Charles Lynch (1736-1796) was a Virginia planter, politician, and American revolutionary who headed an irregular court in Virginia to punish Loyalist supporters of the British during the American Revolutionary War. The terms "lynching" and "lynch law" are believed to be derived from his name.
An indentured servant or indentured laborer is an employee (indenturee) within a system of unfree labor who is bound by a signed or forced contract (indenture) to work for a particular employer for a fixed time. The contract often lets the employer sell the labor of an indenturee to a third party. Indenturees usually enter into an indenture for a specific payment or other benefit, or to meet a legal obligation, such as debt bondage. On completion of the contract, indentured servants were given their freedom, and occasionally plots of land. In many countries, systems of indentured labor have now been outlawed, and are banned by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a form of slavery.
Partus sequitur ventrem, often abbreviated to partus, was a legal doctrine concerning the slave or free status of children born in the English royal colonies. Incorporated into legislation in the British American colonies and later in the United States, partus held that the legal status of a child followed that of his or her mother. Thus, any child born to an enslaved woman was born into slavery, regardless of the ancestry or citizenship of the father. This principle was widely adopted into the laws regarding slavery in the colonies and the following United States, eliminating financial responsibility of fathers for children born into slavery.
Paternity fraud, also known as misattributed paternity or paternal discrepancy, is when a man is incorrectly identified to be the biological father of a child. The underlying assumption of paternity fraud is that the mother deliberately misidentified the biological father. Paternity fraud is related to the historical understanding of adultery.
Matt Dubay child support case was a legal case between Matt Dubay and his ex-girlfriend, both of Saginaw Township, Michigan. The case was dubbed "Roe v. Wade for Men" by the National Center for Men. The case concerned whether the Michigan Paternity Act violates the United States Constitution's Equal Protection Clause, in that the Act allegedly applies to men but not to women.
John Casor, a servant in Northampton County in the Virginia Colony, in 1655 became the first person of African descent in England's Thirteen Colonies to be declared as a slave for life as the result of a civil suit. In an earlier case, John Punch was the first man documented as a slave in the Virginia Colony, sentenced to life in servitude for attempting to escape his indenture.
Anthony Johnson was a black Angolan known for achieving freedom and wealth in the early 17th-century Colony of Virginia. He was one of the first African American property owners and had his right to legally own a slave recognized by the Virginia courts. Held as an indentured servant in 1621, he earned his freedom after several years, and was granted land by the colony.
Richard Frethorne was an indentured servant at Martin's Hundred, Virginia in 1622-1623. He is known as the author of letters detailing his miserable condition in Virginia.
Elizabeth Key Grinstead was one of the first Negro Indian persons in the North American colonies to sue for freedom from slavery and prevail. Elizabeth Key won her freedom and that of her infant son John Grinstead on July 21, 1656 in the colony of Virginia. Key based her suit on the fact that her father was an Englishman, and that she was a baptized Christian. Based on these two factors, her English attorney and common-law husband William Grinstead argued successfully that she should be freed. The lawsuit was one of the earliest "freedom suits" by a person of Negro Indian ancestry in the English colonies.
Virginia Mary Kendall is a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. President George W. Bush appointed her to the bench on January 3, 2006. In addition to serving on the bench, Judge Kendall is also a noted expert on child exploitation and human trafficking, as well as an adjunct law professor and author.
Indentured servitude in Pennsylvania (1682-1820s): The institution of indentured servitude has a significant place in the history of labor in Pennsylvania. From the founding of the colony (1681/2) to the early post-revolution period (1820s), indentured servants contributed considerably to the development of agriculture and various industries in Pennsylvania. Moreover, Pennsylvania itself has a notable place in the broader history of indentured servitude in North America. As Cheesman Herrick stated, "This system of labor was more important to Pennsylvania than it was to any other colony or state; it continued longer in Pennsylvania than elsewhere."
Slavery in Virginia dates to 1619, soon after the founding of Virginia as an English colony by the London Virginia Company. The company established a headright system to encourage colonists to transport indentured servants to the colony for labor; they received a certain amount of land for people whose passage they paid to Virginia.
Samuel More (1593–1662) was at the centre of two historical incidents in seventeenth century England.
Colonial America bastardy laws were laws, statutes, or other legal precedents set forth by the colonies in North America. This page focuses on the rules pertaining to bastardy that became law in the New England colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania from the early seventeenth century to the late eighteenth century. The colonies established many of their laws based on a combination of old English common law and their religious faith. Upon their arrival in North America, European settlers established rules to guide society. Many of these rules strongly resembled the established guidelines set forth by England. Although the laws differed initially in their creation and enforcement, by late eighteenth century, the New England colonies and the colony of Pennsylvania had altered their laws pertaining to bastardy to be mirror images of the laws in effect in England.
John Punch was an enslaved African who lived in the Colony of Virginia. Thought to have been an indentured servant, Punch attempted to escape to Maryland and was sentenced in July 1640 by the Virginia Governor's Council to serve as a slave for the remainder of his life. Two European men who ran away with him were sentenced to longer indentures but not the permanent loss of their freedom. For this reason, historians consider John Punch the "first official slave in the English colonies," and his case as the "first legal sanctioning of lifelong slavery in the Chesapeake." Historians also consider this to be one of the first legal distinctions between Europeans and Africans made in the colony, and a key milestone in the development of the institution of slavery in the United States.
Sir Cecil Bishopp, 6th Baronet, later Bisshopp, was a British politician. He succeeded to the title of 6th Baronet Bishopp, of Parham, co. Sussex on 25 October 1725. He was Member of Parliament for Penryn between 1727 and 1734, having been returned unopposed on the interest of the Boscawen family into which he had married. He also represented Boroughbridge between 1755 and 1768. He married Hon. Anne Boscawen, daughter of Hugh Boscawen, 1st Viscount Falmouth and Charlotte Godfrey, in 1726. In addition to Parham Park, Sussex he was also the owner of a house at 11 Berkeley Square, London which Horace Walpole purchased from Bisshopp's heirs in 1779 and in which Walpole lived until he died there in 1797. Sir Cecil died on 15 June 1778 at the age of 77.
Grace White Sherwood (1660–1740), called the Witch of Pungo, is the last person known to have been convicted of witchcraft in Virginia. A farmer, healer, and midwife, she was accused by her neighbors of transforming herself into a cat, damaging crops, and causing the death of livestock. She was charged with witchcraft several times; at her trial in 1706, Sherwood was accused of bewitching her neighbor, Elizabeth Hill, causing Hill to miscarry. The court ordered that Sherwood's guilt or innocence be determined by ducking her in water. If she sank, she was innocent; if she did not, she was guilty. Sherwood floated to the surface and may have spent almost eight years in jail before being released.
Indentured servitude in the Americas was a means by which immigrants, typically young Europeans under 25, came to the Americas from the early 17th to the early 20th centuries. Immigrants would contract to work for an American employer for a time period, usually between one and seven years, in exchange for the employer paying for their passage to the Americas. The employer provided subsistence for his indentured servants, but no wages; he could restrict some of their activities such as marriage, could sell or transfer their contract to another employer, and could seek legal sanctions, such as prison, if they ran away. At the end of the agreed time period, the servant would become free to go his own way or demand wages for his work. In some cases, the newly freed person also received an item of value such as a small parcel of land or a new suit of clothes.
Colonel William Kendall (1621-1686) was an early Virginian politician. He was the 21st Speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses, a position he held in 1685. He was considered "one of the foremost men of his time."
