Slavery of both Indians and Negroes and white servitude were well recognized forms of social status in all the colonies, and slavery was general down to the time of the American Revolution. As early as 1639 we hear of a Negro slave in Pennsylvania. In 1644 Negroes were in demand to work the lowlands of the Delaware. In 1685 William Penn directed his steward at Pennsbury to secure blacks for work "since they might be held for life," which was not true of indentured servants.[123] Negro slaves were sold in Maryland in 1642.[124] Negroes are referred to in the Connecticut records as early as 1660.[125] An "act against trading with negro slaves" was passed in Elizabeth-Town, New Jersey, in 1682.[126] An entry in Winthrop's Journal, February 26, 1638, states that a "Mr. Peirce, in the Salem ship, the _Desire_, returned from the West Indies after seven months. He had been to Providence, and brought some cotton, and tobacco, and _Negroes_, etc."[127] The twenty Negroes sold to the colonists at Jamestown, 1619, were the first landed on the soil of Virginia and possibly the first brought to the American colonies.[128] There is evidence to show that the status of the Negro was at first very closely affiliated with that of the white servant with whom the colonists were thoroughly familiar and who stood half way between freedom and complete subjection. It is probable, therefore, that both Indian and Negro servitude preceded Indian and Negro slavery in all the colonies,[129] though the transition to slavery as the normal status of the Negro was very speedily made. The first and essential feature in this transition was the lengthening of the period of servitude from a limited time to the natural life. The slave differed from the servant then not so much in the loss of liberty, civil and political, as in the perpetual nature of that loss.[130]