“Redemptioners,” bound for a term of service as domestic and farm servants, also came from the various European States; and good servants often did they prove, and good citizens, too, when their terms of service expired. There also opened in this emigration of redemptioners a vast opportunity for adventure. In the “New York Gazette” of March 15, 1736, we read of one servant-girl adventurer:-- “We hear that about two years ago a certain Irish gentlewoman was brought into this province a servant, but she pretended to be a great fortune worth some thousands (was called the Irish Beauty). Her master confirming the same a certain young man (Mr. S***ds), courted her; and she seemingly shy, her master for a certain sum of money makes up the match, and they were married and go to their country-seat; but she not pleased with that pursuades her husband to remove to the city of New York and set up a great tavern. They did so. Next she pursuades her husband to embark for Ireland to get her great portion. When he comes there he finds her mother a weeder of gardens to get bread. In his absence Madam becomes acquainted with one Davis, and they sell and pack up her husband’s effects, which were considerable, and embark for North Carolina. When they come there they pass for man and wife, and he first sells the negroes and other effects, then sells her clothes and at last he sells her for a servant, and with the produce returns to his wife in Rhode Island, he having made a very good voyage.” They were constantly eloping with their masters’ or mistresses’ wardrobes, sometimes with portions of both, and setting up as gentlefolk on their own account. We find one Jersey girl running a fine rig: dressed in a velvet coat and scarlet knee-breeches, with a sword, cocked hat, periwig, and silken hose, she had a gay carouse in New York tap-houses and tea-gardens, as long as her stolen twenty pounds lasted; but with an empty stomach, she ceased to play the lad, and went sadly to the stone ketch. I turn regretfully from the redemptioners; they were the most picturesque and romance-bearing element of the community.