Jamestown Gold Research Paper

Many of the earliest English explorations were gold-seeking adventures who were part of the English gentry who had come to find their own riches. Upon their arrival to Jamestown, they were anticipating gold findings for profitable trade, and a ticket to China to only be disappointed with their assumptions. Instead, they were ill-prepared for their new life in the New World. It’s not necessarily surprising given their lack of experience and skillset, considering the survival rate for the first settlers was incredibly lower, less than 10% to be exact. However, within the first decade it was discovered that tobacco grew extremely well in Virginia’s climate. This quickly became Virginia’s “gold”, but required cheap labor. The first cheap labor

to Virginia came in the form of indentured servants who would exchange the cost of the transatlantic passage for a set number of years of servitude. A majority of the 1600 settlers within Virginia and Maryland came as indentured servants. The servants were typically from the lower social classes in effort to find their own wealth once the years of service were completed. Unfortunately, the dream of gaining wealth for the vast majority of them was also never realized as they died of disease or brutal labor conditions. While the first two groups came in hopes of securing their own fortune, for as the Puritan settlers in New England came for their own religious freedom. The Puritans had faced persecution in England because they felt that the official Protestant Church of England was still too Catholic. The initial group of Pilgrims arrived via the Mayflower in 1620 and many more soon followed after. These included clergymen to provide staffing for the new churches that the settlers had founded. Whereas New England was a great opportunity to create for themselves a society based on God’s vision. And unlike in Virginia and Maryland, many of these first settlers came as free men and women.