Visit Project Project Details
One of many historical treasures of the American Philosophical Society Library & Museum is a book recording the details of over 5,000 indenture contracts registered between 1771 and 1773. These entries contain a lot of information about working people and immigrants who came to Philadelphia in the lead up to the American Revolution. This exhibit uses interactive visualizations of data from the book to examine indentured servitude in Colonial British North America through three themes: distance, gender, and time. Alongside them are personal stories of individuals who entered into contracts in the record to work as servants and apprentices. This exhibit has been created to inspire users to learn more about indentured servitude in the hopes that they will explore the dataset for themselves.
Subjects or Themes
Early America, Apprentices -- Pennsylvania, Indentured servants -- Pennsylvania
Project Language(s)
English
Time Period
Geographic Location
Project Categories
Content Type
Data Visualization, Text, Dataset
Target Audience(s)
Creators
Nicôle Meehan, Bayard Miller, Cynthia Heider
Year(s)
2019-2021
Host Institution / Affiliation / Project Location
American Philosophical Society
Software Employed
Labor and Support
Phase One: June 2017-March 2019
Process: Digitization, transcription, and basic data structuring by Benjamin Weinstein (Washington College Explore America Intern) and Cynthia Heider.
Deliverables: Publication of “Digitizing Indenture Records,” “Indenture Mining: Making Pre-Industrial Tradeswomen Visible (Part I),” and “Indenture Mining (Part II)” on the American Philosophical Society blog.
Phase Two: March-April 2019
Process: Data restructuring and refinement in OpenRefine for more effective computational analysis by Cynthia Heider.
Changes to data: Standardization of “Bound As” column value to reflect “Apprentice,” “Servant,” or blank as indicated in the original indenture; splitting of “Name” field
Deliverables: Finalized dataset submitted to MEAD and made available via GitHub and the APS Digital Library. Publication of “Datafied Redemptioners/Redeeming the Data: What’s New at the APS Center for Digital Scholarship” on the American Philosophical Society blog.
Phase Three: May-July 2019
Process: Online exhibition planning, text creation, data augmentation, data visualization and mapping using Tableau by Nicôle Meehan (APS Digital Humanities Fellow). Contextual research by Nicôle Meehan and Cynthia Heider.
Changes to data: Addition of geo-coordinates to allow analysis of departure/arrival points; tentative categorization of gender based upon name analysis and use of pronouns in the original document
Deliverables: Publication of dataset on MEAD.
Phase Four: August-December 2019
Process: Website design and construction by Bayard Miller using HTML5Up and StorymapJS with contributions by Cynthia Heider. Drafting of data transparency policy by Bayard Miller and Cynthia Heider.
Phase Five: March-August 2020
Process: Additional text written and edited by Bayard Miller and Cynthia Heider. Home page redesign and visualization annotation done by Cynthia Heider.
Project Cost
