Preface: Witness -- Part 1. England and its Virginian colony -- The Marmaduke maids -- The Warwick women -- A woman's place -- Point of departure -- Of hogs and women -- La belle sauvage -- Maids to the rescue -- Intermezzo: Maidens' voyage -- When stormie winds do blow -- Land ho! -- Part 2. Virginia -- Arrival at Jamestown -- The choosing -- Dispersal -- Catastrophe -- The end of the affair -- The crossbow maker's sister -- The planter's wife -- The cordwainer's daughter -- Captured by Indians -- Endnote: return to Jamestown -- Appendix: A list of the maids.
Summary:
"In 1621, nearly fifteen years after the establishment of the Jamestown colony, the Virginia Company funded another voyage of colonists to the New World. This time, however, their ships carried fifty-six young women. Their ages ranged from sixteen to twenty-eight, they were of good character and proven skills, and each had a bride price of 150lbs of tobacco set by the Company. Though the women had all agreed to journey to Jamestown of their own free will, they were also unquestionably there to be sold into marriage, thereby generating a profit for investors and increasing the colony's long-term viability. These were the aims of the Virginia Company at least; the aims of the women themselves are less clear. Without letters or journals (young women from middling classes had not generally been taught to write), Jennifer Potter's research has 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. The first part of her book explores the women's lives before their departure, but the true heft of the work lies in the second part, which documents the women's lives in Jamestown. In telling the story of these "Maids for Virginia," Potter at once sheds light on life for women in early modern England and in the New World."--Provided by poublsher. 1621. Fifteen years after the establishment of the Jamestown colony, the Virginia Company funded another voyage of colonists to the New World. This time their ships carried fifty-six young women, ages from sixteen to twenty-eight, of good character and proven skills... and each had a bride price of 150 lbs of tobacco set by the Company. The women had agreed to journey to Jamestown of their own free will, but were also unquestionably there to be sold into marriage, thereby generating a profit for investors and increasing the colony's long-term viability. Potter explores the women's lives before their departure, then documents the women's lives in Jamestown. -- adapted from publisher info [or should I say "poublsher"?]
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