Note 148 — Chapter III · DOMESTIC SERVICE DURING THE COLONIAL PERIOD

The Report of a French Protestant Refugee in Boston, 1687, evidently submitted to guide friends in France thinking of coming to America, says: “You may also own negroes and negresses; there is not a house in Boston, however small may be its means, that has not one or two. There are those that have five or six, and all make a good living.”—Pp. 19-20.

The New England papers, even in the first part of the eighteenth century, are full of advertisements like the following: “A Negro Wench with a Girl Four Years old both born in the Country, used to all Family work on a Farm, to be sold on reasonable Terms.”—Boston News Letter, October 5, 1719.

“A very likely young Negro Wench that can do any Household Work to be sold, inquire of Mr. Samuel Sewall.”—Ibid., April 9, 1716.

“Lately arrived from Jamaica several Negro boys and girls, to be sold by Mr. John Charnock & Co.”—Ibid., May 11, 1719.

Most of the advertisements describe those offered for sale as “very likely,” and add the specially desirable qualification that he or she “speaks good English.” Judge Sewall, in 1700, gives this account of his first protest against negro slavery: “Having been long and much dissatisfied with the Trade of fetching Negros from Guinea; at last I had a strong Inclination to Write something about it; but it wore off. At last reading Bayne, Ephes. about servants, who mentions Blackmoors; I began to be uneasy that I had so long neglected doing anything.”—Diary, II., 16.