Text reference: Bailyn wrote a great book on inbound colonial immigration, Voyagers To The West.
Most of them, before 1750, sold as indentured servants, and most of those died before they could get the freedom or acreage they had been promised.
It is a very far cry from how most Americans visualize what their ancestors here were like, and what station in life they had had.
I have only glanced at it so far. Had it on the shelf a long while now.
Allison has a moving lecture, touching on the subject, how most of them died long before the time when they would have acquired freedom from indenture, and large acreage. This was how many early plantations got built up, over many decades, in the 17th Century. The planter owner, whose own ancestor had survived, who bought them, then got their allotment later, added to his or his heir's existing acreage.
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