The Virginia Company

• Charter: Permission to organize settlements in an area.

• One group of merchants in London, England, received a charter to start a settlement in America. Their name was the Virginia Company.

• The Company sent 144 settlers in 3 ships to build a new colony in America. They were supposed to look for gold and attempt to establish trade in furs and fish.

•1607- The colonists called their settlement Jamestown to honor King James.

What were two major setbacks?

1. It was swampy land with mosquitoes carrying disease.

2. It lacked good farmland.

•The settlers also looked for gold instead of growing food.

•By 1608 only 38 of the Jamestown colonists remained alive.

Captain John Smith

• What was the biggest obstacle the colonists faced?

Governing Jamestown

• Captain John Smith, an experienced soldier and explorer, was sent to govern the colonists.

•Smith forced settlers to work and he also managed to obtain corn from the Native Americans.

•Smith returned to England, but without good leadership, the settlement struggled to feed all of the people. The years 1609-1610 became known as the “Starving Time.”

Why do you think it was called the “Starving Time?”

Farming the Land

• One colonist, John Rolfe, began to grow tobacco in Jamestown.

•Planters followed Rolfe and raised tobacco and the colony began to prosper and grow.

•John Rolfe married Pocahontas, the daughter of Chief Powhatan,

which resulted in an improvement in the relationship with the Native

Americans.

•In order to attract more colonists, the Virginia Company gave a land grant called a headright of 50 acres to those who paid their own way.

•What did this headright convince thousands of people to do?

Thousands moved to Virginia

Representative Government

• As the colony started to grow, the settlers did not want to take orders from the Virginia Company back in London.

• What did the company allow the colonists to do? They could have some say in the government of Jamestown.

•Ten towns sent two burgesses or representatives to an assembly.

•What did the assembly have the right to do? They could make laws for the colony.

•This group called the House of Burgesses met for the first time in Jamestown on July 30, 1619.

New Arrivals

• In 1619 the Virginia Company sent 90 women to Jamestown. What did they believe the colony needed in order to

flourish? Families

•In 1619 A Dutch ship also brought a group of Africans who were sold to planters to labor in the tobacco fields. These Africans worked as servants rather than slaves.

•William Tucker was the first African born in America.