In 1654 the Bristol City Council passed an ordinance requiring that a register of servants destined for the colonies be kept, the purpose being to prevent the practice of dumping innocent youths into servitude. The registers, covering the period 1654 to 1686, are the largest body of indenture records known, and they also are a unique record of English emigration to the American colonies.Of the total of 10,000 servants in these registers, almost all came from the West Country, the West Midlands, or from Wales. Most entries give the name of the servant, his place of origin (until 1661), length of service, destination (usually Virginia, Maryland, or the West Indies), name of master, and, after 1670, the name of the ship. Four indexes have been included, one each for servants, masters, places of origin, and ships. [from Ancestry.com]
"A comprehensive listing compiled from English public records of those who took ship to the Americas for political, religious, and economic reasons; of those who were deported for vagrancy, roguery, or non-conformity; and of those who were sold to labour in the New Colonies."
Contents: 1. German long - distance migration / 2. The flow and composition of German immigration to the American colonies / 3. The trade in migrants / 4. The ordeal of relocation / 5.Irish immigration to the Delaware Valley / Conclusion : A model for the modern era / Appendix : German immigration voyages 1683 to 1775
Summary
"Wokeck shows how first the German system of immigration, and then the Irish system, evolved from earlier, haphazard forms into modern mass trans-oceanic migration. At the center of this development were merchants on both sides of the Atlantic who organized a business that enabled them to make profitable use of underutilized cargo space on ships bound from Europe to the British North American colonies. This trade offered German and Irish immigrants transatlantic passage on terms that allowed even people of little and modest means to pursue opportunities that beckoned in the New World. The eighteenth-century changes established a model for the better-known mass migrations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which drew wave after wave of Europeans to the New World in the hope of making a better life than the one they left behind-a story that is familiar to most modern Americans." [from the publisher]
