Essay On Virginia Colony

The Virginian Colony was founded in 1607 as the first permanent English colony. The founders name was John Smith. This colony was in the Southern region. Trade and profits were the reason this colony was founded. Many of our countries morals today come from the founding of the Virginia colony.

Food that was eaten in the Virginia colony was from all around the world such as: Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands, France, Germany, slaves from Africa, and Native American tribes. Many diverse foods were a result of this time period. Maize (corn), beans, squash, cranberries, sunflower seeds, and chestnuts were some of the crops adopted from the Native Americans. Wild-growing foods were also eaten, such as: berries, grapes, onions and plums. After being imported, rye, wheat, oats, cabbage, peas, carrots and beets were also consumed. Apple orchards flourished at this time. As for meats, fish, deer, buffalo and wild fowl were eaten. Pigs were the most widely consumed animals. Because of the slaves at the time,

yams, okra, peanuts, melons and sesame seeds were popular. In colonial days, three meals were severed.
In Virginia, it was mandatory to attend the Anglican Church. Taxes supported the church. The line between religious and civil authority was blurred, though. Dissenters from Protestant religions had also settled here very early on. Virginians weren’t tolerant of these non-Christian religions. White women soon became the primary guardians of family religious life.
Virginia was a slave state, being that it was primarily a cash-crop colony. Virginia was also the colony that slavery took root in. In 1619, a Dutch ship sold around 20 blacks to the colonists but slavery didn’t take up until the 1680s. Until the mid-1660s, the number of indentured servants sufficed. After the mid-1660s, though, this number decreased sharply. This was a factor of many events. The English birth rate fell. Also, in England there were fewer works competing for jobs so wages increased greatly. The great fire in London in 1666 created many jobs and a huge need for labor to rebuild the city. Virginia, and Maryland both became less attractive because land was filling up and becoming scarcer. The majority of settlers were moving to Pennsylvania or the Carolinas. To increase the labor force, people of the Chesapeake region turned towards slavery. In 1680, seven percent of the population was slaves. In 1700, the small seven percent changed to 22 percent! Slavery was the primary labor system on plantations.
The first colony, Jamestown, was established in 1607 in Virginia.

A group of investors, the Virginia Company of London, was given a charter by King James I. This charter gifted permission to establish this colony. 144 settlers sailed to the New World but only 104 made it, due to death. 27% died on this voyage. The settlers landed in the mouth of a river and named it James, after king James. May 14, 1607 was the day the Jamestown settlement was made. In the first few days of the first fort, the Powhatan Indians attacked the colonists.

Once established, the Virginia colony had nothing to offer England. This all changed when John Rolfe introduced tobacco. Tobacco changed a poor useless colony into a thriving cash crop colony in just a few years. After the American Revolution, many farmers began growing grains such as wheat, oats, and corn. These crops required fewer workers to grow, didn’t take as many nutrients as tobacco growing did, and was in great demand in

Europe.
In 1619, three very important events went down. The first being that a ship with 90 women arrived in the new colony; these women became brides of men who would pay their passage with 120 pounds of tobacco each. Secondly, the first legislative body met in the new colony. This meeting was known as the House of Burgesses and lasted a week. The members of the House of Burgesses discussed laws against gambling, idleness, and made it mandatory to attend two church services each Sunday. On Sundays at church, the settlers were required to bring their weapons with them. The House of Burgesses ended their meeting after a week because it simply got too hot to bare. The third event took place three weeks after the House of Burgesses began. This marks the day of the beginning of slavery. A Dutch ship brought 20 African Americans from Africa to work in the tobacco fields.
Virginia, the first established colony of the new world to last, shaped our country in more ways than one. We see new crops, morals, foods, beliefs, standards, democracies and everything else America has today because of the Virginia colony. One of Americans lowest points in history came from Virginia, too. Slavery was established here. We also were introduced to tobacco in Virginia. Without this great first colony, the United States would not be the way it is today.