manor or the right to take up land from the proprietor is
unclear. Probably the former was intended at first, but
whatever the understanding at the time, in the end the
proprietor, not the investor, gave those who came as
servants the land they had earned by their labors.³³

   Who found these conditions acceptable in return for
the risk of sailing to an unknown land across 3,000 miles
of ocean? We know nothing of the backgrounds of the
servants who traveled on the Ark except what can be in-
ferred from their histories after their arrival in Mary-
land. Sixty-four out of a likely one hundred and three
have been identified.³⁴ Only one was known to be a
woman, although there were certainly a few more. We
know absolutely nothing about twenty-two of the men
beyond their names. They probably died, as many im-
migrants did in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake,
within a year of their arrival. The forty-two people who
lived longer have left traces behind them in the colony's
records. But many did not live much longer and soon
disappear from view.

   The forty-two people who are known show a broad
range of social origins similar to those of later immi-
grant servants. At least six men probably came from
families of yoeman farmers or tradesmen. Four more
had special skills. One was a bricklayer, two were car-
penters, and one was a surveyor. Such men in England
were defined as "the middling sort." They were below
the gentry but not among the very poor, who often
needed charity. To this number should probably be
added nine others who apparently were literate. All, like
the gentlemen adventurers, were probably younger sons
whose fathers could not provide them with much of an
inheritance. The remaining twenty-three servants doubt-