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Colonial America: Virginia

A research topic guide covering Colonial America.

Resources

Life In Colonial Virginia

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kssy7l9wFH4

Perspectives

A Tale of Two Colonies

  In 1609, two years after its English founding, colonists struggled to stay alive in a tiny fort at Jamestown.John Smith fought to keep order, battling both English and Indians. When he left, desperate colonists ate lizards, rats, and human flesh. Surviving accounts of the "Starving Time" differ, as do modern scholars' theories. Meanwhile, the Virginia-bound Sea Venture was shipwrecked on Bermuda, the dreaded, uninhabited "Isle of Devils." The castaways' journals describe the hurricane at sea as well as murders and mutinies on land. Their adventures are said to have inspired Shakespeare's The Tempest. A year later, in 1610, the Bermuda castaways sailed to Virginia in two small ships they had built. They arrived in Jamestown to find many people in the last stages of starvation; abandoning the colony seemed their only option. Then, in what many people thought was divine providence, three English ships sailed into Chesapeake Bay. Virginia was saved, but the colony's troubles were far from over. Despite glowing reports from Virginia Company officials, disease, inadequate food, and fear of Indians plagued the colony. The company poured thousands of pounds sterling and hundreds of new settlers into its venture but failed to make a profit, and many of the newcomers died. Bermuda--with plenty of food, no native population, and a balmy climate--looked much more promising, and in fact, it became England's second New World colony in 1612. In this fascinating tale of England's first two New World colonies, Bernhard links Virginia and Bermuda in a series of unintended consequences resulting from natural disaster, ignorance of native cultures, diplomatic intrigue, and the fateful arrival of the first Africans in both colonies. Written for general as well as academic audiences, A Tale of Two Colonies examines the existing sources on the colonies, sets them in a transatlantic context, and weighs them against circumstantial evidence. From diplomatic correspondence and maps in the Spanish archives to recent archaeological discoveries at Jamestown, Bernhard creates an intriguing history. To weave together the stories of the two colonies, which are fraught with missing pieces, she leaves nothing unexamined: letters written in code, adventurers' narratives, lists of Africans in Bermuda, and the minutes of committees in London. Biographical details of mariners, diplomats, spies, Indians, Africans, and English colonists also enrich the narrative. While there are common stories about both colonies, Bernhard shakes myth free from truth and illuminates what is known--as well as what we may never know--about the first English colonies in the New World.

The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century

"The most noticeable differences between the two editions are found in the chronological reach, the chapter introductions, the lists of suggested reading, the number of illustrations and the inclusion of an index. This new edition also contains pictures of artifacts recovered during the past three decades at Jamestown and various Indian sites." --The Treesearcher, Kansas Genealogical Society

Captain John Smith: Writings

One of the truly legendary figures of American history, the soldier, explorer, and colonist Captain John Smith was a vivid and prolific chronicler of the beginnings of English settlement in the New World. This volume brings together seven of his works, along with 16 additional narratives by 13 other writers, that recount firsthand the tragic, harrowing, and dramatic events of the settlement of Roanoke and Jamestown. Written in a consistently lively style, Smith's works are filled with suspense, astonishment, and keen observations of American Indian cultures and New World landscapes. Together with the other narratives, they capture the fear and fascination of early encounters with the Indians and the brutality, desperation, and ingenuity of settlers facing extreme hardship. Included in the volume are 29 plates of contemporary drawings, 15 in full colour.

The World They Made Together

In the recent past, enormous creative energy has gone into the study of American slavery, with major explorations of the extent to which African culture affected the culture of black Americans and with an almost totally new assessment of slave culture as Afro-American. Accompanying this new awareness of the African values brought into America, however, is an automatic assumption that white traditions influenced black ones. In this view, although the institution of slaver is seen as important, blacks are not generally treated as actors nor is their "divergent culture" seen as having had a wide-ranging effect on whites. Historians working in this area generally assume two social systems in America, one black and one white, and cultural divergence between slaves and masters. It is the thesis of this book that blacks, Africans, and Afro-Americans, deeply influenced white's perceptions, values, and identity, and that although two world views existed, there was a deep symbiotic relatedness that must be explored if we are to understand either or both of them. This exploration raises many questions and suggests many possibilities and probabilities, but it also establishes how thoroughly whites and blacks intermixed within the system of slavery and how extensive was the resulting cultural interaction.

Escaping Servitude

Escaping Servitude: A Documentary History of Runaway Servants in Eighteenth-Century Virginia is an edited collection of runaway servant advertisements that appeared in newspapers in eighteenth-century Virginia. In addition to documenting the fugitive in the Chesapeake, it adds to our understanding of indentured servitude and provides valuable insights into an important chapter in American history. Escaping Servitude's contribution to scholarship is threefold. First, it calls new attention to the scant scholarly body of work concerning indentured servitude; specifically, the work pertaining to fugitive servants. Highlighting well over one thousand accounts in which bondsmen and women ran away from their masters in Virginia during the colonial era, Escaping Servitude complements Abbot Emerson Smith's Colonist in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607-1776, Edmund Morgan's American, American Freedom, David W. Galenson's White Servitude in Colonial America, Anthony Parent Jr.'s Foul Means, Don Jordon and Michael Walsh's White Cargo, and others studies of American serfdom. Secondly, considering that there is currently no other documentary history in print for other colonies in British America, Escaping Servitude hopes to inspire similar histories for eighteenth-century Maryland, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and the northern colonies. Less known are the life stories of indentures who absconded in other parts of British America. Finally, in its explication of the lives of the unfree, Escaping Servitude hopes to expand the current academic discourse regarding the history of slavery and race.

George Mason, Forgotten Founder

George Mason (1725-92) is often omitted from the small circle of founding fathers celebrated today, but in his service to America he was, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, "of the first order of greatness." Jeff Broadwater provides a comprehensive account of Mason's life at the center of the momentous events of eighteenth-century America. Mason played a key role in the Stamp Act Crisis, the American Revolution, and the drafting of Virginia's first state constitution. He is perhaps best known as author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, a document often hailed as the model for the Bill of Rights. As a Virginia delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Mason influenced the emerging Constitution on point after point. Yet when he was rebuffed in his efforts to add a bill of rights and concluded the document did too little to protect the interests of the South, he refused to sign the final draft. Broadwater argues that Mason's recalcitrance was not the act of an isolated dissenter; rather, it emerged from the ideology of the American Revolution. Mason's concerns about the abuse of political power, Broadwater shows, went to the essence of the American experience.

Lethal Encounters

This in-depth narrative history of the interactions between English settlers and American Indians during the Virginia colony's first century explains why a harmonious coexistence proved impossible. * Draws extensively on primary source materials such as letters, memoirs, legislative proceedings, and court records * Includes John Smith's 1612 map of Virginia, which identifies the location of Indian settlements

Albemarle

In Albemarle, photographer Robert Llewellyn and writer Avery Chenoweth explore how the landscape of Albemarle County, where the Virginia piedmont meets the Blue Ridge Mountains, and its people have helped create an American sense of identity. Complemented by Llewellyn's luxurious color photography, the narrative rolls back 15,000 years to the first signs of human habitation, continues through the Colonial period, and arrives in the modern era. The story traces the evolving culture of landscape as it has been played out in the lives of historic figures, from the Monacans to the Moderns, Thomas Jefferson to Lady Bird Johnson, Edgar Allan Poe to Teddy Roosevelt. With a sweeping view of aesthetics, spirituality, religion, and history, the book itself is a work of art, essential reading, and viewing, for anyone who has lived in, or been inspired by, the landscape of Albemarle County. Excerpt: "From the vast pattern of a landscape to the small enclosure behind the house, we blend the elements of water and flower and fruit into an atmosphere of spiritual intimacy. In this manner of taking care, we follow an ancient path into an emotional landscape where all things are in harmony. And yet the story that we found in the Albemarle landscape is one that expands into larger spaces altogether. This landscape, which we believe is unique, encompasses our earliest ideas of America."