My Tangent – Indentured Typist?

Early Morning,

And I moved my genealogy paperwork and stuff, and “Oh-I’ll-get-around-to-that-later-piles” from the dining room table to the extended counter in the kitchen. Now instead of looking at a field of paper and ancestral treasures when I walk through the dining room, I have the Great Wall, albeit a foot high, building slowly to the left of me where I work at my PC. There’s something about piles of paper, books, magazines, and “important” stuff that seems to creep up on me of which I keep trying to blame it on my current age. But I did that last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and… I think you get the picture.

Bella’s got her head in my lap, which of course I think I’m her source of heat generation. She seems to be comfortable with the click-click-clicking of the keyboard keys. Every so often Tinker jumps up. Bella growls a bit. They both settle down in my lap in all efforts to take over my chair, while I become a haphazard keyboard operator.

Today’s word is “Indenture”. And why indenture? I have a number of images and files of Indentures from Grenada relating to my Smith name search that I have been able to collect. Any time I mention the word, indenture, I am asked as to what I am focusing on in my research. “Indentured servants?” My immediate response, off-the-cuff, is no, but then, I myself was not too sure of the correct usage as my only frame of reference for the word “indenture” had to do with servitude and something to that effect.

I then searched the word and found that there is a possible definition, sort of, reflecting two possible usages from Wikipedia: “An Indenture is a legal contract reflecting a debt or purchase obligation, specifically referring to two types of practices: in historical usage, an indentured servant status, and in modern usage, an instrument used for commercial debt or real estate transaction.” I stand corrected. An Indenture is a contract. The above inserted clipping of an Indenture is a 1798 contract as well as it references the liabilities and responsibilities due regarding the matter of a “certain female slave” between one William Smith and Felicité Boisfermé.

The first sample of Indenture work that I provided in my Blog can be found in Part 60s.

There are a number of files of Indentures that I now need to challenge myself to transcribe. All-things-being-equal I hope to find any details or hints about my Smith family line.

And I continue,

Enjoy,

Jim