Early English Settlements

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Early English Settlements
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Jamestown
1607
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The Virginia Company

• Charter Permission to organize settlements in an
  area.
• One group of merchants in London, England,
  received a charter to start a settlement in
  America. Their name was the Virginia Company.

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• The Company sent 144 settlers in 3 ships to build
  a new colony in America. They were supposed to
  look for gold and attempt to establish trade in
  furs and fish.

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• 1607- The colonists called their settlement
  Jamestown to honor King James.

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• What were two major setbacks?
• It was swampy land with mosquitoes carrying
  disease.
• It lacked good farmland.

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• The settlers also looked for gold instead of
  growing food.
• By 1608 only 38 of the Jamestown colonists
  remained alive.

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Captain John Smith

• What was the biggest obstacle the colonists
  faced?
• Governing Jamestown
• Captain John Smith,
  an experienced soldier and
  explorer, was sent to govern
  the colonists.

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• Smith forced settlers to work and he also managed
  to obtain corn from the Native Americans.

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• Smith returned to England, but without good
  leadership, the settlement struggled to feed all
  of the people. The years 1609-1610 became known
  as the Starving Time.
• Why do you think it was called the
  Starving Time?

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Farming the Land

• One colonist, John Rolfe, began to grow tobacco
  in Jamestown.

• Planters followed Rolfe and raised tobacco and
  the colony began to prosper and grow.

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• John Rolfe married Pocahontas, the daughter of
  Chief Powhatan, which resulted in an improvement
  in the relationship with the Native Americans.

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• In order to attract more colonists, the Virginia
  Company gave a land grant called a headright of
  50 acres to those who paid their own way.
• What did this headright convince thousands of
  people to do?

Thousands moved to Virginia
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Representative Government

• As the colony started to grow, the settlers did
  not want to take orders from the Virginia Company
  back in London.
• What did the company allow the colonists to do?
  They could have some say in the government of
  Jamestown.

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• Ten towns sent two burgesses or representatives
  to an assembly.
• What did the assembly have the right to do? They
  could make laws for the colony.
• This group called the House of Burgesses met for
  the first time in Jamestown on July 30, 1619.

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New Arrivals

• In 1619 the Virginia Company sent 90 women to
  Jamestown. What did they believe the colony
  needed in order to flourish? Families

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• In 1619 A Dutch ship also brought a group of
  Africans who were sold to planters to labor in
  the tobacco fields. These Africans worked as
  servants rather than slaves.
• William Tucker was the first African born in
  America.