One of many historical treasures of the American Philosophical Society Library & Museum is a book recording the details of over 5,000 indenture contracts registered between 1771 and 1773. These entries contain a lot of information about working people and immigrants who came to Philadelphia in the lead up to the American Revolution.
This exhibit uses interactive visualizations of data from the book to examine indentured servitude in Colonial British North America through three themes: distance, gender, and time. Included alongside them are personal stories of individuals who entered into contracts in the record to work as servants and apprentices. This exhibit has been created to inspire users to learn more about indentured servitude in the hopes that they will explore the dataset for themselves.
Click the arrows to learn more about the project and navigate to each section of the site.