Servant to Gentleman??

[charlie64]

Here is a piece of an e-mail I wrote to a cousin to try to organize some thoughts. I would love for someone who knows the English indentured servant system and the class system to comment and point out anything I need to know, criticize my reasoning, etc. Thanks, Charlie

A deposition taken several decades later said that in about 1627 (give or take) one John Nuthall was a boy, a servant of Hugh Hayes, cousin of Gov. Stone, and ran away to the Indians. A trader found him, gave him a beating, and sent him back to Hayes. Hayes died in England in 1637, and William Stone was administrator. Around 1635, give or take, Dr. John Holloway came to Virginia, and cured an ulcer in John Nuthall’s throat. In 1637 when Hayes died the court ordered Stone his administrator to pay the doctor “out of John Nuthall’s wages” for the cure. So this John must have been born in the early 1620s and given the fact that Holloway didn’t get on scene until about 1635 he must have been indentured to Hayes for over ten years. This seems like a long indenture, but maybe time was added on for his time AWOL. In 1641 the court ordered that the estate of one Nicholas White pay a debt to John Nuthall or his assigns. This seems tight, if this is the John Nuthall who was a “boy” young enough to be spanked in 1628.

Here my lack of British history knowledge comes in. My John Nuthall is later styled as “Gentleman.” I thought that gentry (at least adults) were generally excepted from corporal punishment and that they did not work for wages. To continue the story:

My John Nuthall was still unmarried in April of 1643 when the court ordered that “due to the sudden danger by the Indians the ” the powder and shot in the hands of one “Mr. John Nuthall” be seized and distributed to the inhabitants and Mr. Nuthall be paid for these. Dr. Holloway died in in late 1643 and his (pregnant) widow Elizabeth apparently immediately married my John Nuthall. In that year also, apparently in Maryland, a John Nuthall gave testimony about being witness to a guy who was murdered on a ship in the Chesapeake. He blamed an Indian. Then in August of 1644 a guy named Phillips wrote a letter from London to his (Phillips’) brother in Virginia saying to “Mr. Nuthall’s father, mother and sister are well ... enclosed is a letter from Mr. Nuthall’s father.” That same year one John Nuthall executed a power of attorney for a guy to make payments and discharge all debts “in my absence.”

Here again I don't know enough about the context. The letter is not a legal document, but it seems to me that it would be rare for anyone but gentry to be called “Mr.” in a court order (like the one above) in that society. It seems odd that someone in his early ‘20s to be called “Mr.” in any case. So if my John Nuthall (the one who married Holloway’s widow) and the servant boy are the same, this is an uncomfortable fit. The widow Elizabeth Holloway would have been (roughly) his age but she could have married anybody. Would she have married a former servant? Would a former servant who worked for wages be owed money out of an estate when he was just over 20? Would anyone but a gentleman be called Mr.?

My John Nuthall became a licensed Indian trader, a merchant, a mariner, moved to England for about five years in the 1650s (and may have been imprisoned there), and was referred to as “Gentlemen” in several other legal documents. His Indian trading fits the profile of the servant boy being among them, and people could become gentry. I suspect that class distinctions so important in England were breaking down over here five decades after the colonies were founded, but I wonder if the 1640s records fit with the age of the servant boy Nuthall? I must wonder if another, older John could have been in Virginia at the same time. But I don’t know.

[Megan Roberts]

The site below defines Gentleman as “Gentry; Aristocrat, whose income came from his land”
https://www.rmhh.co.uk/occup/

Whilst this one defines one as “a man of independent means, living off income from land, property or a legacy.”
https://www.familyresearcher.co.uk/gl...Index.html#Old Occupations – I

From my experience, I don’t think that there was one single threshold test that applied, but it was intended to convey a degree of financial means. In my research I have come across a marriage bond in 1741, for the marriage a 17 year old “gent”.

[charlie64]

In my research I have come across a marriage bond in 1741, for the marriage a 17 year old “gent”.

Thank you, Megan. This information about the 17 year old gent is very helpful to me. The problem we Americans have is that while there may be only one man named Argoll Throgmorton in the colonies in the 17th century when we try to cross the water we might find fifty by the same name over there. So I have learned to be shy of records when the ages get tight. You have given me a positive proof of a teenager styled at "Gentleman." Nice!

[Megan Roberts]

Charlie,

It took me years to work out correctly his age. All I knew was that in 1736, when his father wrote his will, he was not yet 18, as there were pages of provisions of what should happen in the event that he did not reach 18. Based on that he was born some time between 1718 and 1736. Then last year I found a court document where his cousin was suing the boy's mother who was executor of the will, alleging all sorts of mis-deeds, and buried in the document it said that the boy was "an infant" no more than 14 when his father died in 1738.

So in 3 years he went from being an infant to being a married gentleman. And to think that today people are always saying that children grow up too quickly

Megan