The Jamestown Brides: The untold story of England's 'maids for Virginia'
n 1621, fifty-six English women crossed the Atlantic in response to the Virginia Company of London's call for maids suitable to make wives for the planters of its new colony in Virginia. The English had settled there just fourteen years previously and the company hoped to root its unruly menfolk to the land with ties of family and children.
While the women traveled of their own accord, the company was in effect selling them at a profit for a bride price of 150 lbs of tobacco for each woman sold. The rewards would flow to investors in the near-bankrupt company. But what did the women want from the enterprise? Jamestown, England's first real foothold in the New World, was fraught with danger. Why did they agree to make the dangerous crossing to a wild and dangerous land, where six out of seven European settlers died within their first few years - from dysentery, typhoid, salt water poisoning and periodic skirmishes with the native population? How clear these and other perils were made to the fifty-six young women who left their homes and boarded ships in England in 1621, nearly fifteen years after Jamestown's founding, is not known. But we do know who they were. Their ages ranged from sixteen to twenty-eight, and they were deemed "young and uncorrupt." Each had a bride price of 150 pounds of tobacco set by the Virginia Company, which funded their voyage. And what happened to them in the end?
Delving into company records and original sources on both sides of the Atlantic, Jennifer Potter tracks the women's footsteps from their homes in England to their new lives in Virginia. Giving voice to these forgotten women of America's early history, she triumphantly invites the reader to journey alongside the brides as they travel into a perilous and uncertain future.
Though the women had all gone of their own free will, they were to be sold into marriage, generating a profit for investors and helping ensure the colony's long-term viability. Without letters or journals (young women from middling classes had not generally been taught to write), Jennifer Potter 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.
In The Jamestown Brides, she spins a fascinating tale of courage and survival, exploring the women's lives in England before their departure and their experiences in Jamestown. Some were married before the ships left harbor. Some were killed in an attack by the native population only months after their arrival. A few never married at all. In telling the story of these "Maids for Virginia" Potter sheds light on life for women in early modern England and in the New World.
Jennifer Potter
A regular reviewer for the TLS and a guest contributor to The Arvon Book of Literary Non-Fiction, Jennifer Potter has enjoyed fellowships on the internationally acclaimed Warwick writing program and at Hawthornden Castle. When not writing, she walks, travels and gardens.
Jennifer Potter's ten books to date include four novels, a biography, two books about gardens and works of social, cultural and botanical history. Her most recent book, The Jamestown Brides, tells the true story of young English women shipped to Virginia and traded for tobacco as wives to the planters.
https://www.jenniferpotter.co.uk/
https://www.jenniferpotter.co.uk/the-jamestown-brides/
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