Going to the Source | About Those Lazy Gentlemen at Jamestown

“The Virginia Company sent a bunch of lazy rich gentlemen, who would not work, and so they starved.” We all have heard some variation on this theme in our grade school years. How correct is it though? Let’s join Brian as he examines what Captain John Smith had to say about the gentlemen in the early years of English settlement in Virginia.
John Smith’s Generall Historie of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles -- www.gutenberg....
John Smith’s The True Travels, Adventures, and Observations of Captain John Smith into Europe, Asia, Africa, and America -- www.gutenberg....
John Smith’s A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Hath Hapned in Virginia Since the First Planting of that Colony -- www.virtualjame...

[@cottagekeeper1044]

I laughed when I saw this. I’ve been telling my children, the story of Jamestown since they were little. If you don’t work, you don’t eat. all in good humor, of course. ❤😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 I can’t wait to find out the truth. I Going to watch the video now. I will send this video also to my oldest child she is 25. I know she will get a kick out of it.😂

[@JYFMuseums]

And you can point the family to the biblical origins and inspiration for John Smith's admonishment of "who will not work, must not eat." -- kzbin.info/www/bejne/hGXSZWqKltSWfLs

[@cottagekeeper1044]

I would like to know what the ladies and children were required to do in Jamestown to help the community survive. Thank you so much for your historical instruction. I really appreciate it.

[@JYFMuseums]

Great Question. One reality is that the English population in the early years of settlement in Virginia would have been dominantly male. Many were unmarried, and those that were married left their wives in England. The first two English women that came to Virginia arrived in the autumn of 1608, nearly a year and a half after the first settlers. A year later in the autumn of 1609 the first larger number of women and children arrived -- just prior to the start of the Starving Time. Many of the women in the early years are either the wives or daughters of men in Virginia or sailing with their husbands/fathers to Virginia. Like many of the men, the women coming to Virginia would have been of the gentry class as well. 1620 marks the arrival of about 97 unmarried women that were recruited by the Virginia Company to come to Virginia and marry a men in the Colony. One good place to get an idea of what may have been required of women in Virginia is by reading through the Laws Devine Moral and Martial -- www.virtualjamestown.org/exist/cocoon/jamestown/laws/J1056 . Women were probably employed as cooks, bakers, laundresses and seamstresses. In the In the Jamestown Rediscovery Project's archeology of Jamestown, two spindle whorls have been excavated that may indicate some spinning of yarn -- historicjamestowne.org/collections/artifacts/spindle-whorl/ Further, you may be interested in in reading a little bit about three of the English women who came to Virginia -- Anne Burras Laydon, who arrived in Virginia in 1608 and survived the Starving Time -- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Burras Temperance Flowerdew arrived in Virginia in 1609 and also survived the starving time and eventually married two governors -- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperance_Flowerdew Cecily Jordan Farrar arrived in Virginia in 1610 as a child -- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecily_Jordan_Farrar

[@kennethmoles4643]

​@@JYFMuseumsThank you for the great follow up!

[@JYFMuseums]

@@kennethmoles4643 You're welcome!

[@leoscheibelhut940]

Very good! I am consistently pleased with JYF's high quality history presentations. I briefly visited Jamestown years ago on a road trip. Arrived in late afternoon so only had about an hour, been dying to get back ever since to see it in depth as well as Yorktown and Williamsburg. A week might put a good dent in seeing them all.

[@JYFMuseums]

Thank you so much. We are very happy that you are enjoying our videos we do enjoy making them. And please, do come back and see us again!

[@kittyjohnstone5915]

Interesting piece. You are so right about the misconceptions arising from modern judgment of documents from earlier times. And those misconceptions would have started relatively soon after the documents were written. One other driver of misconception could been down to the methods by which news was disseminated in 17th - 18th centuries, perhaps well into the 19th. Then news came by word of mouth, the letters being read out in public, even after publication in newspapers became the norm. Ok. It might have been written with accuracy, but how many times were those letters rewritten to “correspondents” who would, in turn, pass the message on, with changes, deliberate or accidental, having been made to the narrative?

[@JYFMuseums]

Interesting thoughts. There is certainly room for misconceptions at any point of history. In the case of John Smith his first report from Virginia was actually published in 1608 and may have been distributed as a broadside. There were also a number of letters and reports sent from Virginia to Company Officials in England, and these reports, letters and documents could certainly be used and manipulated in any number of ways, such as when one faction was trying to wrest control of the company from another and needed any sort of evidence to support their cause. Check out Brian's video on the Francis Perkins letter from 1608 -- kzbin.info/www/bejne/qaKpd3yGoLeohKs OR His video on the Richard Frethorne letter from 1623 that was used by the Warwick faction in the fight for control of the Company -- kzbin.info/www/bejne/qoeWloKNe8t-n7c Smith is also unique because he outlives the Virginia Company and many of its officers. Through his own writings he was able to define and describe his own impact on the Company and his success in Virginia with little to no pushback in turn -- more than other Virginia Company officials were capable of doing for themselves. He survived Christopher Newport, the Treasurer of the Company Sir Thomas Smythe, Governor de la Warr, Sir Thomas Gates and Sir Thomas Dale. William Strachey's "The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia" was not published until 1849 and George Percy's "A True Relation" which was meant to be a rebuttal to John Smith and a defense of his own leadership during the Starving Time, was published in 1922. Virginia Company records were collected and survived in the collection of various Company officials' family papers only to see the light of day in the early 20th century, but, Smith's books in many ways became the definitive works of early Virginia history. Unfortunately with a figure like Smith, his writings become easy to misunderstand or misconstrue and that misinterpretation gets passed along like it were the telephone game, evolving and morphing with each telling, with few ever desiring to check the original source. After all how many of us heard in school from our teachers that John Smith and Pocahontas had a romance?

[@PickleRick65]

"FOR THE EMPIRE!?!"🤣

[@johnharker7194]

I was told they starved because there was initially no individual profit motive. The free rider problem was supposedly the thing that dragged them down.

[@JYFMuseums]

There are modern political commentators who attempt to frame the context of Jamestown and early Virginia through the lense of their ideal modern political or economic systems. Systems that at the early-17th century didn't exist or hadn't yet been theorized. Nonetheless the men coming to Virginia were to be paid with their food, clothing and shelter. Then ideally paid off either in coin or shares of the company at end of their terms of service and then go home. The issuance of the 1612 charter allowed those classed as ancient planters or share holders to be paid off in land. Men who paid were off with land and chose to stay in Virginia, now had to make a go of that land they now held. In turn many of the men and officers had taken terms of service with the Virginia Company with the intent of fulfilling those term, going home and then moving on to the next contract. George Percy probably came to Virginia because of the mark on the family for his cousin's involvement in the Gunpowder plot. He did his term in Virginia and after returning to England went onto leading soldiers in the Netherlands. After his return from Virginia Sir Thomas Gates returned to England, continued involvement with the Virginia Companies of London and Plymouth, before returning to the Netherlands. Sir Thomas Dale after his time in Virginia was relived of his obligations to the Netherlands and took a term of service with the English East India Company. English starving in Virginia had more to do with resupply difficulties, difficulties establishing agriculture in Virginia and relations with the Powhatan.

[@johnharker7194]

@@JYFMuseums ah. So they were for the most part there to develop the colony. So was the expectation that after establishment, farmers would travel over and buy plots of land? Or was it going to be a large plantation for indigo and tabacco?

[@johnharker7194]

@@JYFMuseums also. I think I got the free rider problem mixed up with the pilgrims at Plymouth. Not the Virginia company.

[@JYFMuseums]

Yes, the earliest settlers were developing the colony and its economy. Where could the company profit in Virginia and balance that against the various interests of the factions within the company. Wood production, manufacturing glass, attempts to develop silk production, trade in animal skins & pelts, sturgeon, attempts to develop mineral resources, medicinal commodities, even Virginia as a haven for privateering operations against the Spanish. With the changes brought by the 1612 Charter and investors and ancient planters being paid off in land, those new landholders were going to have to make their new holdings profitable. There were now landholders that would remain in Virginia and have a go at making their holdings profitable and ekk out an existence. There were those landholders that went home or investors that never stepped foot in Virginia that would have to convince people to take the risk to settle in Virginia and to work these lands to profitability for their landholders in England. These changes took place at the same time that John Rolfe was experimenting with tobacco and showed its potential profitability. By the end of the 16-teens the headlight system of granting land had developed. Under the headright system land was granted to those that sponsored, paid for, or financed another's passage to Virginia.

[@johnharker7194]

@@JYFMuseums thanks!

[@deadhorse1391]

Interesting Of course Smith was reporting back to “proper gentlemen” which may have influenced how he characterized his “proper gentlemen “ as he begged for more accomplished working men Probably wouldn’t want to tell these “ proper gentlemen “ how useless they really were You would think they would stock the expedition with better workers but I imagine not easy to do. An accomplished and successful Blacksmith, Carpenter etc were probably less likely to sign up to go across the world for an uncertain future then a person that didn’t have much to lose

[@rumbleinthebumble8180]

"FOR THE ALGORITHM!?!"

[@lazygardens]

So they needed a "swear jar".

[@JYFMuseums]

LOL, yes in a sense. "Captain I swore today, please pour some water down my sleeve!"🤣

[@zacktube100]

Removing tree stumps by hand is horrible. I wonder if the trees then are the same size as now.

[@JYFMuseums]

From his book The General History of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles, John Smith described the cypress as, "...there is a kinde of wood we called Cypres, because both the wood, the fruit, and leafe did most resemble it, and of those trees there are some neare three fadome about at the foot, very straight, and 50, 60, or 80 foot without a branch." "Fadome" is a fathom or 6 feet. At three fathom he is saying the tree is 18 feet in circumference near its base.

[@platform15gym]

Fascinating!