The Journal of John Harrower: An Indentured Servant in the Colony of Virginia, 1773-1776 (Williamsburg Eyewitness to History Series)

xxi, 202 pp. Edited with an introduction by Edward Miles Riley. Illustrated by Fritz Kredel. Harrower, a Scottish merchant ruined by the panic of 1772, set out the following year "in search of business." At the end of his wandering he made the sad discovery that unemployment and destitution were as common in London as they were at home. Relief was not to be found--except, of course, in the distant American colonies. In despair, Harrower chose that direction and traded off his only negotiable talent--a certain literacy in some demand on the colonial frontier--by signing a four-year indenture as a schoolmaster.--jacket