White Slave Children of Colonial Maryland and Virginia: Birth and Shipping Records

Picking up where he left off in his acclaimed book "Without Indentures: Index to White Slave Children in Colonial Court Records," Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips has now taken the story back even further, to the kidnapping of children to be sold into slavery ca. 1660-1720. Compiled from shipping records found in the Library of Congress, the Bristol [England] Record Office, and elsewhere, the author has identified 170 ships that carried white slave children to the plantations of colonial Maryland and Virginia from no fewer than seventeen ports of departure in England. The places from which the children were taken and their adjudged ages on the dates of their court appearances have enabled Dr. Phillips to conduct a targeted search of the birth and baptismal records. In all, he has matched more than 1,400 children with the parish or town records.