It's amazing any indentured servants survived. What rough lives they led.
For those who came here in the early 1600's and after, life was indeed hard. Not just on indentured servants. The majority of the settlers died in their first year here. This boy whoever he was, had TB he was not going to live! Everybody had a hard life at that time, and how can that time be equated to just indentured servants that had a hard time and were mistreated.
Often there were no options for these souls, indentured or not! He was most certainly an orhan for whom no one cared. He needed medicine that was not available. He undoubtedly, like many of his contemporaries, had a poor diet. He never would have gotten any taller. He was one of lifes tragedies but in history there are many, as now in South Africa. Where their lives are a living hell. How many years after this boys sad life?
I am the descendant of an indentured servant (read SLAVE) sent to the "new world" (Barbados) as a prisoner after participating in one of the Scottish "jacobite" rebellions against English tyranny.
he somehow (mysteriously) got away from Barbados and worked his way up to the mid-Atlintic colonies. He became a surveyor and surveyed what is now Maryland, West Virginia and many other areas. He bacame the right hand to Lord Baltimore and was granted much land of his own (including all of what is now Washington, D.C.).
The life of an indentured servant (or slave) was harsh, but not all of them died in this manner. There are plenty of stories like my ancestors. There are plenty of stories of freed slaves (living well in the South, of all places) that put the lie to the propoganda being pushed by the intelligentsia. Life was harsh and hard for "free men" at the time as well, let alone their wives and children. Yet they survived, thrived and built a new nation, based on new ideas of liberty that the world had NEVER seen before.
This poor child was grist for that mill. His pain did not go in vain, however small his contribution to the conciousness that led to the founding of our nation. Who knows what minds were affected by his tragedy? Who knows but God? Honor him, do not mourn him. He has gone to a better place.
We all die. It only matters how we act between now and then.