How to borrow funds in Colonial America (ie. Indentures)
I've seen numerous indentures. My question is how did the lender and the borrower 'meet'? I have not seen many (if any) cases where the lender was a family member (such transactions may not be widely recorded even though they should).
Short term recurring transactions (ex. a farmer borrowing at the start of the season and repaying after harvest) are possibly easy to understand but if a young couple without a credit history wanted to buy property for the first time and wished to borrow money, how did they make the connection with someone who had money available and was ready to lend? I assume they would have had to talk to several individuals before they met someone who had the money and was willing to lend the funds to them. If the county was sparsely populated, that might involve a lot of travel time.
Has anyone seen research done on this?
I'm researching an illiterate newly married young couple in Union, Berks, PA who bought 150 acres in Robinson, Berks, PA from the Guardians of 5 siblings in Union. I'm hoping this will provide some insight into the parents of the couple. They are well documented in everything except their ancestry. I think that knowledge of how these transactions came to be might prove to be of interest in some other lines as well.
Thanks!
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What a great discussion question. Of course my first go-to is Google and Wikipedia. I don't see anything specific enough.
As a possibility...I would guess that the "lender" either held title to the land, or had funds for lending.
For contact...word of mouth, advertisement, relatives, church members.
I would check the location church records, and census records for possible FAN club members.
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If the lender did hold title it would be a version of 'seller financing' and that probably did happen from time to time. If you cross reference with the deed, you can either rule that out or rule that in. In most that I have seen, you can rule that out.
In my case, this occurred in 1777 which predates the earliest Berks Census records. He doesn't show up in the 1767 or 1768 tax records but that could be because he was too young. Robeson & Union Twps were rural with small populations. If he was in the war (I suspect he was), he could have relocated from elsewhere after serving. I'm sure there were soldiers who after fighting in various areas found an area that they liked more than where they were from.
Regardless, I was just curious if anyone ran into any 'good' research on the subject (ie. stats would be nice!). With all revolutionary war period research that has been done, you'd think there would be something. I struck out on Google too.
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Take a look at this and see if it helps.
https://archive.org/details/americanpublicfi0000perk/page/n463/mode/2up
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@RobertWessel Thank you! What a great resource :)
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"American Public Finance and Financial Services 1700 - 1815" by Edwin J Perkins. I jumped to "The Credit System" chapter. At first I thought he was going to stick to mercantile interests but his words on mortgages were very enlightening. With travel time being so great, as Rhonda suggested, maybe a lot of financing got done in the church yard and at the local markets. Churches were possibly more common than a market so it must have been real interesting if all they had was a Minister riding a circuit. I think I'll do a link analysis on the lenders vis-a-vis my ancestors. I might discover a few relatives that I had missed. What higher praise can I offer than 'I got to get a paper copy of the book!' Thanks!
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