Founded in 1607, Jamestown was not the only settlement for long. In 1609, Captain John Smith decided to disperse his numerous settlers from the small fort at Jamestown. Several were sent west to the falls of the James, where they purchased a fortified town from some local Powhatans. One detachment was sent south to settle on the Nansemond River, and another group began to build several forts at the tip of the Peninsula, Forts Henry, Charles and Algernon. These forts near Old Point Comfort (modern day Fort Monroe) provided defense against the Powhatan, as well as lookouts for possible Spanish incursions. Hampton, founded in 1610, remains the oldest English-speaking city in North America. During the early years, the few isolated outposts beyond Jamestown were military bases, not yet permanent settlements. In the next few years, communities branched out along the river to form domestic housing sites for families. Governor Thomas Dale founded the city of Henricus in 1611 near Richmond, intending to replace Jamestown as the colony's capital. Henricus never prospered as was hoped, however, and suffered heavily in the 1622 Powhatan uprising. By 1613, under the aggressive leadership of Dale, settlements began to branch out from Jamestown along both sides of the James. Hundreds, patented tracts of land which were often palisaded for defense, soon sprung up along the river. These included Bermuda Nether Hundred, Bermuda Upper Hundred, Digges Hundred, West Hundred and Shirley Hundred. This area of settlement was concentrated near modern Hopewell. In 1614, an expedition settled the Eastern shore on Smith's Island for fishing. Permanent settlement of the Eastern Shore dates to 1619. In 1618, Governor Sir George Yeardley founded Flowerdew Hundred, on the south bank of the James. It would also soon to be home to 15 of the 20 odd Africans who arrived in 1619. The James River served as a highway of traffic and commerce, much like modern interstates. Early settlements spread along the rivers, sources of reinforcement and communications. Throughout this time, Virginia's population was primarily single, male and died young. With few families arriving and high mortality rates form diseases, immigration rather than natural increase accounted for growth. Heightened efforts at recruiting settlers by Treasurer Sir Edwin Sandys increased the colony's population with offers of land and political authority. Known as particular plantations, these settlements offered incentives to both investors and settlers. In Virginia, new laws passed by the General Assembly of 1619 also fostered new growth beyond Jamestown to accommodate the increasing arrivals from England. The same year the Assembly divided Virginia into four counties: James City, Charles City, Henrico and Keghoutan (Elizabeth City), each of which sent representatives to the assembly and formed county courts. The beginnings of a legal and political framework were taking hold. New immigrants to the colony would receive 50 acres, as well as an additional 50 for any persons whose passage they financed. This helped increase the flood of immigrants arriving in Virginia. Also fostering the colony's growth was the first substantial influx of unmarried women in 1620. Virginia's population grew rapidly from 1618 until 1622, rising from a few hundred to nearly 1,400 people. A tobacco boom swept Virginia in the 1620s, further increasing the population and spreading settlers out in search of new lands to cultivate. By 1622, English settlements lined both banks of the James from Hampton Roads to the present site of Richmond. At this point, Powhatan Chief Opechancanough launched a concerted effort to drive the English out by simultaneously attacking these settlements. Despite suffering heavily, the English retaliated and soon forced the Powhatans to sue for peace. In the decades following the attack, English settlement spread further into the interior as immigrants arrived in even greater numbers. In 1646, the first Indian reservations in America would be established in King William County for the surviving Powhatans. With the founding of Maryland in the 1630s and continued immigration and natural increase, English settlement moved west and north of the fall line from its fragile toehold on the Peninsula. Increasingly, these new communities were domestic villages, rather than military outposts. As settlement continued to branch out and move inland, Jamestown remained the administrative center of Virginia. Here the governor resided and the Assembly met. Jamestown also functioned as the colony's official port of entry. A new town of brick began to rise over the ruins of the wooden fort. Author: Robert Dunkerly Seasonal Ranger, COLONIAL NHP September 1998 As late as 1691, King William III and Queen Mary II sent word that Jamestown would remain the seat of government in Virginia. However, when Lt. Governor Francis Nicholson arrived in Virginia, he inspected the colony’s military defenses and found them lacking. In 1698, the statehouse at Jamestown was once again destroyed by fire. Students from the College of William and Mary, established 10 miles inland at Middle Plantation in 1693, urged the General Assembly to move the capital there. The assembly agreed, and in 1699 Virginia’s government followed colonial settlement inland. The new capital city would be known as Williamsburg. By 1699, the population of Virginia had grown form the 104 colonists of 1607 to more than 60,000 people, most of them living east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Only about 600 Powhatan Indians remained on reservations located in the English-controlled parts of the colony. By 1699, Virginia’s Africans had increased in number to about 6,000, or 10% of the population. Jamestown declined rapidly after the capital moved to Williamsburg. By 1716, the town consisted of “a church, a Court House…and three or four brick houses.” Eventually, Jamestown ceased to be a town at all, and the town lands became agricultural fields. Yet, the colony was strong and growing. Jamestown had become Virginia. At Jamestown cultures from three continents came together, worked alongside each other, and fought one another before a new way of life ultimately emerged. The process was long and harsh with displacement of Virginia Indian populations and the institution of slavery creating dire consequences for our nation. It was from these encounters and struggles that a new nation was shaped with cultural diversity one of its defining characteristics. It was at Jamestown that free enterprise and private ownership of property were introduced and offered opportunities for social and economic mobility. In 1619, the first steps were taken toward representative government, laying the foundation for our United States Constitution. After 400 years, the history of Jamestown, with all of its struggles and tragedies, reminds us that we can better understand the present by learning from the past.
Secoton, a Powhatan VillageCourtesy of the trustees of the British Museum The original inhabitants of Virginia arrived some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. These were people of Paleo-Indian culture, who, like their successors, the Archaic-culture people, lived mainly by hunting and fishing. From about 1000 bce the Woodland culture began to make pottery and to grow such crops as corn (maize), beans, and squash. The coastal areas of eastern Virginia supported a significant population of indigenous peoples who fished in the rivers and bays and hunted wild fowl. At the time of European settlement, in the early 17th century, various tribal groups lived in the area. However, the early English settlers dealt mostly with the Powhatan confederacy, an alliance of some 30 Algonquian-speaking peoples of the Tidewater region, united under the powerful chief Powhatan. JamestownMPI/Archive Photos/Getty Images The purposes of the representatives of the Virginia Company of London, who landed at present-day Jamestown in May 1607, were not only to colonize but also to Christianize, to open new areas for trade, and to guard against further inroads by the Spanish, who already had colonized what is now Florida. Hunger, poor shelter, hostility from the indigenous peoples, and rampant disease plagued the company’s early years, but, while the settlement tottered constantly on the brink of dissolution, a tobacco industry was established by John Rolfe and a representative assembly was convened. Rolfe’s marriage in 1614 to Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan, brought temporary peace between the indigenous populations and the English; however, after the death of Pocahontas and her father, a war broke out between the two groups. In 1624 the company’s charter was revoked, and Virginia was established as England’s first royal colony. In the following years new settlements were made, and local administrative systems were developed. Nathaniel BaconCourtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The governorship of Sir William Berkeley—begun in 1642, interrupted from 1652 to 1660 by Puritan rule in England, and ended in 1677—marked the solidification of the colony. The many anti-Puritan supporters of Charles I who fled to Virginia after the king’s death in 1649 added an important element to the population, much of which consisted of indentured servants of European or African descent. The first Africans had been taken to Virginia in 1619, but race-based slavery began to grow rapidly only after the 1660s. Soon the institution was protected by Virginia law, and the number of enslaved people in the colony rose steadily until the American Revolution (1775–83). (For a more detailed account of the nature of slavery in the colonies, see race: The history of the idea of race.) In 1676 a rebellion of colonists led by Nathaniel Bacon, though short-lived, led to Berkeley’s recall and signaled a growing desire for more self-government among the colonists. This sentiment intensified during the century that followed, when England attempted to govern fairly but did not allow the inhabitants of its American colonies the full rights of the English at home. In 1699 the colony’s capital was moved from Jamestown to Williamsburg. The next several decades were a period of expansion as well as of internal strengthening. Virginia had the largest population of any American colony, and, as tobacco crops wore out the soil, Virginians began to move steadily westward in search of new land. Settlers from the Tidewater region spilled over into the Piedmont, across the Blue Ridge, and, by the 1740s, into the Ohio country beyond, there running afoul of French ambitions for that region. For decades the popularly elected assembly of colonial Virginia, the House of Burgesses, led the way in opposing royal prerogatives in the colony, and, following England’s prohibition of westward expansion in 1763, a concerted drive to rationalize rebellion began. On the eve of the American Revolution, Virginia had more than 120,000 residents, many of them persons of considerable sophistication and learning, and a stable—if narrowly based—economy. |