Angelica De la Cruz

Document interpretation 2

May 11, 2017

Elizabeth Sprigs, Letter to get Father

This primary source document written by Elizabeth Sprigs, indicates that in the

17th century people were being used as a labor source to help around newly founded settlements.

In this case, new mansions were being built in the Chesapeake area. African slaves were used for

labor since they were cheap to acquire, when compared to indentured servants. Indentured

servants were poor European workers or people who were in search for something better. These

white labor workers were less seen in the 18th century because they were being replaced by cheap

labors which were African slaves. White labor workers or European labor workers lived in better

living conditions because they were not seen as black slaves. This results in indentured servants

to be a bit more costly when compared to the slaves because indentured servants were only

servants for a period of time. Unlike, the African slaves, their labor was for life and had almost

no chance of freedom. In Maryland, some planters began to build mansions; this caused the use

of servants to do their labor work. This is where Elizabeth Sprigs document comes into life. A

young girl named Elizabeth Sprigs left her homeland to become an independent woman. The

reason for this is because she mentions in her letter to her father that she is sorry for disobeying

him by leaving, meaning that he did not want her to leave and wanted her to remain by his side

or get married and live the usual life that people in England would live. Elizabeth did not want

that life because she left to America, she wanted to be independent. She disobeyed her father by

leaving and financed a free passage in exchange of living a couple of years as an indentured

servant, through a contract. An indentured servant is someone who is under contract to work for
another person for a certain amount of years; majority of the time they are not paid in exchange

for a free passage to another country, which is the case of Elizabeth Sprigs.

During the year of 1756, Elizabeth Sprigs writes a letter to her father hoping he takes

compassion over her. She tells him how cruel her master treats her and how she feels they treat

African American slaves better than her. In the cruel life she is living as an indentured slave she

hopes to repay and balance out how disobedient she was with her father by not listening to him

and leaving on her own free will. On a daily basis Elizabeth is working extremely hard. Majority

of the time she is in the horses drudgery, but if she doesnt work hard enough to content her

master or complains about her work she gets tied up and gets whipped to the extent that not even

an animal would get whipped as hard as her. The master that is in control of Sprigs only feeds

her Indian corn and salt to eat, shes about half naked because all her clothes are all torn from all

the work, she has no shoes or socks to wear, and when the end of the day comes to go to bed

shes only given a blanket to sleep on the floor. These are the inhuman conditions Elizabeth

Sprigs has to deal with as a servant in Maryland. Therefore, she begs her father to at least have

compassion towards her and send her some clothes