How would you like to be owned by this bastard! Is there any doubt, that so slick-tongued a man would win every court case between the two of you? The following runaway headed out with nothing more than the clothes on her back and a few trinkets, at the onset of winter, during the Little Ice Age, to face conditions that George Washington's Army would be lauded for facing a decade later. That a woman, and one employed according to her description in indoor trades, would venture out in mid-December marks her day-to-day life as unbearable.
While apologist historians declare such thralldom as humane even opportunistic on the part of the servants—ignoring unmarked mass graves and the English census figures of the 1600s demonstrating 95% mortality among white servants, individual snapshots of desperate lives such as that described by the oppressor below, paint a different picture than the raw economic data of nation-building.
December 14, 1769
The Pennsylvania Gazette
SIX DOLLARS Reward.
BETWEEN the sixth and seventh day,
Of last ninth month, ran away,
A Servant, that from Ireland came,
Catherine Waterson her name;
She thick and clumsey made you see,
Pretends a tayloress to be,
She about 5 feet 4 inches high,
Very apt to swear and lie.
Of a down look; complexion dark,
In her face much pock mark.
As also very long black hair,
Which she clubbbehind did wear;
Two striped petticoats she had,
One bird eye ditto, very bad,
One striped linsey jacket she,
With two check aprons, bore away,
Two handkerchiefs about her neck,
One a flag, the other check;
Her hose blue worsted; clocks of white,
And stuff shoes, as black as night.
She also had, tho'not her own,
A very good large silver spoon,
Which was stamped with C.
Hall On the shank, near to the bole.
Worsted pincushion that knit,
With D. G. on one side of it,
Which was round, incompass tight
With a band of silver bright;
And as one end did the other pass,
With a loop it fast was,
A chain of silver to the same,
When borne away by this dame,
Who is very artful to deceive,
And an answer quick will give;
As I have been inform by one
Who stop her as away she run,
Tho'by a cunning crafty wile
She did him so much beguile.
Or at least prevail upon
Him, so much as to get along,
And south eastward she did steer,
Of her since that I cannot hear,
Tho' shortly for work she must call,
As her money, if any, was but small,
And to pawn that spoon or pincushion,
She would be backward to begin.
Therefore I desire with whome she be,
He may think of himself and me,
And safe secure her in some Goal,
That I may have her without fail,
Then the above reward to him fare,
With reasonable charges, I secure.
And lastly, it behoves me to tell
In what part of the province I dwell,
Which to do I will not defer,
It is in the county of Lancaster,
And somewhat more will be expected,
Which I had almost neglected,
That is to declare my name,
Therefore I subscribe the same,
JAMES GIBBONS, Innkeeper.
*P.S. One of the aprons home made, the other bought; the home made apron remarkable, having a breadth and near a half in width, and the half breadth pieced with about a quarter at top, to make it long enough; her shifts, tho'not mentioned above, had remarkably long wide bosoms, all of coarse ozenbrigs, [2] without any necks.
Notes
1. Note that the majority of possessions declared as worn or stolen by servants were simply the cheap, rough clothing which no modern person would wear against their skin. Even the clothes were often not owned by the servants. Indeed, some children were sold as servants on the premise that by excepting the gift of a hat, jacket or shoes, they were indebted to and therefore sold to pay off the articles of clothing.
2. A cheap, rough type of linen fabric, named after the German city where it was woven and preferred for the outfitting of servants and slaves.
5. According to Miss Spriggs, a Maryland Servant girl of the generation before Catherine, she was whipped every day and called a bitch for her name. In the 1700s, the common English vernacular for a poor woman was "bitch" which has ben kept alive in America largely through the black vernacular inherited from their slave masters. So, Mister Gibbons, no doubt inquired of his duped bartender, who was probably the one who saw her leaving alluded to in the poem, "Why'd you let the fat bitch go?"
