3 Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America, ch. 5. Literacy of servants tended to be higher in East Anglia, and during the 18th century increased markedly.

4 Advertisements for runaway slaves in Virginia during the mid-18th century reported that less than one in a hundred were able to read and write. That proportion rose a little from 1750 to 1790, but remained at very low levels—much below rates of literacy among slaves in northern colonies. Literacy rates among 678 runaway slaves (according to published descriptions by their masters) was as follows:

Period

Able to Read

Able to Write

Able to Read and Write

Total

N

%

1750-59

0

0

1

1

135

0.7

1770-79

0

0

4

4

253

1.6

1790-99

5

4

5

14

189

7.4

Compiled by Donna Bouvier, Susan M. Irwin, Marc Orlofsky and the author from fugitive slave advertisments in the holdings of the Virginia Gazette.

5 The Rutmans’ study of literacy in Middlesex County, Virginia, yields estimates of literacy by gender and father’s status through time:

 

 

Literacy by Gender, Status and Period of Maturity

Status of

1650-1699

1700-1719

1720-1744

Father

m

f

m

f

ra

f

High

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

High Middle

87.5

80.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

83.3

Middle

80.0

17.8

81.4

17.9

78.7

17.8

Lower Middle

44.4

20.0

66.7

20.0

95.7

20.0

Low

50.0

5.3

47.5

0.0

45.8

14 3

Source: Rutman and Rutman, A Place in Time, Explicatus, 169

6 David Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order; Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1980), 73-74.