A sketch of Byrd Plantation, Virginia, ca. 1700AD.
Today's post, for the fun of it, is an overview of colonial-era Virginia. This draws upon sources used in both my theses:
- Economy: Initially Virginia had several small village-like settlements, such
as Jamestown, the capital, and Henricus, which was near present day
Richmond. These were short lived,
however, and “[t]he little villages built in the days of the London
Company crumbled into ruins, except for Jamestown, the capital.” Later Norfolk and Williamsburg
would be constructed, but these were small (Wmsbrg, 6,000 & Norfolk,
1,000). Virginia was marked by a notably rural society, almost totally
devoid of anything but the smallest towns. Thomas Jefferson noted in 1785 that, “[o]ur
country being much intersected with navigable waters, and trade brought
generally to our doors, instead of our being obliged to go in quest of it,
has probably been one of the causes why we have no towns of any
consequence.” As Jefferson observed, part of the
reason behind this aversion to all things urban was the tendency of the
widely scattered planters to trade directly with England
for her goods. These farmers traded
directly with their mother country because, primarily, of the nature of
the crop that they grew: tobacco.
It was tobacco that Virginia
grew above all else so that “[b]y the middle of the eighteenth century, many people both in
the colonies and the mother country had come to regard Virginia and
tobacco as synonymous.” The Virginia farmer could to grow tobacco
on a particular field for some three years before depleting the soil. He would then plant the field with corn
for up to ten years, and he then “abandoned the field, allowing it to
revert to pine forest.” This was
anything but the kind of farming known in England, for the farmer in the
Old Dominion rarely used the plough, never used manure, and would usually
till the ground with hoes alone.
This reckless manner of cultivation demanded much land, for the
tobacco farmer was always in need of fresh soil. This need of land was one major
contributing factor to the scattered nature of Virginia’s citizens. The other was the tobacco driven economy. Tobacco
was essentially the currency in the colony, for coins were rare in Virginia, and
tobacco was used to pay for everything.
Even the royal governor of Virginia
taxed in it. The majority of
this cash crop would be shipped to England, and, in return, the
goods desired would be shipped back over to the planters in the Old
Dominion. The farmers themselves grew enough food to subsist, and so they
gained all of their other wants by means of the tobacco shipped to England.
- Government:
- Colonial:
The main authority in Virginia
after it became a crown colony in 1624 was the Royal Governor – or his
Lieutenant Governor. The governor
and the colonial council were important in their role as the executive
body of the colony. It was these
appointed men who exercised veto power over legislation produced by the
House, appointed local officials in all of the counties, and even acted
as a supreme court of appeals for the colony. The Governor’s Council “had
twelve members appointed for life by the king” from the prominent political families of Virginia. It was this Executive Council that
nominated the local officials of the county on the recommendation of the
county court. The House of
Burgesses was the lower house of the colonial assembly, and was elected
by the voters of the colony. Each
county would elect two Burgess, and each city one, to represent it in
this lower house – begun 1619 – which was the first representative body
in the English New World, and which became the Virginia House of
Delegates. The laws governing
elections remained rather stable after the revision of 1736 and
stipulated that freeholders, those eligible to vote, were to be defined
as a white male over twenty-one years of age who possessed “one
hundred acres of unimproved land or twenty-five acres with a house and
plantation.” [Later lowered to 50 acres of
unimproved] Eligibility to vote in
an election depended upon this land ownership, not physical residence in
the county, and all voting took place when the governor dissolved the
previous assembly, and in public at the local courthouse. Prior to 1699, the capital city was Jamestown, and from 1699 to the Revolution, it would
be in Williamsburg.
- Local:
- The basic form of local government was, and is,
the county. At the county level,
the county had a court of Justices of the Peace who were both judges and
supervisors. Capital cases, you
should now, were handled in the capitol city, by the executive council,
unless you were a slave. The
county also had a clerk of the court, a sheriff [the sheriff was
responsible for the upkeep of the jail and any prisoners, the collection
of taxes, the overseeing of elections for the House of Burgesses, and
generally being the “chief executive officer of the county,” which
included a great deal of other “miscellaneous administration], a lieutenant [command the militia], and other
minor officials, such as surveyor (who maintained roads) and inspectors
(who looked at tobacco quality). When
the need arose for a new county – distance to court was inconvenient, a new
county would be formed: For example, Prince William from Stafford in
1731, Fairfax from Prince William in 1742, and Fauquier from Prince
William in 1756.
- The other significant colonial body was the
established parish. Thomas
Jefferson explained that: “The state, by another division, is
formed into parishes, many of which are commensurate with the counties:
but sometimes a county comprehends more than one parish, and sometimes a
parish more than one county. The
division had relation to the religion of the state, a Parson of the
Anglican church, with a fixed salary, having been heretofore established
in each parish. The care of the
poor was another object of the parochial division” The church wardens and vestrymen oversaw a
variety of duties, particularly focusing upon the administration and
maintenance of the parish, the care of the poor, and the processioning
of the lands.
- Proprietary: In Northern Virginia a unique arrangement existed: there was a
proprietor within the colony, who “ruled” the region north of the Rappahannock River.
Charles II had given the rights, but they ended up falling to the
sole control of one man by the 1700s: Lord Fairfax. Thomas, 6th Lord Fairfax,
Baron Cameron was the proprietor of the “Northern Neck.” If you lived in this part of the state,
rents were paid to him, not the governor.
He also had rights to preside at any county court in the region,
though his lived near Berryville,
Va. at Greenway Court. It is for him that the county &
city are named, and he helped found places such as Alexandria, Va. The Revolution ended his role.
Live well!
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