GENEALOGY: Headright System Used To Bring People Into The Colonies

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GENEALOGY: Headright system used to bring people into the colonies Share this Click to sign up for our newsletter! Free access to breaking news is sponsored by Dorsett Automotive Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The landed gentry who paid to import indentured servants to the New World received four to seven years of the servant’s labor in return for paying the transport costs (which were about £6, or equivalent to more than £600 by today’s standards). As much as this seems like a bargain for the plantation owner, there was yet another incentive to encourage bringing people into the colonies — the promise of free land. Several colonies, notably Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas, having seemingly limitless territory but a dire shortage of workers, devised the headright system. This system rewarded anyone who conveyed himself, his family or any others to the colonies with 50 acres of land per head.

The headright system was first used in Virginia. The Virginia Company had founded Jamestown and received a charter from the English Crown in 1609 granting the company vast stretches of land. Settlers and stockholders of the company at first held the land in common. After a few years, the company began granting land privately. The headright system was created to reward those who would pay to import much-needed laborers into the colony.  

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