The wills of the seventeenth century on record in the county courts indicate that there were many negroes, more especially of the female sex, who had been carefully educated to take part in domestic manufacture. After the cloth had been made, it was converted into suits, either by the slaves or by the servants. Byrd, in his instructions to his English merchants to send him mechanics, occasionally wrote for a tailor, stating that the term of the one then in his employment was on the point of expiring.[1] The conditions upon which such tradesmen were engaged doubtless varied in different instances. The covenants into which Luke Mathews, a tailor of Hereford, entered with Thomas Landon of Virginia were probably fairly representative; Mathews bound himself to serve Landon for a period of two years, his term to begin when he reached the Colony; the remuneration was to be six pence a day when working for members of Landon’s family, but when for other persons, he was to be entitled to one-half of the proceeds of his labor, whatever it might be.[2]
There were cases in which tailors bound by covenants had, before the date of their indentures, acquired or inherited such large means, or had enjoyed such opportunities
- ↑ Letters of William Byrd, May 31, 1686. One of the white servants of Robert Beverley, Sr., was a tailor, who very probably had been imported. See inventory on file at Middlesex C. H. Among the servants who were brought over in the First Supply (1608) were six tailors. A tailor formed one of the company of voyagers of 1607. See Works of Capt. John Smith, pp. 390, 412. In many cases, the wealthy planters imported from England the clothes worn by these servants and slaves. See Letters of William Byrd, May 31, 1686.
- ↑ Records of Middlesex County, original vol. 1694-1703, p. 14. Landon afterwards removed for a time to Carolina, and before doing so, entered into a second agreement with Mathews. See Ibid., p. 116.
