The Role of Women in Virginia

…the plantation can never flourish til

families be planted and the respect of

wives and children fix the people on the

soil.

The Lure of Virginia

• God, Glory, and Gold

• Hope to Convert Native Americans to Christianity

• Establishment of English hold on the New World

• Exploitation of resources

• Northwest passage to the Orient

Initial Lack of Women

• …it was thought that women had no place in the grim and often grisly business of subduing a continent…”

• They were simply not yet necessary

Reasons Behind Delay

• 1st priority – Build an outpost– Explore– Determine the best use of resources

• Exploration expedition rather than a colonizing effort

Establishing Permanency

• A clash of cultures existed between the Englishmen and the Native American with whom they soon found to need to trade as well as to Christianize.

• Settlers were unprepared for the rugged frontier life in a wilderness.

• Many settlers intended to remain in Virginia only long enough to make their fortune and then return home to England.

Women’s Indispensable Role

• Providing the stability needed for Jamestown’s survival

• Arrival contributed greatly to success

Lord Bacon

• When a plantation grows to strength, then it is time to plant with women as well as with men; that the plantation may spread into generations, and not be ever pieced from without.

Pocahontas

• First woman to foster stability –

• Daughter of Chief Powhatan

• Among first Native Americans to bring food to the settlers

• Educated and baptized

• Married John Rolfe

• Appeased the clash between the two cultures

Anne Burras

• 1st English woman to provide a home life in the rugged Virginia wilderness

• Personal maid of Mistress Forrest

• Married carpenter John Laydon

• 1st Jamestown wedding

• Raised 4 daughters in the wilderness

Temperance Flowerdew

• During Starving Time saw over 80% of Jamestown succumb to sickness, disease, and starvation

• Married Governor George Yeardly

• Married Governor Francis West

Land

• 1619 men were granted acres of land based on time of arrival.

• Asked for land to also be allotted to their wives

• “…because that in a new plantation it is not known whether man or woman be the most necessary.”

Brides

• 1619

• “…a fit hundredth might be sent of women, maids young and uncorrupt, to make wives to the inhabitants and by that means to make the men there more settled and less movable…”

• 90 arrived in 1620

Jamestown

• Would not have survived as a permanent settlement without the daring women who were will to leave behind their English homes and face the challenge of a strange new land

• Created a sense of stability in the untamed wilderness of Virginia

Virginia

• Became not just a temporary place for profit or adventure, but as a country in which to forge a new home.