The Jamestown Brides: The Story of England's Maids for Virginia

"In 1621, nearly fifteen years after the establishment of the Jamestown colony, the Virginia Company funded another voyage of colonists to the New World. This time, however, their ships carried fifty-six young women. Their ages ranged from sixteen to twenty-eight, they were of good character and proven skills, and each had a bride price of 150lbs of tobacco set by the Company. Though the women had all agreed to journey to Jamestown of their own free will, they were also unquestionably there to be sold into marriage, thereby generating a profit for investors and increasing the colony's long-term viability. These were the aims of the Virginia Company at least; the aims of the women themselves are less clear. Without letters or journals (young women from middling classes had not generally been taught to write), Jennifer Potter's research has turned to the Virginia Company's merchant lists, which were used as a kind of sales catalog for prospective husbands, as well as censuses, court records, the minutes of Virginia's General Assemblies, letters to England from their male counterparts, and other such accounts of the everyday life of the early colonists. The first part of her book explores the women's lives before their departure, but the true heft of the work lies in the second part, which documents the women's lives in Jamestown. In telling the story of these "Maids for Virginia," Potter at once sheds light on life for women in early modern England and in the New World."--Provided by poublsher.