Additional information
by Joseph Lee Boyle (Compiled by)
This is the eighth collection of runaway servant ads for the Chesapeake region compiled by Joseph Lee Boyle, and it covers Pennsylvania ads for the years 1769-1772. As Mr. Boyle points out in his very helpful introduction, Pennsylvania received one-tenth of all male indentured servants from the 1720s through the 1740s, and about one-fifth of the women in that period. According to one authority, over 67,000 German immigrants arrived at the busy port of Philadelphia from 1720 through 1760, at least half of whom were servants. Mr. Boyle's transcription of the runaway ads is taken from twenty-four different colonial newspapers, including papers from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, and New York, as well as one German-language tabloid. The ads provide valuable demographic information on more than 2,500 additional individuals, with name, age, sex, height, place of origin, clothing, occupation, speech, physical imperfections, and sometimes personal vignettes and even poems.
