Why did many orphans and poor children become indentured servants?

Answer 1

First, families before the 1900s were typically large, anywhere from 2 to 16 children per family. Second, the four top occupations from the 1600s to 1800s were:

• farmers - agriculture or ivestock raising
• preachers, who were also farmers
• teachers, who were also farmers
• lawyers who may or may not be farmers
• Other occupations had fewer workers. For example, a rural area may have had one blacksmith, one miller (grains), one distiller (whiskey), etc.
• Later in the 1800s, most men and boys in coal areas became coal miners...or farmers.

Third, because farming contains inherent risks like bad weather, no rain OR floods, windstorms, etc., families could experience financial strife at any time.

Fourth, if a father died leaving a widow and children, there was often no family breadwinner. The family unit could not survive. So girls as young as 8-11 years old became indentured to a family as a maid or caretaker of children; boys as young as 8-11 became indentured laborers or farm hands. Some localities had church organized "Poor Farms" which took in children, then "indentured" them out to a family where the child would live and work for his/her Room and Board.

Indentured Servitude was not uncommon for the above reasons. Popular belief was that it helped the servant, however, mistreatment was often a real threat.

Adult Indentured servants also sometimes worked a piece of land as a sharecropper, working the land as "labor and crops" payment toward future purchase of the land. But so much was taken as "payment" that it was too hard to ever get ahead. Some land owners betrayed these men, withdrawing their promise to earn ownership of the lands the servants worked.

So basically, servants worked for the possibility to get fed and have a roof over their heads, knowing their "keeper" might at any time withhold food, earnings, or even beat / whip the servant. Not all "employers" were mean to their servants, but many were.

When a child reached the Age of Majority, OR the years expired on the contract of servitude, then the adult could leave and make a different life. But since many knew only the life of being a servant, they continued that as their occupation.