SCENARIO: You are a poor but respectable young woman from East Anglia. You are intelligent, literate and a good worker but there are no good opportunities for employment at home or even in London. You want more out of life and hope to get ahead in the world. Therefore, you have decided to take your chances as an indentured servant in the English colonies. After your period of indenture, you hope to settle down and get married. Which colony do you choose? Why? (Note: you should consider social, economic, and political reasons and mention how your colony is different/better than the others) Massachusetts Bay Pennsylvania Maryland Virginia

Perhaps the best choice for this young woman is Pennsylvania. Its climate was more salutary than that of Maryland and Virginia, as the swamps of the Chesapeake resulted in malaria and in high death rates. Massachusetts was ruled as a Puritan theocracy, so if the woman were not Puritan, she would not find this colony particularly welcoming and would not necessarily find someone to marry (as people married within the church). In addition, the crops grown in Maryland and Virginia, such as tobacco, were labor-intensive, while the climate in New England was cold and snowy. The soil of New England was rocky, making growing crops difficult. The crops grown in colonial Pennsylvania, on the other hand, included grains such as wheat and rye, and this area would be a good place for this young woman to settle down after her period of indentured servitude. In addition, the redemptionist system in Pennsylvania allowed indentured servants to buy themselves out of their contracts more quickly than the established time of 3–7 years. Some immigrants to Pennsylvania (including many German immigrants) were able to pay for their passage and were released from servitude immediately upon arrival in the colony (see the source below).

Source:
The German Element in the United States, Volume 1, by Albert Bernhardt Faust, page 66.