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A thin network of increasingly interrelated families made up the planter elite and held power in colonial Virginia. "As early as 1660, every seat on the ruling Council of Virginia was held by members of five interrelated families," writes British historian John Keegan, "and as late as 1775, every council member was descended from one of the ...
The Colony of Virginia was a British colonial settlement in North America from 1606 to 1776.. The first effort to create an English settlement in the area was chartered in 1584 and established in 1585; the resulting Roanoke Colony lasted for three attempts totaling six years.
The settlers suffered terrible hardships in its early years, including sickness, starvation, and native attacks. By early 1610, most of the settlers had died due to starvation and disease. [3] With resupply and additional immigrants, it managed to endure, becoming America's first permanent English colony. [4]
The London Company sent an expedition to establish a settlement in the Virginia Colony in December 1606. The expedition consisted of three ships, Susan Constant (the largest ship, sometimes known as Sarah Constant, Christopher Newport captain and in command of the group), Godspeed (Bartholomew Gosnold captain), and Discovery (the smallest ship, John Ratcliffe captain).
Listed in the 1624 census in Virginia, they became the first African family recorded in Jamestown. [52] Their baby, named William Tucker, became the first documented African child baptized in British North America. Another of the early enslaved Africans to be purchased at the settlement was Angela, who worked for Captain William Peirce. [6]
The primitive travel capabilities of the day and the county's relatively large area contributed to the settlers' hardship in travel to the county seat to transact business, and became the primary reason for the county's division by an Act of the Virginia General Assembly in 1691 to form the two smaller counties. [2]
A few of the lost towns of Virginia have very dramatic stories, and, somewhat like the early settlers of Jamestown, the residents experienced much hardship. While natural factors doomed Jamestown, they also literally wiped out Boyd's Ferry, which was virtually entirely destroyed by flooding of the Dan River in Halifax County around 1800.
A new map of Virginia, Maryland, and the improved parts of Pennsylvania & New Jersey, 1685 map of the Chesapeake region by Christopher Browne. The Chesapeake Colonies were the Colony and Dominion of Virginia, later the Commonwealth of Virginia, and Province of Maryland, later Maryland, both colonies located in British America and centered on the Chesapeake Bay.