Analysis: Gottlieb Mittelberger’s Journey to Pennsylvania

Date: 1756

Author: Mittelberger, Gottlieb

Genre: memoir

Summary Overview

Gottlieb Mittelberger was a German musician who traveled to America to install an organ that had been purchased by a church in the Philadelphia region. On board the ship on which he sailed were a number of redemptioners—individuals who contracted to work for someone for a specified period of time as the means of paying for their passage to America. Mittelberger later wrote a memoir, Journey to Pennsylvania in the Year 1750, and Return to Germany in the Year 1754, in which he discourages Europeans from taking the risk of immigrating to America as redemptioners. His memoir is most noted for its negative assessment of the opportunities presented to these immigrants, describing the terrible conditions they had to endure in crossing the Atlantic, the system by which their contracts for labor were purchased by landowners or businessmen in the colonies, and the often-brutal conditions under which they labored.

Document Analysis

Mittelberger’s account of his journey to Pennsylvania describes the hardships endured by Europeans traveling to the colonies as redemptioners. He focuses in particular on the risks of the journey and on the fate of the redemptioners upon their arrival in America. As a visitor to the colonies who neither served as a redemptioner or indentured servant nor employed them, Mittelberger provided an account that, while not free of personal bias, was not based on personal investment in the institution. Ultimately, Mittelberger argued against the positive descriptions of indentured servitude written by some of his contemporaries and sought to dissuade his fellow Germans from choosing to become unpaid laborers.

Scholars have suggested that possibly more than half of the European immigrants who came to America were indentured servants or other kinds of unfree workers, such as convicts sentenced to work as laborers in the colonies. Many indentured servants entered into indenture voluntarily, and their reasons for doing so were largely economic; many of those recruited to immigrate to America as indentured servants were desperately poor and were willing to risk much on the hope that they might find better opportunities. Individuals writing at the time and early historians of colonial America developed a kind of rags-to-riches mythology that told of how poor servants came to America and, after serving a period of indenture, became wealthy landowners or businessmen themselves. In some cases, this was likely true. While they did work hard and had few legal guarantees of proper treatment, those who survived their years of servitude could then work as free laborers. Furthermore, because of the need for labor in the American colonies, free workers received wages higher than those they would have received in Europe. Many servants probably ended up better off, in strictly economic terms, than they would have been had they remained in their homelands.

In his memoir, Mittelberger attempts to dispel these notions of economic betterment and reveal the dangers associated with life as an indentured servant in the colonies. While his opinion of indentured servitude prior to his journey to Pennsylvania is unknown, Mittelberger returned to Germany an ardent opponent of the practice. Seeking to discourage his fellow Germans from traveling to America as redemptioners, he set out to describe the conditions under which indentured servants were brought to America and labored in Pennsylvania. His account illustrates both the value and the potential problems with primary sources from any era. Mittelberger witnessed many things with his own eyes, and his testimony about these is particularly valuable. However, he sometimes generalizes from the examples he has seen and draws conclusions that may not be representative of the experience of most indentured servants in order to deter his fellow countrymen from taking that path. Nevertheless, his account is an important one, particularly as a counterpoint to the writings of those in favor of indentured servitude. Mittelberger’s account and those by others like him suggest that the possibility of future prosperity is not worth the risks of a dangerous journey and poor working conditions.

Mittelberger begins by describing the unpleasant voyage from England to America. He writes that the trip typically took eight to twelve weeks, but many crossings were shorter, in the range of three to six weeks. Storms, or contrary winds, could cause the voyage to take longer than usual. Many sources from the colonial era testify to the health risks of an Atlantic crossing, and the hardships Mittelberger describes were not confined to ships carrying redemptioners. Even paying passengers such as Mittelberger or military personnel whom the government would naturally want to arrive healthy enough to be of service suffered much during such voyages. “I myself had to pass through a severe illness at sea,” he writes. Overcrowding, poor sanitation, and a lack of knowledge about how contagious diseases were spread, combined with poor-quality food and impure drinking water (both often in severely limited quantities), accounted for much of this suffering.

Although he was not an ordained clergyman, Mittelberger appears to have been personally devout, and he sought to minister to the needs of the people with whom he traveled. In the absence of a clergyman, he held worship services on Sundays, during which he read from a collection of sermons. He also led daily prayer meetings. He mentions baptizing five children; these were probably infants born during the voyage. When people died and were buried at sea, he also provided a basic funeral service.

As Mittelberger reports, many died on such voyages. It appears that losses in the range of 10 to 30 percent of the total number of passengers were not uncommon. Of course, some remarkable voyages were made with little loss of life, but on the other hand, ships and all on board were at times lost at sea. Mittelberger focuses in particular on the harmful effects of the voyage on children, reporting that thirty-two children died on his voyage. Based on this experience, he suggests that children between the ages of one and seven rarely survived such journeys. Port records indicate that living children were often on board arriving ships, however, so Mittelberger’s statement was probably incorrect.

Mittelberger believed that the poor quality of the food and water the passengers received contributed to the suffering experienced on these voyages. They received hot food only three times a week, and he reports that the water they were given was often foul and dirty. Some passengers may have brought some of their own provisions on board, but since most of the people seeking to become servants in the colonies were very poor, it is unlikely that many of them could have procured much to supplement their diets. When a crossing took longer than expected and other food supplies were exhausted, passengers had to eat the “ship’s biscuit,” a kind of hard bread or cracker. This was meant to be an emergency ration that could be stored for a long time, but as Mittelberger records, it was susceptible to becoming contaminated by worms and bugs.

After the horrific experience of such a voyage, landfall in America was a welcome relief to those on board. But as Mittelberger points out, their suffering was not over just because they had reached a port. Indentured servants usually already had contracts for their labor in place, but redemptioners such as those who traveled with Mittelberger did not. Ship owners or captains had borne the expense of transporting these people, speculating that in America they could sell their labor contracts for enough to make a profit. Because the ship’s captain had a stake in the sale of these servant’s labor contracts, no one was allowed to leave the ship until the cost of their passage was paid. Masters took a risk if they bought servants who were sick, so naturally the healthiest passengers sold first and were able to negotiate the best terms. This meant that passengers who were sick were confined to the ship until their labor contracts were sold, perhaps getting sicker or even dying. As Mittelberger notes, many who died might have recovered if they had been removed from the unhealthy environs of the ship’s hold. He does note that after a time, the very sick were taken to a “sick-house” until they recovered, but if they ever did recover enough to leave the sick-house, they still had to pay for their passage to America by contracting to work for someone. While Mittelberger mentions that healthy workers were valued over sick ones, he does not discuss the role that skills or trades played in the negotiation process. Redemptioners or indentured servants who had marketable skills such as blacksmithing, carpentry, or masonry could command better terms and usually were able to work for a shorter time.

Adult servants usually had to contract to work for three to six years in order to pay the cost of their passage to America. Children might go into servitude to pay their own cost of passage or to help pay the cost of their parents’ passage so that the adults in the family could start out as free laborers. If someone died after having been on board more than half the journey, surviving members of the family had to pay the full cost of the passage of the deceased person. Many parents had to sell the contract for a child’s labor to someone other than the master for whom the parents would be working. Mittelberger stresses the negative effects of this system on children and on the family as a whole, noting that “after leaving the ship, [parents and children often] do not see each other again for many years, perhaps no more in all their lives.”

Mittelberger suggests that if servants ran away, they had little chance of remaining free. He notes that a master could sell the contract for a recaptured servant if he did not wish to assume the risk of the servant running away again. The remaining time on a servant’s contract could also be used to pay a debt or pass on to heirs if the master died. Servants generally had no say in these transfers, although some colonies did require a court order to approve long-term arrangements. It is correct that there were substantial penalties for running away and that local authorities were tasked with helping to recover runaways. However, historical evidence casts doubt on Mittelberger’s assertion that escape was nearly impossible. Colonial newspapers often printed ads offering rewards for the return of runaways, indicating servants running away was a common occurrence and suggesting that perhaps escape was more possible than Mittelberger suggests, if so many servants were willing to attempt it. In addition, because of the great demand for workers, a landowner or businessman might hire someone even if he or she suspected the worker might be a runaway indentured servant. Some colonies passed laws against this practice, known as piracy of labor, thus hinting that it occurred frequently enough to be a concern. During colonial wars, indentured servants sometimes ran away and enlisted in the militia. This was not supposed to be allowed without the master’s permission, but enlistment officers who had quotas to fill decided at times not to look closely into the status of potential recruits.

If a person wished to marry an indentured servant, Mittelberger notes, he or she would have to buy out the remaining time on the potential spouse’s labor contract. This was more commonly true when a man sought to marry a woman in servitude. Masters generally did not want their female servants to get married, because if they became pregnant, they might not be able to do as much work. Owners of slaves owned the children born to their slaves, but this was not the case with servants, and a child born to a servant would not be old enough to do much work before the time of the parent’s indenture was over. Since there were significantly more men than women in the colonies, it was fairly common for a female servant to marry her master.

Despite his opposition to the institution of indentured servitude, Mittelberger does mention some of the benefits servants could typically expect to receive if they survived. Following the end of a servant’s contracted term, he or she was entitled to a new suit of clothes and, if it had been expressly specified in the contract, possibly even livestock. In some colonies, these “freedom dues,” as they were called, were specified by law. They often included basic farm tools such as axes or hoes, which indicates that authorities expected former servants to start farming on their own. In some colonies, a former servant would receive a “headright,” a grant of land from the colonial government given to any laborer who came to the colony. The proprietors of Pennsylvania (the descendants of Penn, to whom the colony had been granted) also sold land at good prices on liberal credit terms. For Mittelberger, however, these benefits did not outweigh the risks of the journey and the hardships endured by many servants in the colonies.

In general, Mittelberger writes as a person incensed by the suffering he had seen among the redemptioners he traveled with and others he observed after arriving in Pennsylvania. Although he recognized that poor Europeans could benefit economically from indentured servitude, he believed that the negative effects of the journey and life as a bonded laborer, particularly on children and families, were severe. By publishing his memoir, Mittelberger attempted to discourage others from his homeland from making what he believed to be an unwise decision.

Bibliography

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