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A Study of the Africans and
African Americans on Jamestown
Island and at Green Spring, 1619-1803
by
Martha W. McCartney
with contributions by
Lorena S. Walsh
data collection provided by
Ywone Edwards-Ingram
Andrew J. Butts
Beresford Callum
National Park Service | Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
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A Study of the Africans and

African Americans on Jamestown

Island and at Green Spring, 1619-

by

Martha W. McCartney

with contributions by Lorena S. Walsh

data collection provided by Ywone Edwards-Ingram Andrew J. Butts Beresford Callum

National Park Service | Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

i

Table of Contents

Page

Acknowledgments ..........................................................................................................................iii Notes on Geographical and Architectural Conventions ..................................................................... v

Chapter 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2. Research Design ............................................................................................................ 3 Chapter 3. Assessment of Contemporary Literature, BY LORENA S. WALSH .................................................... 5 Chapter 4. Evolution and Change: A Chronological Discussion ....................................................... 13 Chapter 5. The Wider Context, BY LORENA S. WALSH ....................................................................................... 15 Chapter 6. 1619-1630: Arrival and Dispersion .............................................................................. 27 Chapter 7. 1630-1642: A Pivotal Period of Change ....................................................................... 43 Chatper 8. 1642-1652: Berkeley’s First Term ............................................................................... 49 Chapter 9. 1652-1660: The Commonwealth Period ...................................................................... 57 Chapter 10. 1660-1677, Berkeley’s Final Term ............................................................................ 65 Chapter 11. 1678-1699: The Old Capital’s Decline and Demise .................................................... 81 Chapter 12. Three Microcosms: The Travis and Ambler Plantations and Green Spring .................... 97 Chapter 13. 1700-1792, The Plantation Period ........................................................................... 103 Chapter 14. Microcosms: The Travis and Ambler Plantations, the Broadnax Holdings, Urban Jamestown, and Green Spring ................................................................................................. 143 Chapter 15. 1793-1803: Steps Along the Path to Freedom ......................................................... 165 Chapter 16. Microcosms: The Travis and Ambler Plantations, Urban Jamestown, and Green Spring .......................................................................................................................... 167 Chapter 17. Looking to the Future .............................................................................................. 173 Chapter 18. Recommendations for Future Research .................................................................... 177 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 179

Appendices Appendix A: Travis Plantation Personal Property Tax Assessments ........................................... 205 Appendix B: Richard Ambler’s Slaves in James City County, February 15, 1768 ..................... 207 Appendix C: Slaves Listed in an Inventory of Edward Ambler I’s Estate in James City County, 1769 ..................................................................................................................... 209 Appendix D: Ambler Plantation Personal Property Tax Assessments ........................................ 211 Appendix E: Slaves Listed in Philip Ludwell III’s Inventory, 1767 ............................................ 213 Appendix F: Ludwell-Lee Slaves in James City County ........................................................... 215 Appendix G: Contract Between John Ambler II and Overseer Henry Taylor ............................. 217 Appendix H: Jamestown, Structure/Lot Concordance .............................................................. 219 Appendix I: Guide to the Database .......................................................................................... 223

Cover illustration: From Map of the Most Inhabited Parts of Virginia, Containing the Whole Province of Maryland with Part of Pensilvania, New Jersey and North Carolina , by Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson, 1755. Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

iii

A

ndrew J. Butts, Beresford Callum, and Ywone Edwards-Ingram, graduate stu- dents at the College of William and Mary, were responsible for data collection. Ms. Edwards-Ingram, a doctoral candidate at the Col- lege and an archaeologist with the Colonial Will- iamsburg Foundation, supervised the data collection process and saw that facsimiles of all relevant documents were clustered categorically and cross-referenced. She also prepared an elec- tronic data base that not only encompasses all of the sources examined, but serves as a topical guide to the records collected. Volunteer Billy Stinson generously shared his computer exper- tise and helped with the data entry process. Drs. Marley R. Brown III and Lorena S. Walsh provided overall guidance and direction to the Jamestown-Green Spring African Ameri- can study. Dr. Walsh also prepared two criti- cally important essays. One assesses the quality and quantity of the contemporary literature available on the study of Africans and African Americans in the colonial Chesapeake. The other, which draws upon her extensive knowl- edge of the Chesapeake’s history, utilizes the data summarized in this report to place Jamestown and Green Spring within a broad his- torical context.

Acknowledgments

The author prepared a written summary of the documentary records compiled by other project personnel and analyzed the legal records that were collected. She contributed information on Native American servitude and slavery, including supple- mentary background data drawn from local and regional records and documents in the British Public Records Office. Karen Rehm, Diane Stallings, and Jane Sundberg of the National Park Service, who were keenly interested in this project, were highly sup- portive and set its goals. They also provided the project team with direction. Gregory J. Brown of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s Department of Archaeological Research contributed his exper- tise by refining and formatting this report. Heather M. Harvey prepared the graphics used throughout this report and was responsible for electronic map- ping. Archaeologist and expert photographer An- drew C. Edwards, who provided many of the slides used in public presentations, helped tremendously in communicating the results of our work to the outside world. Staff members in Colonial Williamsburg’s Rockefeller Library (notably George Yetter, Gail Greve, Marianne Cardin and Cathy Grosfils) assisted by procuring copies of graphics and overseas documents.

iv

vi

Figure 1. Overview of Study Units.

Figure 2. Study Unit 1, Tracts A-H.

STR UCT URE 112

Pond

KingsmillCreek

River

Back

Marsh

Point"

Back

River "Pyping

The Thorofare

S TRU CT URE 17

STR UCT URE 117

STR UCT URE 110

Mrs. Harmer

Cart Path

J ack son

150 acres 1657 R. James

1654

R. James40 acresoriginal

tobacco houseMr. Meriwether's^ 80 acres

Meriweather/Kingsmill William Sherwood66 acres

John Knowles133 acres 1665

Block House Site1610-

Thos. Sully6 acres 1624

Block House Site 1608

Road Church Point

Tract C Component

Tract B (^) Lot A

Components^ Tract A

"The Friggott"

Tract C

Tract CLot C

Tract G

Tract F

Tract CLot B

Tract E

Study Unit 1 Tracts A-H

Tract H

Lot D

Tract D

A. P .V .A. Prope rt yN .P .S. P rop ert y

Passmore

Goose Hill

Lower Point

Pond Fox Island

Pond

Creek

Pond

KingsmillCreek

River

Back Marsh

Point" Back

"Pyping River The Thorofare

Black Point

Orc hard Run

STRUCTURE 17 bri d ge

3 /^10 acr e

D -1 7D - 19

Boundaries of Study Units 1, 2, 3 & 4

Study Unit 2

Study Unit 3

Study Unit 1

Study Unit 4

vii

Figure 4. Study Unit 2, Tracts A-X.

STRU CTURE 17

STRUCT URE 123

ST RUCT URE 125 Highway along River Bank

Back Street (Ditch 2)

Back Street

Highway to Back St

J Chew3/10 acre

Ralph Hamor

1 1/2 acre

John Harvey

6 1/2 acres

G. Menefie7/8 acre Road to River

R Stephens3/8 acre

J. Alsop

W. Edwards

1696

John Harris

Hartwell

1/2 acre 1660

Omoonce/Fitchett

T. Rabley

Sherwood1 acre

3 acres

original

3/4 acreLudwell (Jail)

Ditch 3

John Barber Thomas Hunt1 acre 1/2 acre

1/2 acreWm. May 1661

1/2 acreWm. May (^1670) CustisJohn pre-16831/2 acre

1655 John Barber1/2 acre 1656

CorstenStam1/2 acre 1638

.1125 acre 1640 Wm. Barker.15 acre^1638 J. Corker

Arthur Bayly1/2 acre^1638

1 acreAnn Talbot 1655

Thos. Harris?

Thos. Swan? D- D- D-

D-

Wm.Harris D- 1/2 acre 1755 Travis Travis?

(Cassinett/Awborne) Brown/Lee/Tullitt 3/4 acre

Wm. Pierce'sStore

John Phipps'barn

(Armiger<1687)

Ditch 1

1/2 acreLudwell^1696

Marable Castle

(Wm. Wood)

<12/

Ditch 24 Main Road (Study Unit 1 Tract F)

(Study Unit 1 Tract D)

Lot A

Lot B

(Lots A&B)Tract F

Wells.2125 acre 1699

Tract C

Tract B

Tract J

Tract Y

Lot A

Lot B

B LotA C

Study Unit 4 Tract G Study Unit 4Tract K

Tract A

(See separate map)Tract L

Tract I Lot A

Lot B Tract E

Lots A&B C&D

Tract F

Lot Lot

Lot C

1/2 acre 1658 Wm. Harris

Wm. Parry Tract D.15 acre^1638

PassmoreCreek

Pond

KingsmillCreek

Black

Walter Chiles 70 acres 1670

Thos. Passmore, AP12 acres

J. Jefferson, AP

(Edward Travis II by 1682) John Radish/ original 12 acresJohn Bradwell 1637

Mary Holland12 acres 1624 Nathaniel Hutt, AP12 acres pre-

Mary Bayly, AP10 acrespre-1626 Robt. Marshall10 acres (R. Holt, 1650)

Lieut. Batters

Ensign Wm. Spence, AP

Johnson, APJohn 15 acres 1624 Southerne12 acresJohn (^1625) John 12 acres 1625 Southerne Thos. Passmore, AP16 acres pre-

Wm. Fairfax, AP12 acres 1619(to Ricd. Buck, 1620)

Jenkin Andrews Mary Bayly (pre-1619)

Mary Baylypre- John Grubb acres^4

David Ellisand Mr. Crosbie John Senior,12 acres

18 acres Southey 1627 Mrs. Eliz.

Tucker'sHole Swamp

1624 1628 Patent1626 Lease

A (^) F pre- H G N Thos. Sully(6 acres) PLot A O M U LotB C D B

E

J Q K (^) I V

R

L

W

X (conjectural)

Robt. MarshallT Thos. Grubb10 acres

Period I, 1607- Study Unit 2 Tracts A-X

John Haul (^) S Point

Figure 3. Study Unit 1, close-up of lots near waterfront.

Chapter 1.

Introduction

D

uring 1998 and 1999 documentary re- search was conducted in support of the Jamestown-Green Spring African Ameri- can study. One of the project’s principal goals was to chart the course of Africans and African Ameri- cans in the transition from servitude to slavery. Through a close examination of documentary records associated with Jamestown Island and Green Spring, an attempt was made to determine how this drama unfolded at both locales. Special attention was given to legal records that regulated the conduct of ethnic minorities (especially Afri- cans, African Americans and Native Americans) in Virginia during the period 1619 to 1803. These dates were chosen to bracket the period of study because they commence with the arrival of the Africans in Virginia and end with the establishment of a free black community comprised of Green Spring’s former slaves. Throughout the research process, data were collected from primary and secondary sources. Ex- tensive use was made of a master list of people known to have owned or been associated with properties on Jamestown Island or with Green Spring plantation. Information also was gathered on people known to have been involved in activi- ties at one or both areas. By the mid-eighteenth

century, much of Jamestown Island had been ab- sorbed into the plantations owned by the Amblers and the Travises. Therefore, each of those proper- ties was studied in detail and compared with Green Spring. Whenever Jamestown Island landowners or tenants are mentioned within this report, they are cross-referenced to the specific properties with which they were associated. Each of these prop- erties’ boundaries, identified as components of Study Units, Tracts and Lots (along with any struc- tures they contain) are shown on the electronically generated base map produced as part of the Jamestown ArchaeologicalAssessment. Within this report, black people have been identified as Afri- cans whenever it is almost certain that they were born in Africa. Those identified as African Ameri- cans are people of African descent who most likely were born in the New World. Whenever Africans and African Americans are referenced collectively (for example, in legal records), or when there is uncertainty with regard to a person of African ancestry’s place of birth, they are referenced as black. Whenever people are identified as mulat- toes (a term traditionally applied to those having black and white ancestry), it is because they were labeled as such in one or more historical records.

by National Park Service interpreters. Photocopies of graphic images of slaves and servants were ex- tracted from a variety of published sources, includ- ing drawings and illustrations appearing on maps. A simple data base was created in Microsoft Ex- cel so that the information compiled by project personnel would be readily accessible to National Park Service staff members. The Colonial Williams- burg Foundation’s compilation of sources, Enslav- ing Virginia , was used as a reference work during preparation of this report.

Limitations of Primary Sources

Almost all of the antebellum court records of James City County, the jurisdiction within which the study area lies, were destroyed during the Civil War. Moreover, many early patents were lost or de- stroyed, creating numerous gaps in the records, and patents predating 1683 are transcriptions, not originals. Even so, thanks to Green Spring’s unique place in history and urban Jamestown’s role as the colony’s seventeenth century capital, a wealth of information was generated by governmental and military officials, by antiquarians and numerous oth- ers who paid personal visits to the area and re- corded their observations. The Ambler manu- scripts, portions of which are on file at the Library of Congress and the University of Virginia, pro- vide a wealth of information on the Ambler planta- tion on Jamestown Island and on the mainland, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These records, which are voluminous, make the Ambler plantation at Jamestown one of Tidewater Virginia’s most thoroughly documented rural prop- erties. Likewise, the Ludwell and Lee Papers, available at the Virginia Historical Society, provide numerous useful insights into the management of eighteenth century Green Spring plantation, including the African and African-American people who com- prised its work force.

Data Presentation

The preliminary report that follows draws upon many of the sources that have been identified to date, a considerable number of which await in- depth exploration. This is especially true with re- gard to seventeenth and eighteenth century source material involving the slave trade and the Royal African Company. Certain collections of private papers that were identified during preliminary re- search, legislative and judicial sources dating to the mid-nineteenth century, seventeenth century court records of nearby counties, and other documents at outlying repositories, such as those on file at the British Public Records Office, are among the ar- chival materials that await initial or more thorough examination. Therefore, within the report that fol- lows, many issues are mentioned that warrant a fuller understanding. For example, from time to time, material on Native American servitude has been included. However, that issue awaits a thor- ough investigation. For the sake of discussion, Jamestown Is- land has been subdivided into four geographically distinct components or Study Units. Each Study Unit is comprised of lesser-sized parcels that have been designated Tracts. Some Tracts are made up of smaller subunits that have been styled Lots. The geographically-based organizational scheme, used in this report, was also employed in preparing the three-volume history that was produced as part of the Jamestown Archaeological Assessment. When- ever previously identified cultural features are ref- erenced in this report, they are cited according to the numbers assigned them by National Park Ser- vice archaeologist John Cotter. This has been done for convenience of reference in discussing specific elements of Jamestown’s cultural landscape.

Chapter 3.

Assessment of Contemporary Literature

by Lorena S. Walsh

motivations for migration and they might have brought different skills and social attitudes to the New World than did men and women from the lower orders. Mildred Campbell, in “Social Ori- gins of Some Early Americans,” in Seventeenth- Century America , ed. James Morton Smith (Chapel Hill, NC., 1959), 63-89; Campbell, “’Middling People’ or ‘Common Sort’? The So- cial Origins of Some Early Americans Reexam- ined,” William and Mary Quarterly , 3d ser., 35 (1978): 535-40; and Campbell, “The Social Ori- gins of Some Early Americans: A Rejoinder,” Wil- liam and Mary Quarterly , 3d ser., 36 (1979): 277- 86, argued for primarily middle class origins. David Galenson, “Immigration and the Colonial Labor System: An Analysis of the Length of Indenture,” Explorations in Economic History , 14 (1977): 360-77; Galenson, “‘Middling People’ or ‘Com- mon Sort’? The Social Origins of Some Early Americans Reexamined,” William and Mary Quarterly , 3d ser., 35 (1978): 499-534; Galenson, “The Social Origins of Some Early Americans: Re- joinder,” William and Mary Quarterly , 3d ser., 36 (1979): 264-77; and Galenson, “The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An Economic Analysis,” Journal of Economic His- tory , 44 (1984): 1-26, argued that the substantial percentage of migrant servants with no stated oc- cupation in surviving records were likely of lower social origins. On this issue see also David Souden, “‘Rogues, whores, and vagabonds’: Indentured Servant Emigrants to North America, and the Case of Mid-Seventeenth-Century Bristol,” Social His- tory , 3 (1978): 23-41; Anthony Salerno, “The Social Background of Seventeenth-Century Emi- gration to America,” Journal of British Studies , 10 (1979-80): 31-52; John Wareing, “Migration to London and Transatlantic Emigration of Inden-

T

he most influential work on the develop- ment of Virginia labor systems, with an em- phasis on early Jamestown, remains Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Free- dom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975). On this topic see also Morgan, “The Labor Problem at Jamestown, 1607-18,” Ameri- can Historical Review , 76 (1971): 596-611, and “Headrights and Head Counts: A Review Article,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography , 80 (1972): 361-71. Wesley Frank Craven, White, Red, and Black: The Seventeenth-Century Vir- ginian (Charlottesville, Va., 1971) remains a sug- gestive and still frequently cited source. Good sum- maries of the development of the Chesapeake economy, population, and labor systems are found in John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607- (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1985), chaps. 6, 10, and 11.

Indentured Servants

In addition to Morgan, the older Abbott Emerson Smith, Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607- (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1947) remains useful. A more recent work is David W. Galenson, W hite Servi- tude in Colonial America: An Economic Analy- sis (Cambridge, Eng., 1981). Much of the scholarship of the 1970s and 1980s involved debates about the social origins of migrating indentured servants. A larger question, not always directly addressed in the ensuring de- bates, concerned these individuals’ motives for mi- grating. Lacking direct documentary evidence pro- duced by the servants themselves, motives were inferred from evidence about their social status prior to immigration. Migrants drawn from broad mid- dling groups in England might have had different

both during and after servitude, would at this point in time benefit from additional research and re- evaluation.

Seventeenth-Century African

Migration

The 1990s have witnessed a greatly expanded in- terest in the Transatlantic slave trade and the Afri- can Diaspora, as evidenced especially by the widely attended September 1998 Institute of Early Ameri- can History Conference on Transatlantic Slaving and the African Diaspora held in Williamsburg, and the imminent release of the W.E.B. Du Bois Insti- tute dataset of slaving voyages. Scholars have most intensely studied the slave trades of the sixteenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, leaving the poorly documented seventeenth century relatively neglected. Since so few Africans were transported to the mainland colonies relative to the Caribbean and Central and South America in this century, forced transportation to the continental colonies has received little attention from scholars of the whole transatlantic trade. Recent works that do attempt to put the early Chesapeake in the context of the whole transatlantic trade include Richard N. Bean, The British Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, 1650- 1775 (Ph. D. dissertation, University of Washing- ton, 1971; repr., New York, 1975); James A. Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A His- tory (New York, 1981); Ira Berlin, “The Slave Trade and the Development of Afro-American So- ciety in English Mainland North America, 1619- 1775,” Southern Studies , 20 (1981): 122-36; David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman, “Fluctuations in sex and age ratios in the transatlantic slave trade, 1663-1864,” Economic History Review , 46 (1993): 308-23; James Walvin, Questioning Sla- very (London, 1996); Robin Blackburn, The Mak- ing of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (London, 1997); and David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge, Eng., 2000). John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680 (Cambridge, Eng., 1992), discusses the slave trade and the African

diaspora in the New World from an African per- spective. Initially received as an extreme statement, Thornton’s account of African control of the slave trade in Africa has now become widely accepted. His argument that many enslaved Africans per- ceived themselves as part of communities that had distinct ethnic or “national” roots remains contested. The issue of the presence or absence of such eth- nic consciousness and of possible elements of re- tained African cultures will be a major issue in most new studies of Africans everywhere in the Ameri- cas. The documents reproduced in Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (4 vols., 1932- 35; rpt. New York, 1969), remain the most exten- sive compilation of period primary sources avail- able. Useful studies of the Royal African Company trade to Virginia include K. G. Davies, The Royal African Company (London, 1957), esp. pp. 214- 32; and Charles L. Killinger III, “The Royal Afri- can Company Slave Trade to Virginia, 1659-1713,” (M.A. thesis, College of William and Mary, 1969). Other works that touch on aspects of the seven- teenth century trade of relevance to Virginia are Virginia Bever Platt, “The East India Company and the Madagascar Slave Trade,” William and Mary Quarterly , 3d ser., 26 (1969): 548-77; Susan Alice Westbury, “Colonial Virginia and the Atlantic Slave Trade” (Ph.D. dissertation., Univ. of Illinois at Ur- bana-Champaign, 1981; Westbury, “Slaves of Colonial Virginia: Where They Came From,” Wil- liam and Mary Quarterly , 3d ser., 42 (1985): 228- 37; and Elizabeth Suttell, The British Slave Trade to Virginia, 1698-1728 (M.A. thesis, College of William and Mary, 1965). Darold D. Wax, “Pref- erences for Slaves in Colonial America,” Journal of Negro History 58 (1973): 371-89 summarizes information on planters’ ethnic preferences. Narrowing the focus to the British mainland colonies, Ira Berlin, “Time, Space, and the Evolu- tion of Afro-American Society on British Mainland North America,” American Historical Review , 85 (1980): 44-78, places Chesapeake slavery in a comparative mainland context, covering the topics of proportion of total population, differing work

and demographic regimes, and internal slave econo- mies. Berlin’s recent Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Mass., 1998) is a masterful synthesis of current scholarship with significant at- tention to the seventeenth as well as the eighteenth centuries. Berlin’s arguments about how and why blacks who arrived in the colonies early in the sev- enteenth century differed from and had different experiences than those who arrived later appears in expanded form in Berlin, “From Creole to Afri- can: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of African- American Society in Mainland North America,” William and Mary Quarterly , 3d ser., 53 (1996): 251-88. Stimulating discussions of the development of slavery elsewhere in the British colonies include Ri- chard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1972); Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Providence Island, 160- 1641: The Other Puritan Colony (Cambridge, Eng., 1993); Virginia Bernhard, “Bermuda and Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: A Compara- tive View,” Journal of Social History , 11 (1985): 57-70; Bernhard, “Beyond the Chesapeake: The Contrasting Status of Blacks in Bermuda, 1616- 1663,” Journal of Southern History , 54 (1988): 545-64; and Michael Jarvis, “In the Eye of All Trade”: Maritime Revolution and the Transfor- mation of Bermudian Society, 1612-1800 (Ph.D. dissertation, College of William and Mary, 1997). For a comparison of Barbados and Virginia see Richard S. Dunn, “Masters, Servants, and Slaves in the Colonial Chesapeake and the Caribbean,” in Early Maryland in a Wider World , ed. David B. Quinn (Detroit, 1982), pp. 242-66. Philip D. Morgan, “British Encounters with Africans and African-Americans, circa 1600-1780,” in Strang- ers within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire , ed. Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991), pp. 157- 219, places contacts in the context of multi-cul- tural studies. Douglas Brent Chambers, “‘He Gwine Sing He Country’: Africans, Afro-Virginians, and the

Development of Slave Culture in Virginia, 1690- 1810” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia,

  1. deals primarily with the eighteenth century, but, especially in chapter 4 on the slave trade in Virginia, raises issues about the composition of slave cargos, the distribution in Virginia of Africans com- ing from particular geographic regions inAfrica, and planter purchasing patterns that need to be explored for earlier years.

Africans and African Americans

in Seventeenth-Century Virginia

New information has surfaced in the past two years regarding the first Africans to arrive in Virginia. First of all, more Africans were present in the Virginia colony by 1620 than the 20 and odd negroes that John Smith and John Rolfe recorded as having been brought to Virginia in a Dutch ship in 1619. Thirty- two Negroes (15 men and 17 women) were listed in a census of 1619/20 recently discovered in the Ferrar Papers, Magdalene College, Cambridge. This census is discussed in William Thorndale, “The Virginia Census of 1619,” Magazine of Virginia Genealogy , 33 (1995): 155-70. Subsequent un- published research of Martha McCartney estab- lishes that Thorndale incorrectly attributed the date of this census to March 1619 rather than to March

  1. Engel Sluiter, “New Light on the ‘20. And Odd Negroes’ Arriving in Virginia, August 1619,” William and Mary Quarterly , 3d ser., 54 (1997): 395-98 identifies the first known shipment of slaves as having been transported from Luanda in Portu- guese Angola by a Portuguese supplier of slaves to New Spain that was captured by an English and a Dutch ship in the West Indies. John Thornton, “The African Experience of the ‘20. And Odd Negroes’ Arriving in Virginia in 1619,” William and Mary Quarterly , 3d ser., 55 (1998): 421-34, describes the events in Angola that led to these peoples’ cap- ture and forced shipment. Irene W. D. Hecht, “The Virginia Muster of 1624/5 as a Source for Demo- graphic History,” William and Mary Quarterly , 3d ser., 30 (1973): 65-92, shows the distribution of blacks among white households in the most widely known early census.