DEVELOPMENTS, 1619-24.
Another significant development of 1619 was the sending by the company of maidens to Virginia to be wives of the settlers. Although many women were already established with their families in the Jamestown colony, the company recognized that homes and children for all the men would be conducive to established family life and permanent residence. Under this new project, the first maidens arrived in May and June 1620. Others followed, as ships brought more and more young women seeking their fortunes in Virginia.
The third momentous event in 1619 was the arrival of Negroes in a Dutch warship. They remained in Virginia, some finding homes, and some as indentured servants even as some white men were at that time. Nevertheless, this first arrival of Negroes was to lead to the introduction of slavery into the colony. It was more than a generation before the institution of slavery began to be entrenched as the backbone of the economic life in Virginia, yet this event of 1619 was the first move in that direction.
A typical view of the landscape on Jamestown Island. The high ground is principally along low ridges, sometimes called “fingers,” divided by marshes or very low ground.
Under Dale, the emphasis on colonization was away from Jamestown, yet later governors found the original seat desirable. Capt. Samuel Argall, who succeeded Yeardley as deputy governor in 1617, wrote that he advanced physical improvements prior to his hasty withdrawal from Virginia in the spring of 1619 to avoid arrest under charges of mismanagement of company affairs. Argall had been the first to prescribe limits for Jamestown. Yeardley followed him as governor, and for the next few years Jamestown, at this time most often called “James City,” witnessed considerable growth and activity. The town, long before, had expanded outside of the fort and spread along the shore on the extreme west end of the island. The borough or incorporation, of which it was the center, extended west to the Chickahominy River and downriver beyond Hog Island. Its territory was along the north side of the river and included the south side as well—the area that later became Surry County. West toward the Chickahominy the area adjacent to Jamestown Island became rather heavily developed and was referred to as the “Suburbs of James City.”
The period from 1619 to 1624 was one of considerable activity for Virginia in general and Jamestown in particular. The reorganized Virginia Company, following its political changes, renewed its efforts to expand the colony and to stimulate profitable employment. Heavy emphasis was placed on new industries, particularly iron and glass, the latter evidently attempted a second time on Glasshouse Point. The planting of mulberry trees and the growing of silkworms were advanced by the dispatch of treatises on silk culture and silkworm eggs in a project in which King James I himself had a personal interest. Immigration to the colony was increased, and measures were taken to meet the religious and educational needs of the settlers. This was the period that saw the attempt to establish a college at Henrico.
The industrial and manufacturing efforts of these years, however, were not destined to succeed. This condition was not due to any laxity on the part of George Sandys, resident treasurer in Virginia, who was something of an economic on-the-spot supervisor for the company. Virginia could not yet support these projects profitably, and interest was lacking on the part of the planters who found in tobacco a source of wealth superior to anything else that had been tried. Tobacco was profitable, and it was grown, at times, even in the streets of Jamestown. It was the profit from tobacco that supported the improved living conditions that came throughout the colony.
These Englishmen who came to settle in the wilderness retained their desire for the advantages of life in England. Books, for example, were highly valued, and with the passage of the years were no uncommon commodity in Virginia. As early as 1608, Rev. Robert Hunt had a library at Jamestown, which was consumed by fire in January of that year. Each new group of colonists seemingly added to the store on hand—Bibles, Books of Common Prayer, other religious works, medical and scientific treatises, legal publications, accounts of gardening, and such. In 1621, the company wrote to the colonial officials regarding works for a new minister being sent to the colony that: “As for bookes we doubt not but you wilbe able to supplie him out of the lybraries of so many that have died.” By this date there was local literary effort, too, such as that by Treasurer George Sandys who continued his celebrated translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the house of William Pierce at Jamestown. Then, too, in March 1623, a gentleman of the colony sent from “Iames his Towne” the ballad “Good Newes from Virginia” in which, among other things, he describes the arrival of the governor’s wife at Jamestown and uses this to prod others to support the colony and to settle in Virginia.
But last of all that Lady faire,
that woman worth renoune:
That left her Country and her friends,
to grace braue Iames his towne.
The wife unto our Gouernour,
did safely here ariue:
With many gallants following her,
whom God preserue aliue.
What man would stay when Ladies gay,
both liues and fortunes leaues:
To taste what we haue truely sowne,
truth never man deceaues.
(From The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., V, 357-8)