Hello! Hope to find you all happy and well.
I've found this sentence in a book about racism in anglo-american continental colonies (basically xvii-century Virginia and Maryland plantations).

That's the context:

Tobacco being "the sole measure of value, standard of price and medium of exchange",

Quote :

early in the season, when ready tobacco might not be available, exchanges were sometimes made completely or partially by direct barter, as in [the following case]:  In April 1663, Elizabeth Holbrooke, a bond-laborer belonging to John Williams with four years to serve, was exchanged for “One yearling heyfer, with her encrease.”

What is that "increase" referring to? Is it an extension of the serving term of Holbrooke? Is that pointing to the tools, implements or clothes she was theoretically entitled to receive as an indentured servant? An allusion to the freedom dues to be given to her at the end of the original term?

I hope you can help me here —otherwise it's going to be difficult for the Spanish reader to make sense of the sentence (I mean, just a dry "incremento" would be quite perplexing, I gather…).

Thanks for your kind attention.

Be good!

CM

A Heifer is a female cow who has not yet given birth. The "encrease", increase, refers to any calves the the cow may subsequently produce.

Further to Trike's example, I suspect the word might be closely related to the French legal term, en créance, referring to a future debt - whether that's a future claim (from the creditor's point of view), or (from the debtor's viewpoint) a future obligation that will eventually need to be paid, but, because of circumstance is not yet due. A debt en créance refers to some future debt/obligation in that the monetary amount to be paid might currently be uncertain but it will be according to existing agreed parameters (such as in Trike's example of calves, if any, yet to be born). I wonder if encrease is not just an old Anglo-American spelling of the French encreance?

In modern French un debt en créance is the legal term used when a tenant vacates a property and accepts that they will eventually need to pay off all electricity/gas/telephone/council bills accrued during their period of residence, albeit that the exact sums have yet to be calculated. There's probably an exact Spanish term for it, but legal matters, in whatever the language, are certainly not my forté.

I see. I knew the meaning of Heifer, but would have never-ever suspected these "increments" (no matter how obvious they might be post hoc). That solves the problem, Triceratops (or its first part: to understand it): its great help.
The second part, finding the equivalence, seems harder, but your connection with the french expression "en créance", Meles meles, gives me a perfect starting point. Jargons are always a world in themselves, but I'll try to find the good term.

Thanks a lot to both of you.

Not to offer any help to your translation (which MM and Trike have solved anyway), but the meaning of 'encrease' was unknown to me and I'm from the UK.

No worries. I think it's an old spelling.
Glad to "see" you LadyinRetirement.

CM

It should also be appreciated that for the heifer to be in calf at the time of sale was proof of its status. This means that the buyer was guaranteed a fertile cow able to produce both beef and milk. That said - miscarriages, breech births and still births are fairly common with first pregnancy cows, so including the unborn calf in the sale would seem an obvious part of the deal. That fact, however, that in this case the 'encrease' was specifically mentioned in the terms of the exchange would suggest that there were other sales in which the first born calf would be returned to the breeder, no doubt for having invested the time and know-how with regard to the successful impregnation of the heifer.

Hello Vizzer: that's very interesting. It makes cristal-clear why the "encrease" was important and what exactly it meant on the whole. It would be very useful should I need a footnote. I really appreciate.
Thanks a lot.

I remember several years ago hearing of court case where three or four heifers had been purchased for a dairy herd and they turned out to be freemartins.  If a heifer is purchased in calf it would be self-evident she's fertile (as mentioned above).  At the time I didn't know what a freemartin was and had to look it up in the dictionary (in the days before I had access to the internet at home).

Yes! I know what you mean! "the days before Internet at home", with a typewriter and wading through heavy physical dictionaries and encyclopedias… Gosh! That seems far away! Less speedy, anyway; you know, more means, more productivity… One has to be "fertile…"
(Sorry about the digression… I still have eight pages to translate…).

Take care.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I remember several years ago hearing of court case where three or four heifers had been purchased for a dairy herd and they turned out to be freemartins.  If a heifer is purchased in calf it would be self-evident she's fertile (as mentioned above).  At the time I didn't know what a freemartin was and had to look it up in the dictionary (in the days before I had access to the internet at home).

Brave New World!

Green George, Brave New World is a 'modern classic' I never got around to reading.  There was an adaptation of it on the BBC many, many years ago but I didn't watch the whole thing.