Jane Dickenson petitions the colony of Virginia for release from bondage.
Date: 1624
Dickenson's husband signs a contract of indenture to secure passage from England to the colonies. He is killed in the Second Anglo-Powhatan War, and she is captured by the Pamunkey community and later ransomed. Still bound by her husband's contract, she testifies that the contract “differeth not from her slavery [with] the Indians.”