The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624

by Jr. Charles E. Hatch

All tracts, including those allotted prior to the general division, now would have to be laid off and surveyed. The prescribing of bounds became a necessity to resolve existing, and to prevent future, uncertainties and disputes. This was to be the function of William Claiborne, surveyor-general, who reached Virginia in October, 1621.

Headrights were another matter which entered the picture in these formative years. This began as a device, a good one it proved to be, used by the Company to stimulate immigration and settlement in Virginia. It allowed any person who paid his own way to the Colony to receive fifty acres for his own "personal adventure." In addition he could collect fifty acres for each person whose passage he paid. If a person brought himself and three others, for example, he could claim 200 acres under this arrangement. This headright system was later adopted in other colonies and continued in use for generations.

The early success of the land division can be seen, perhaps, in the report of John Rolfe written in January, 1620:

All the ancient planters being sett free have chosen places for their dividendes according to the commission, Which giveth all greate content, for now knowing their owne landes, they strive and are prepared to build houses & to cleere their groundes ready to plant, which giveth ... [them] greate incouragement, and the greatest hope to make the Colony florrish that ever yet happened to them.

Participation in the affairs of government was another element in the new Company approach. Soon after his arrival, Yeardley issued a call for the first representative legislative assembly in America which convened at Jamestown on July 30, 1619, and remained in session until August 4. This was the beginning of our present system of representative government. The full intent behind the moves that led to this historic meeting may never be known. It seems to have been another manifestation of the determination to give those Englishmen in America the rights and privileges of Englishmen at home that had been guaranteed to them in the original Company charter. It seems to be this rather than a planned attempt to establish self-government in the New World on a scale that might have been in violation of English law and custom at the time. Whatever the motive, the significance of this meeting in the church at Jamestown remains the same. This body of duly chosen representatives of the people has continued in existence and its evolution leads directly to our State legislatures and to the Congress of the United States.

Circumstances seemed to prevent the annual meeting of the Assembly even though this was initially intended. Possibly, although it is not clear, the Assembly met in March, 1620. There was a session after the arrival of Governor Wyatt in October, 1621 although little is known of its actions. The next session of record was in the late winter of 1624 and of this some papers have survived. At the time the dissolution of the Company seemed to be sensed and the Burgesses acted carefully. Much of the session was devoted to answering questions relative to the state of the Colony. The Assembly went on record, too, denouncing the so-called autocratic government that existed in Virginia prior to 1619. There was, however, refusal to associate its name with an attack on the Company and it would not send its papers to England by the investigating commissioners. Instead they were sent by a representative of the Assembly's choice. The status of the General Assembly under the King, when Virginia became a royal colony, was, for sometime, undefined and even its continuation was, perhaps, doubtful. It did, nonetheless, survive to become a chief instrument of government.

In the social field the Company had recognized that homes, children and family life make for stability and now steps were taken to do something about it. To this end, in November 1619, a program was launched to increase the emigration of women to Virginia. Many had already come to contribute greatly to the Colony's welfare, the first two in 1608; and family life was already very much a reality. The male percentage of the population was, however, still much too high.

The first of the "maids" sent in this new program reached Virginia in late May and early June, 1620 seemingly to the benefit of both "maids" and eligible bachelors. In 1621 it was reported that in December the Warwick arrived with "an extraordinary choice lot [of] thirty-eight maids for wives."

Earlier, in August 1619, there had been another event, this an unplanned one, when a group of negroes were brought to the Colony out of the West Indies and sold from the ship which brought them for "victualls." This created little attention at the time. Evidently these newcomers found themselves bound for a time as servants rather than as slaves. The matter of mass negro slavery with its profitableness in the tobacco economy was, as yet, decades away. This event of 1619, however, may properly be noted as the first move in this direction.

Immigration to the Colony continued to increase including even a number of English youths, 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.