2.3 Settling the Chesapeake:
Jamestown Colony:
● Area: swamp containing malaria-carrying mosquitos
○ Garbage settlers dumped caused dysentery and typhoid fever
● Colony’s leadership changed repeatedly
● High death rate, inadequate supplies from England
● First settlers: farmers, laborers, sons of English gentry + high-class craftsmen
○ Gold > farm
● John Smith - one of colony’s first leaders
○ Imposed forced labor on company’s lands
○ 1609 - injury forces him to return to England
○ Successors continued iron rule
From Company to Society:
● Virginia Company: abandon gold search, grow food, find marketable commodities
● Headright system: paid 50 acres of land to any colonist who paid for his own or another’s
passage
● 1619 House of Burgesses: first elected assembly
○ Only freemen could vote
○ Elected governor could nullify any measure
○ Laid foundation for a slave owner-dominated society
Powhatan and Pocahontas:
● Virginia Company instructed colonists to treat Indians kindly
● John Smith attempted to stop settlers from seizing produce from Indian villages
● First two years: mostly peaceful, equal give-and-take
● Pocahontas saves John Smith from execution by Powhatan
● 1610: conflict begins when John Smith leaves for England
● 1613: settlers held Pocahontas hostage
○ Converted to Christianity
○ 1614: married John Rolfe to restore peace
○ Accompanied him to England, symbol of Anglo-Indian harmony
○ 1617: succumbed to disease
Uprising of 1622:
● 1622: Opechancanough (Powhatan’s brother) leads a surprise attack
● Surviving colonists retaliated with massacres
● 1644: last attempt at rebelling
● Forced treaty to surviving coastal Indians
● Virginia failed to accomplish goals
● Local elite controlled colony
Tobacco Colony:
● Commodity, Virginia’s substitute for gold
● Crown profited from custom duties
● New immigrants taking advantage of headright system
● Demand for labor
● Tobacco cultivation → demand for field labor
● Harsh conditions, high death rate, laws mandating punishment
○ Land continued to attract migrants
● ¾ migrants came as servants
Women and the Family:
● Lacked stable family life
● Colony promoted immigration of women
○ 1620-162: “tobacco brides”, arranged marriages
● Majority of women came as indentured servants
○ Did not form families until mid-twenties
● High death rate, unequal gender ratio, late marriage age
● Many single men, widows, orphans
● Dower-rights: ⅓ of dead husband’s property
● Widow/unmarried women could enjoy an independent legal identity
● Many women came as indentured servants → hard life, early death
● Married women found themselves in poverty after husbands died
Maryland Experiment:
● 1632 - proprietary colony: authority to an individual
● Cecilus Calvert disliked representative institutions
● Yet, Charter guaranteed Englishmen liberties
Religion in Maryland:
● Calvert (Catholic) envisioned Maryland as a refuge
○ Protestants and Catholics could live in harmony
● Protestant majority
● High death rate
● Greater opportunity for land ownership than Virginia
○ Fifty acres of land
● Tobacco planters occupied best land → prospects for landless diminished