White servitude in Maryland.

[mia]

2. From St. Mary's County too - life was not easy back then.

Bones tell of harsh Md. life in 1600s

WASHINGTON -- When archaeologists excavated 18 graves at a 3-century-old Calvert County plantation a few years ago, they had no headstones, no diaries, no letters and no church records. Nothing to tell the stories of those long-vanished colonists.

By studying wear and tear and the shapes and sizes of the bones, Dr. Ubelaker has produced grim snapshots of life on a mid-17th century Maryland settlement: of shoulders strained by heavy lifting and hauling, of clay pipes puffed habitually through clenched teeth, of bones made brittle by disease, of malnutrition and early death.

"The general picture I have is that, particularly for adults, it was a very hard life," said Dr. Ubelaker, the curator of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History....

The upper bodies of the men showed the strains of heavy physical labor. Many of the colonists -- men, women and even a 13-year-old child -- smoked clay pipes habitually, leaving tobacco stains and circular wear marks on their teeth. About a third of the colonists had suffered broken bones....

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1993-06-25/news/1993176078_1_bones-ubelaker-calvert/2