June through September 1608:
Captain John Smith leads fourteen men on a seven week exploration of Chesapeake Bay, and the Indian settlements along it;s shores.
He makes second voyage in late July to early September further.
September 10.1608:
Smith elected president of the colony; he would soon issue the edict " he that will not work shall not eat".
October 1608:
Newport lands with the " second supply", 70 new immigrants arrive, including 6 " glass-men" of either German or Polish
origin as well as two women. Mrs. Thomas Forrest and her maid. Anne Burras.
November 1608:
In Jamestown's first wedding, Anne Burras marries carpenter John Laydon.
End of 1608:
Newport travels to England carrying with him " tryals of pitch, Tarre, Glasse, Frankincense, Sope Ashes...."
Late 1608 or early 1609:
Smith orders the digging of James Fort's first well.
The Second Charter, May 23, 1609:
James 1, issues the second charter to Virginia Company which replaces the Council with a Governor who has absolute control.
June-July 1609:
The" Third Supply" of nine ships and 500 immigrants leave England, but a hurricane scatters the fleet and wrecks the flag ship.Sea Venture with Sir Thomas Gates. Sir George Somers and John Rolf on a reef in Bermuda. all 150 on board are saved
and begin rebuilding two boats from the wreckage.
August 1609:
The ships that survived the hurricane arrive at Jamestown with about 300 men, women, and children and a few provisions to feed them.
October 1609:
After Captain George Percy replaces Captain John Smith as leader, Smith is badly wounded in a suspicious gunpowder explosion
and forced to return to England . The ship's departure is the signal for the Powhatan's to attack the English.all along the James River.
Winter 1609-1610:
Chief Powhatan has warriors lay siege to James fort,, trapping about 300 settlers inside. Settlers eat horses,snakes,rats,cats, dogs and shoe leather to avoid starvation that kills all but 60 of the forts residents by the springtime.
The drafting of the Constitution of the United States began on May 25,1787,
when the Constitutional Convention met for the first time with a quorum at the Pennsylvania State House ( now Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to revise the Articles of Confederation,
and ended on September 17,1787.
1609 through 1610;
One of the settlers trapped in James fort is a fourteen year old girl who arrived on the " Third Supply . " When she dies, desperate settlers resort to survival cannibalism.
1609 -1610:
Captain Gabriel Archer ,one of Jamestown's most important early leaders, dies and is the second honored with burial in the church chancel.
May 23,1610:
Lieutenant Thomas Gates , John Rolf, Ralph Hamor , Sir George Somers, William Stracher , and other survivors of the Sea venture a
arrive at Jamestown, in two ships built in their 10 months on Bermuda, The Deliverance 3 and Patience. They find only 60 survivors and the fort in ruins.
May 24,1610:
Gates issues " the Laws Divine, Moral, and martial," introducing strict codes of behavior and severe punishment for transgressions.
June 7, 1610:
Gates decides to leave Jamestown. A lot of material is left behind as the survivors pack onto ships to return to England.
June 8,1610:
Gate's convoy coming down the James River meets the resupply led by Governor Thomas West,
who demands a return to Jamestown.
June 10,1610:
Lord De La Warr orders the settlers to clean up and reestablish James Fort.
The church is repaired and new buildings constructed.
August 9, 1610:
English launch major attack on the Paspahegh village., executing the queen and her children, burning house and cutting down corn fields.
1611:
John Rolf experiments with growing tobacco seeds. Nicotiana tabacum from Bermuda;
native Virginia tobacco was Nicotiana rustica.
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March 28 1611:
De La Warr, and Gates leave for England, leaving George Percy in charge as Deputy Governor with only about 150 settlers left due to continuing problems with disease.
May 1611:
Sir Thomas Dale arrives with 300 "men of war"
June1611:
The English capture three men from a Spanish expedition at the mouth of the James ; one of the them
is Don Diego de Molina. who will be held captive in Virginia for five years.
August 2, 1611:
Lt. Governor Dale Leads 350 men to build Henricus up river near the falls of the James as an alternative
to the swampy and dangerous Jamestown.
King James1 renews the charter for the Virginia Company and gives it more self -governance. He also authorizes lotteries
to raise money for the venture.
1612:
The English colonize Bermuda:
1612:
First commercial tobacco crop is raised in Jamestown, Virginia.John Rolf exports first crop of improved tobacco .
April 1613:
Pocahontas is captured from a Patawomeck Indian village by Capt. Samuel Argall and brought to Jamestown.
October, 29, 1613: Europeans referred to as "white" people
On October 29, 1613, The Jacobean Playwright Thomas Middleton's play " The Triumphs of Truth" was first performed.
The phrase was first uttered by the character of an African King who looks out upon an English audience and declares: "I see amazement set upon the faces / of these white people,wond 'rings and strange gazes.
This may be the earliest printed example of a European author referring to fellow Europeans as white people".
( This may serve to prove the historian Neil Irvin Painter's reminder in The History of White People (2010), "race is an idea, not a fact".
Literature scholar, Roxanne Wheeler reminds us in " The Complexion of Race" (2000),
there was an earlier moment in which biological racism...was not inevitable'.
Since Europeans didn't always think of themselves as "white", there is good reason to think that race is socially constructed,
is arbitrary. If the idea of " white people" ( and thus every other 'race ') has a history, then the concept itself is based less on any kind of biological reality than it is in the variable contingencies of social construction.
our particular criteria concerning how we think about race did develop, and it did so in service to colonialism ( and their handmaiden : slavery), bolstered by a positive language, the idea of race became so normalized that eventually the claim that anyone would have coined such an obvious phrase as "white people" would begin to sound strange.
Race might not be real, but racism very much is.
Matoaka, ( Pocahontas
Apil 5, 1614:
A year later, the English commoner John Rolfe of Jamestown in Virginia took as his bride an Algonquin princess named Matoaka, whom we call Pocahontas.marry at Jamestown.
February 1614:
Gates departs Virginia , leaving Dale as Deputy Governor,
1615:
Pocahontas gives birth to a son Thomas Rolfe.
John Rolfe records the English Population in Virginia.
, indicating there are 351 settlers at 6 settlements..
May 1616:
John Rolfe, Pocahontas, their son and a group of attendant Indians depart Virginia for England with Sir Thomas Drake.
June1616:
The Virginia Company institutes the "head right" system, giving 50acres to anyone who would pay fare, and 50
additional acres for each person brought with him, this encourages further settlement by gentlemen and
lays the economic foundation for what will become a system of legal slavery.
John Rolfe, Pocahontas's, husband , had introduced tobacco from the Caribbean in 1610.
he returned to Virginia and became a member of the house of Burgess.
1617:Governor Samuel Argall orders the construction of a new church "50 foot long and twenty foot broad"
just east of the first church building at Jamestown (where Pocahontas and Rolfe were married).
This new building will be a wooden church built on a foundation of cobblestones one foot wide
capped by a wall one brick thick
March 17, 1617:
Pocahontas dies in Gravesend, England, just after beginning the return trip to Virginia with her husband and son.
Rolfe returns to Virginia, but leaves his son to be raised in England.
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1619
:
George Yeardley brings "The Charter of Grants and Liberties" to form a new government in which
white men of property get to pick representatives to make laws for themselves in an assembly meeting at Jamestown.
July 30,1619:
The House of Burgesses meets for first time , in the Jamestown church; it's first law requires tobacco to be sold for at least three shillings per pound.
* August 1619:
The first Africans arrive in Jamestown,traded off of an English ship , the " White Lion" a privateer owned by Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick.
The approximately 20 Africans on that ship , originally from Angola,had been seized by the British crew from a Portuguese slave ship, the Sao Joao Bautista.which landed at Point Comfort. Some of these Africans are treated like indentured servants and work several years before earning their freedom; others likely remained enslaved.
by 1619, a system of indentured service was fully developed in the colony;
Once freed of their debt, some of the Africans joined the community , eventually owning slaves of their own.
It wasn't until 1640, when slavery first appeared in Virginia when African John Punch was sentenced to slavery
for life, after trying to flee his indentured labor service.
The European men who fled with him were, however only sentenced to one additional year of indentured labor.
*This incidence is viewed in history, as the first legal sanctioning of slavery in the English colonies and the first legal distinctionmade between Europeans and Africans.
The next instance of slavery that we see in Virginia is the civil case between Anthony Johnson ( a freed African)
and Robert Parker. John Casor an African indentured servant complained that his master Anthony Johnson
held him past his indentured time.
A neighbor Robert Parker threatened Johnson that he would testify in court and touted that he would lose some
of his lands if he did not free Casor.
Johnson then freed Casor.
Casor then entered into an indentured service with Parker.
Feeling bamboozled Johnson sued Parker for possession over Casor.
The court ruled that Parker illegally took Casor and that he belonged to his rightful master for the "duration of his life."
Casor was now a slave.
March 1620:
32 Africans were documented as residing in Virginia.
by 1650, this had increased to about 300 Africans, about 1% of an estimated
After 1620:
With growing demand for tobacco on the continent, the Company arranged to sell Virginia tobacco in the Netherlands,
The law of the land from 1624:
mandated that European Virginians worship in the Anglican church ( Church of England) and support its upkeep
with the taxes.
Where religion was an integral part of everyday life in Virginia, the lines blurred between religious and civil authority.Virginia gentlemen, who supported establishment but disliked
centralized church authority , gained control of parish
vestries and
county courts to secure their power over religious matters.
Although Anglicans tolerated protestant dissenters, they found the traditional religious views of native Americans
and Africans beyond sanction. But English colonists made only fitful and often grudging efforts to bring Africans, and
native Americans into the established church.
The Powhatans and Indigenous people further inland proved resistant to Christianity.
For Africans, the oppression of slavery inevitably forced them to abandon a purely African world view.
Still, they did not come to Christianity in great numbers until evangelicals began gathering converts of both ethnic groups, after the mid-18th century.
Although some Africans and Europeans forged bonds through their shared evangelical experience, Virginia's
celebrated statute for religious freedom would have only superficial meaning for Africans, after the war.
In the 17th century, small numbers of slaves had recognized that they could gain their freedom through baptism ,
but the General Assembly closed this loophole in the 1667.
Over the next century , most slave owners and Anglican ministers ignored the spiritual lives of African Americans.
Throughout the colonial period, the established church was supported and reinforced by other formal institutions.
Virginia lacked a bishop. Hence, control of the religious matters was largely left in the hands of local institutions
dominated by the gentry.
Vestrymen became the dominant influence on church affairs by the end of the 17th, century.
New Paragraph
William Tucker,1624:
was the first born of African parents, in the British Colonies.
His birth symbolized the beginnings of a distinct identity along the eastern coast
of what would eventually become the United States.
Born near Jamestown, Virginia, the son of "Anthony and Isabell", two indentured servants.
According to the 1624-1625 Virginia Census,22 Africans lived in Virginia at the time of Tucker's birth.
The first 20, arrived in 1619 and all of them worked under indentured servitude contracts.
These men and women were not slaves because Virginia's General Assembly had not yet worked out the terms
for enslavement in the colony.
Consequently these first Africans in Virginia received the same rights, duties, privileges, responsibilities
and punishments as their european indentured counterparts from Great Britain.
They also worked under the same terms and many but not all were given land at the end of their period of indenture.
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In fact they, and their descendants became the nucleus of the African population which existed in Virginia
prior to the Civil War.
William Tuckers parents were among the first 22 Africans.
They worked for a Captain William Tucker, the Virginia envoy to the Pamunkey Indians,
and his wife Mary Tucker.In the early 1620s Captain Tucker allowed the couple to wed
though the practice violated the English custom for indentured servants.
1625:
Growth of the African population; 23
1626:
The Dutch West India Company imports 11 African male slaves into the Netherlands.
1636 :
Colonial North America's slave trade begins when the first American slave carrier,Desire, is built and launched in Massachusetts.
1639 /40:
The General Assembly of Virginia specifically excludes Africans, from the requirement s of possessing arms.
1640: Status changed to "servant for life"
John Punch,
a runaway African indentured servant, is sentenced to servitude for life.His two European companions are given extended
terms of servitude. Punch is the first documented slave for life.
1640:
New Netherlands law forbids residents from harboring or feeding running slaves.After DNA testing,
1641:
The D'Angola marriage
is the first recorded marriage between Africans in New Amsterdam.
1641:
Massachusetts is the first colony to legalize slavery.
1642:
African women are deemed taxable,
Creating a distinction between African and English women.
1643:
The New England Confederation of the Plymouth Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New haven adopts a fugitive slave law.
1648:
Growth of the African population; 300
1650:
Connecticut legalizes slavery.
1652:
Massachusetts requires all African and Native American, servants to receive military training.
1654
A Virginia court grants Africans the right to hold slaves.
1657
Virginia passes a fugitive slave law.
1660:
Charles II, King of England, orders the Council of Foreign Plantations to devise strategies for converting slaves and servants
to Christianity.
1661:
Virginia passed its first law allowing any free person the right to own slaves.
In previous years , Africans were legally deemed to be "indentured servants",
including one, John Casor who was declared indentured for life in 1655.
1661:
Virginia formally recognized slavery.
By law, European indentured servants were forbidden from running awa with an African servant.
1662:Life Servitude; Hereditary
Slavery
Virginia passed a law that stated children would be free or bonded based on the status of the mother.
This meant that a child born to an enslaved woman would also be enslaved.
Making Slavery Hereditary.
1662;
Massachusetts reverses a ruling dating back to 1652, which allowed Africans to train in arms. New York. Connecticut, and new Hampshire pass similar laws restricting the bearing of arms.
1663
In Gloucester County, Virginia the first documented slave rebellion in the colonies takes place.
1663
Maryland legalizes slavery.
1663
Charles II, King of England, gives the Carolinas to proprietors.
Until the 1680s , most settlers in the region are small landowners from Barbados.
1664:
New York, and New Jersey legalize slavery.
1964
Maryland is the first colony to take legal action against marriages between European women and African men.
1964
The state of Maryland mandates lifelong servitude for all African slaves. New York, New Jersey, the Carolinas, and Virginia
all pass similar laws.
1666:
Maryland passes a fugitive slave law.
1667,
Virginia lawmakers say baptism does not bring freedom to Africans. The statute is passed because some slaves used their status as a Christian in the 1640s and 1650s to argue for their freedom or for freedom for a child.
Legislators also encourage slave owners to Christianize their enslaved men, women and children.
1667
Virginia declares that Christian baptism will not alter a person's status as a slave.
1668:
Free African women , like enslaved females over the age of 16, are deemed taxable. The Virginia General Assembly says freedom
does not exempt African women from taxation.
1668
New Jersey passes a fugitive slave law.
1669:
An act about the " casual killing of slaves" says that if a slave dies while resisting his master, the act will not be presumed to have occurred with " prepensed malice".
1670:
The state of Virginia prohibits free Africans and Native Americans from keeping Christian servants.Christian servants.
Additional laws regarding slavery of Africans were passed n the seventeenth century and codified into Virginia's
first slave code in 1705.
Among laws affecting slaves was one of 1662, which said that children born in the colony would take the social status of their mothers , regardless of who their fathers were.
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1671:
Growth of the African population; 2,000
1672:
It becomes legal to kill or wound an enslaved person who resists arrest. Legislators also deem that the owner of any slave killed as he resisted arrest will receive financial compensation for the loss of an enslaved laborer.
Legislators also offer a reward to Indians who capture escaped slaves and return them to a justice of the peace.
1674:
New York declares that Africans who convert to Christianity after their enslavement will not be freed.
1676; The first armed rebellion
in the American colonies
In Virginia, African slaves and African and European servants band together to participate in Bacon's Rebellion. Poor white indentured servants and enslaved Africans form an alliance against bond servitude.
The ruling class responds by hardening the racial caste of slavery in an attempt to divide the two races from subsequent united uprisings.
1680- 1705: Virginia Slave Codes are passed, in direct response to Bacon's rebellion.
Slave laws reflect racism and the deliberate separation of Africans and Europeans.
color becomes the determining factor.
Conscious efforts to rigidly police slave conduct.
1680:
Virginia's General Assembly restricts the ability of slaves to meet at gatherings, including funerals.
It becomes legal for a white person or person to kill an escaped slave who resists capture.
Slaves are also forbidden to:
1). arm themselves for either offensive or defensive purposes. Punishment; 20 lashes on one's bare back.
2) Leave the plantation without the written permission of one's master, mistress, or overseer. Punishment; 20 lashes on one's bare back.
3)." Lift up his hand against any Christian." Punishment: 30 Lashes on one's bare back.
1680:
Growth of the African population; 3,000
1682:
Virginia declares that all imported African servants are slaves for life.
1684:
New York makes it illegal for slaves to sell goods.
1688:
The Pennsylvania Quakers pass first formal anti slavery resolution.
1691:
Virginia prohibits the manumission of slaves within its borders. manumitted slaves are forced to leave the colony.
Virginia passes the first anti- miscegenation law, forbidding marriages between European, Africans and Native Americans.
1) Any European person married to an African or mulatto is banished
and a systematic plan is established to capture " outlying slaves."
2) If an outlying slave is killed while resisting capture, the owner receives financial compensation for the laborer.
3) Partners in a marriage between an African and a European, cannot stay in the colony for more than three months
after they are married.
4) A fine of 15 pounds sterling is levied on an English woman who gives birth to a mulatto child.
The fine is to be paid within a month of the child's birth. If the woman cannot pay the fine, as an indentured servant,
she faces an additional five years of servitude after the completion of her indenture.
5) A mulatto child born to a indentured European servant will serve a 30-year indenture.
6) A master must transport an emancipated slave out of Virginia within six months of receiving his or her freedom.
1691:
South Carolina passes the first comprehensive slave codes.
1692:
Slaves are denied the right to a jury trial for capital offenses.
A minimum of four justices of the peace hear evidence and determine the fate of the accused.
Legislators also decide that enslaved individuals are not permitted to own horses, cattle, and hogs after December 31, of that year.
1694:
Rice cultivation is introduced into Carolina.
Slave importation increases dramatically.
1696:
The Royal African Trade Company loses its monopoly and New England colonists enter the slave trade.
1700:
Pennsylvania, legalizes slavery.
Growth of African Population: 16,390
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1702:
New York passes An Act for Regulating Slaves.
Among the prohibitions of this act are meetings of more than three slaves, trading by slaves, and testimony by slaves in court.
1703:
Massachusetts requires those masters who liberate slaves to provide a bond of 50 pounds or more in the event that freedman
becomes a public charge.
1703:
Connecticut assigns the punishment of whipping to any slaves who disturb the peace or assaults Europeans.
Rhode Island makes it illegal for Africans and Native Americans to walk at night without passes.
1705:
The Virginia Slave Code codifies slave status, declaring all non- Christian servants entering the colony to be slaves.
It defines all slaves as real estate, acquits masters who kill slaves during punishment, forbids slaves and freedmen, from physically assaulting Europeans.
And denies slaves the right to bear arms or move abroad without written permission.
1705:
The Virginia General Assembly declared that all those not born into Christianity in their native land would be enslaved for life.
1) African free men could lose the right to hold public office.
2) Africans free, and enslaved are denied the right to testify as witnesses in court cases.
3)All African mulatto and Native American slaves are considered real property.
4) Enslaved men are not allowed to serve in the militia.
1705:
New York declares that punishment by execution will be applied to certain runaway slaves.
1705:
Massachusetts makes marriage and sexual relations between Africans and Europeans illegal.
1706:
New York declares Africans, Native Americans, and slaves who kill Europeans to be subject to the death penalty.
1706:
Connecticut requires that Native Americans, mulattos, and African servants gain permission from their masters to engage in trade.
1708:
The Southern colonies require militia captains to enlist and train one slave for every European soldier.
1708:
Rhode Island requires that slaves be accompanied by their masters when visiting the homes of free persons.
1708:
Africans outnumber Europeans in South Carolina.
1710:
new York forbids Africans, Indigenous People, and mulattos from walking at night without lighted lanterns.
1711:
Pennsylvania prohibits the clandestine importation of Africans and Native Americans
1711:
Rhode Island prohibits the clandestine importation of African and Native Americans.
1712:
Pennsylvania prohibits the importation of slaves.
1712:Slave Revolt:
New York slaves in New York City kill Europeans during an uprising, later squelched by the militia.
Nineteen rebels are executed.
1712:
New York declares it illegal for Africans, Native Americans, and slaves to murder other Africans, Native Americans , and slaves.
1712:
New York forbids freed Africans, American Natives, and mulatto slaves from owning real estate and holding property.
1712:
Charleston, South Carolina, slaves are forbidden from hiring themselves out.