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 crop diversification and on the establishment of a number of new industries including forest products, wine, iron and glass, the latter attempted a second time possibly on Glasshouse Point just outside of Jamestown Island. The planting of mulberry trees and the growing of silkworms were advanced by the dispatch of treatises on silk culture as well as silkworm eggs in a project in which King James I himself had a personal interest.
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. 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. 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.
Yeardley, having instituted the measures of the "Greate Charter," continued to serve as Governor until November 18, 1621. His was a good administration, yet it was not without criticism. There was some unfavorable comment on his negotiations relative to Indian lands as well as in the arrangement of various government fees. With so many personal and private interests in so many of the individual settlements, it is remarkable that he did not get into difficulties of a more serious nature. Even when Sir Francis Wyatt relieved him as governor, he continued on as a Councilor and was later to be Governor again. He had been at the helm when Virginia enjoyed, perhaps, its best three years to date—1619-21.
His successor, Wyatt, proved as popular and even survived the dissolution of the Company. Wyatt, as others before and others to follow, found the governorship to be expensive. It is reported that he spent £1,000 in less than two years. Both Yeardley and Wyatt resided at Jamestown from which, for the most part, they directed Colony affairs. Here they maintained a most impressive establishment with their wives, children and indentured servants including some of the negroes now resident in the Colony.
It is in the 1619 to 1624 period that the first clear picture of at least a part of the physical town of Jamestown emerges, for this period corresponds with the earliest known property records that exist. The town had outgrown the original fort in some years past and now appeared as a fairly flourishing settlement. The records reveal that many of the property owners were yeomen, merchants, carpenters, hog-raisers, farmers, joiners, shopkeepers, and ordinary "fellows," as well as colonial officials. The "New Town" section of James City developed in this period as the old section proved too small and the residents began to build more substantial houses, principally frame on brick foundations. Even so, the town was far from that of a city, perhaps, only a village at best. It was, nonetheless, as close to a hub of political, social, and economic life as completely rural Virginia had. It was the Colony's capital in every sense.
The population figures taken in these years give a good idea of the size of Jamestown in this period. In February 1624, it is recorded that 183 persons were living in Jamestown and 35 others on the Island outside of the town proper. These are listed by name, as are the 87 who had died between April 1623 and the following February. In the "census" of January 1625 there was a total of 124 residents listed for "James Citty" and an additional 51 for the Island. The over-all total of 175 included some 122 males and 53 females.
Aside from the population statistics, the musters of January 1625 give much more information. Jamestown had a church, a court-of-guard (guardhouse), 3 stores (probably storehouses), a merchant's store, and 33 houses. Ten of the Colony's 40 boats were here, including a skiff, a "shallop" of 4 tons, and a "barque" of 40 tons. There were stores of fish, 24,880 pounds to be exact, corn, peas, and meal. There were four pieces of ordnance, supplies of powder, shot and lead, and, for individual use, "fixt peeces," snaphances, pistols, seventy swords, coats of mail, quilted coats, and thirty-five suits of armor. The bulk of the Colony's livestock seems to have been localized in the Jamestown area, about half (183) of the cattle, a little more than half (265) of the hogs, and well over half (126) of the goats. The one horse listed for the Colony was shown to have been at Jamestown, but in this category the "census" must have been deficient. Even in 1616 there had been 3 horses and 3 mares.
The massacre and its aftermath and the investigation and dissolution of the Company dominated the Virginia scene in Wyatt's first three year term as Governor. These things should not, perhaps, becloud the continued expansion and growth of the Colony that resumed after the fateful year of 1622 when the massacre was followed, in the summer, with disease along the James and then by the more specific plague.