Other |
|
|
James Horn, “Servant Emigration to the Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century,” in Tate and Ammerman, eds., The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century, 51-95; similar findings appear in Anthony Salerno, “The Character of Emigration from Wiltshire to the American Colonies, 1630-1660” (unpub. diss., Univ. of Virginia, 1977), 55; Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America 34–64.