Indenture has nothing to do with teeth

 The particular genealogy site I'm using for these posts displays some thumbnail pictures beside the names of ancestors on the tree.

These are taken from pictures that family researchers have uploaded to the site, and I've learned that sometimes the person so honored will have accomplished some interesting achievement. It's certainly far from foolproof, but as I was climbing up my wife's side of the tree and not finding much material, I ran across a picture of a cabin or barn or some such.

Whoever loaded this picture included no information about it. Were I to hazard a guess, I'd say it's located somewhere in Maryland, where the relative in question, Cornelius Shehane Sr., was interred. (I worked briefly at a funeral home while in college where I learned that particular bit of verbal camoflage.)

I looked at the other items attached to his record and read this bit of information: Cornelius Shehane came from Ireland in 1678 via Barbados as an indentured servant. What's this? Cornelius would have been 9 years old at the time. Surely he couldn't have been an indentured servant at that age. Then I found two other pieces of information. 

The first came from looking at his father's record, which notes that he died and was buried in Barbados a year after Cornelius arrived, which I took to be the indicator of how Cornelius came to be there. His whole family may have been indentured.

The second piece was this advert placed in the Philadelphia Gazette many years after Cornelius came: October 29, 1766 -- TO be disposed of, two Irish Servant Boys times, the one having Six, the other Seven Years to serve, and are suitable either for Town or Country Business. The above Servants Times are disposed of for no Fault, but only for want of Employment. For further Particulars, enquire of William Parr, Esq; or of the Subscriber, living at the Corner of Walnut and Third streets.

So children, it seems, could be indentured.

England had established quite a presence in the Caribbean in the 1600s, with one of the main purposes being the production of sugar. Colonists established cane plantations and processing facilities and needed workers badly. Two main sources for labor were slaves and indentured servants. In Barbados, the lion's share of indentures were Irish. Tens of thousands of Irish either entered into servitude voluntarily -- in the hopes of obtain either land or money at the end of their terms, or as a punishment for crime, particularly political crime. Given the Irish antipathy toward England and vice versa, plenty of political prisoners came to Barbados, with promise of freedom once an indenture ended. 

The lengths of indenture mentioned in the ad above were pretty much the standard back then, and the terms of indenture were all that kept these workers from being considered slaves. 

Sadly, the English looked on most Irish  as being a backward bunch. That many were Catholic instead of Anglican only intensified English bigotry. As a result, the Irish generally performed the most menial duties and were considered to be worth little more than the slaves they might find themselves working next to. They were considered to be disobedient, disloyal to the Crown, lazy and aggressive. 

Not surprisingly, the Irish did not appreciate being treated this way and joined with slaves in more than one uprising. As a result, the planters on Barbados attempted to ban the Irish from the island, though they failed. The need for labor was too great, and the people recruiting the Irish had no desire to give up the income they derived from setting up indentures.

Cornelius's record indicates he married in Ireland at the age of 39 and came to America two years later, settling in Talbot, Maryland, where he died at 70. I wish I knew the missing parts of his story.