Fraught Forms: Negotiating Servitude in Colonial New England

Indenture contracts were commonly used in seventeenth- and eighteenth- century New England to formalize labor agreements in which servants (primarily youth) were bound to a master's household for a set period. In addition to immigrant servitude, there were many local practices of private indenture in which these forms were written, signed, and stored within households. New Englanders drew on their familiarity with indenture papers and used them as tools to negotiate their relationships and obligations to one another. This article demonstrates how servants and masters alike developed legal literacies and forged creative strategies to use indenture papers as tools in both legal settings and social arenas. Its analysis also offers a textured view of power relations within early American households, revealing some of the strategies that unfree people deployed in negotiating power within local spaces.