1 acres,[4-74] while William Burcher received a grant
for 300 acres.[4-75]

Several of these men who came as servants to the Eastern Shore are found
in succeeding years among the yeomanry of Accomac and Northampton. Henry
Arnetrading, Armstrong Foster, William Burcher and Sampson Robins were
signers of the Northampton submission to the Commonwealth in 1652.[4-76]
Henry Arnetrading was the owner of 300 acres of land.[4-77] Armstrong
Foster was the official tobacco viewer for Hungers, a position entailing
no little responsibility.[4-78] Sampson Robins received a patent for a
tract of land in Northampton in 1655.[4-79] Thomas Clayton is listed
among the Northampton tithables of 1666.[4-80]

In the case of John Day some uncertainty arises. Apparently there were
two men of this name in the colony, one transported by John Slaughter,
and the other not only paying for his own passage, but for that of a
servant as well.[4-81] A John Day later secured 400 acres in Gloucester
county,[4-82] but whether it was the one who had come as a servant or
the one who had entered the colony as a freeman, apparently there is no
way of ascertaining.

All in all the story of these men tends to confirm the conclusions
hitherto arrived at. It must be remembered that the mortality among the
servants in the tobacco fields in the early days of the colony was
extremely heavy. It is not improbable that of our sixty-one servants,
twenty or more succumbed before the completion of their first year. That
of the remaining forty-one, fourteen or fifteen established themselves
as solid farmers, while several became men of influence in the colony,
is a striking proof that at this period many freedmen had the
opportunity to advance. Taking it for granted that the records of some
of the sixty-one have been lost, or that our research has failed to
reveal them, we once more come to the conclusion that a full thirty or
forty per cent of the landowners of the period from 1635 to 1666 came to
the colony under terms of indenture.

On the other hand, it is equally positive that the class of poor
planters was recruited in part from free immigrants, men who paid their
own passage across the ocean and at once established themselves as
freeholders. Of this too, the records furnish ample testimony. Thus in
1636 we find that Richard Young was granted 100 acres in Warwick "due
him for his personal adventure and for the transportation of his wife
Dorothy Young."[4-83] A ye