Helping People Get Back on Their Feet

Helping People Get Back on Their Feet
Deuteronomy 15: 1- 18

According to a legal record from July 6, 1773, James Best, a laborer, “doth voluntarily put himself Servant to Captain Stephen Jones Master of the Snow Sally” (a snow was a kind of sailing ship). Jones would take Best from London to Philadelphia, and Best would work there for three years for someone who bought Best; he would provide Best with food, drink, clothing, lodging and whatever else he needed for the three years. Then Best would be freed. Alternatively, if Best was in a position to pay fifteen pounds on his arrival in America, he could be freed then. A subsequent legal record in Philadelphia records how Best was duly “redeemed by” (that is, sold to) one David Rittenhouse in Philadelphia (presumably this was David Rittenhouse the famous astronomer and public servant), who paid Jones the fifteen pounds and took on the obligation to supply Best’s needs in return for the three years’ service. Best’s story is in outline a typical one; maybe the majority of people who came from Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries came as indentured servants in this way. It would be nice to hope that Rittenhouse treated him well, though many such servants were ill-treated on the voyage and after their arrival in America...