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]
The appendix contains several lists, etc., not immediately relating to Pennsylvania: p. 439-449, lists of Palatines in New York Colony, 1709-1714; p. 449, list of Palatines in North Carolina, 1709-1710; p. 449-451, lists of Salzburgers in Georgia, 1734-1741; p. 454-460, notice of the German settlement in North Carolina, 1709-1710; p. 460-462, Germanna, Va.; p. 463-464, list of Huguenots in New Rochelle, N.Y., 1710; p. 479-495, interpretation of baptismal names.
Publisher from spine.
Cover title: Thirty thousand names of immigrants in Pennsylvania.
Includes indexes.
Reprint of: 2nd rev. and enl. ed. Philadelphia : I. Kohler, 1876 ; with Ernst Wecken's index, and with Index to ships.
The original lists of persons of quality, emigrants, religious exiles, political rebels, serving men sold for a term of years, apprentices, children stolen, maidens pressed, and others who went from Great Britain to the American plantations, 1600-1700 : with their ages, the localities where they formerly lived in the mother country, the names of the ships in which they embarked, and other interesting particulars, from mss. preserved in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty's Public Record Office, England
