Colonial Virginia, A Beginning:

At the beginning of the seventeenth century all the eastern portion of North America, which afterward became the thirteen original states, was known as Virginia. Great interest in American colonization was awakened throughout the kingdom by a little book on "Western Planting," inspired by Raleigh and written by Richard Hakluyt. Several voyages were made before any permanent settlement was established.

These voyages, undertaken by individuals, had not been successful financially or otherwise. From this cause others were deterred from risking their fortunes in similar enterprises. But the success of various commercial companies which had multiplied in the last half century for the purpose of trading with distant countries, especially of the East India Company, chartered in 1600, naturally suggested similar enterprises for the western world. And further, the corporation as a form of local subordinate government had long been familiar to the English merchant, and readily lent itself to plans of colonial extension.

Accordingly, in 1606, two companies were formed, Virginia was divided into two parts and a part granted to each, the London Company and the Plymouth Company. They obtained a royal charter enabling each to found a colony, granting the right to coin money, raise revenue, and to make laws, but reserving much power to the king. Each was given a block of land a hundred miles square, and the settlements were to be at least one hundred miles apart. The London Company had permission to plant a colony anywhere on the coast between the thirty-fourth and forty-first degrees north latitude, and to what they did we now direct our attention.

Great haste was now made by the London Company in preparing for colonization in America, and on the 19th of December, 1606, three small ships bearing one hundred and five colonists and commanded by Christopher Newport, a famous sea captain, set out upon the wintry sea for the New World. The largest of the vessels, the Susan Constant, was of one hundred tons burden and the smallest of but twenty tons. The voyage was long and dreary, and it consumed the remainder of the winter. On reaching the American shore the weary voyagers were greeted by the singing of birds and the fragrance of flowers. Entering Chesapeake Bay they named the two projecting points at its sides, Cape Henry and Cape Charles, after the two young sons of the king. They chose out one of the great rivers flowing into the bay, left upon it the name of King James and followed it for about thirty miles, and founded a town which also they called after the name of their king.

Thus was founded the first of the permanent settlements which were to multiply and expanded and in three hundred years to grow into the greatest nation of the earth. Let us take a glance at the colonists. It would be difficult to imagine a set of men less fitted to build a colony and found a nation than were those who settled at Jamestown in 1607. Among them were but twelve laborers, a few carpenters, a blacksmith, a mason, a barber, and a tailor, while more than fifty were "gentlemen," that is men without an occupation, idle, shiftless

men who had joined the enterprise without realizing that years of labor were essential to success. But there were a few men of worth in the company. There was Wingfield, who became the first president of of the governing council, the hero of many strange adventures. They soon erected a few tents and small cabins; some, however, found a dwelling place by burrowing into the ground. For a church they nailed a board between two trees, stretched a canvas over it, and beneath this the Rev. Robert Hunt held services according to the rites of the Church of England.

Captain Newport, after spending some weeks exploring the James River, returned with his ships to England, promising to come again as soon as practicable. The colony was soon in a pitiable condition. Arriving too late to plant springs crops, and finding little cleared land fit for cultivation, the men were soon reduced to short rations. The allowance to each man for a day was a pint of wormeaten barley or wheat, made into pottage. Governor Wingfield lacked the ability to rule the men, and there were constant quarrels among them. To their other misfortunes was added a continual fear of Indian attacks; and owing to their

exposure in the swamps and their lack of proper food, they were attacked by fevers. They died sometimes three or four in a night, and before the end of September half of the little colony, including Gosnold, had found a grave in the wilderness.

The entire colony would no doubt have perished before the return of Newport but for the courage and vigor of one man, the most notable and conspicuous character in the early colonial history of America -- John Smith. Smith was still a young man, but according to his own story, his record was an extraordinary one. When scarcely beyond boyhood he joined the French army and later that of the Netherlands in which he

served for several years. He then embarked on the Mediterranean and was thrown overboard as a heretic, swam to an uninhabited island, was picked up by a vessel and carried to Egypt. We next find him traversing Italy on foot, slaying three Turks successively in single combat in Transylvania, and at length captured by the Turks and sold into slavery. He slew his master with a flail, escaped into the Scythian Desert, wandered through every country of Europe, and joined the Virginia colonists soon after reaching his native land. It was now left for his sojourn in the American forest to furnish the crowning romance of his life.While exploring the Chickahominy River he was taken captive by the Indians. After entertaining his captors for several days with a pocket compass and such curios, he was condemned to death by the savages. His head was laid on the block when at the last moment a little daughter of the chief, named Pocahontas, rushed forward, laid her head upon the head of the intended victim, and begged that his life be spared. Her request was granted, and he was sent back rejoicing to his people.

This romantic story, as also the account of his other adventures above mentioned, rests wholly on Smith's own testimony, and most historical writers in recent years are disposed to discredit them, especially the story of his rescue by the Indian girl. It seems clear that John Smith gave a highly colored narrative in relating his adventures, but there is reason to believe that the story of his rescue by Pocahontas is true.The only ground for doubting the story is Smith's well-known spirit of boasting and the fact that in his first account of his capture by the Indians he does not mention this incident. On the other hand, there is one powerful argument, which seems almost conclusive, in favor of the truth of the story. It was not an unusual occurrence among many Indian tribes, when they were about to put a captive to death, for some impulsive Indian, usually a female and in most cases a member of the chief's family, to be the life of the intended victim at the last moment.7 Such a request was seldom denied, and the rescue was usually followed by a formal adoption of the rescued one into the tribe; and this is exactly what Smith claimed was done in his case, though he was given his freedom to return to his colony. How could he have invented a story coinciding so perfectly with an Indian custom with which he could not have been familiar? Such a thing is far less credible than the story itself. It is not disputed, however, that John Smith was a man of wonderful energy, and that he did more for Virginia than any other of the early settlers. He soon became governor of the colony, and he saved the colonists from starvation by trading with the Indians for corn. He succeeded above all others in keeping the men at work and thus laid the foundations for future prosperity. Smith later explored Chesapeake Bay and its rivers and afterward the New England coast, and he made maps of them that are remarkable for their accuracy.

Of Pocahontas it is known that although she was a rollicking, romping girl who often visited Jamestown and amused the colonists with her pranks, she grew into stately womanhood and married one of the colonists, John Rolfe, a widower -- that she accompanied her husband to England, where she was received with great favor, and that she died in England after giving birth to a son who afterward made Virginia his home and became the ancestor of several of the most prominent families of the state.

Let us return to our colony. Life in the forest bore heavily on the little band, and but thirty-eight of them were alive when, in January, 1608, Captain Newport returned with food supplies and one hundred and twenty more colonists. Others came from time to time, and in 1609, when John Smith returned to England, the colony numbered five hundred. The government had been placed, by the first charter, in the hands of a council of thirteen, resident in England, and appointed by the King, which should cooperate with a local council. But a new charter was granted in 1609 by which the council in England, originally distinct from the company, now became a part of it,8 while the local council was abolished, being superseded by a governor. By this charter the bounds of the settlement were enlarged to four hundred miles along the coast, two hundred miles each way from Old Point Comfort, and extended "up into the land throughout from sea to sea west and northwest." The company was also given much greater power than that granted by the charter of 1606.Lord de La Warr, of Delaware, was appointed governor of Virginia under the charter of 1609. He embarked with nine ships and five hundred men and women for Virginia; but encountering a terrible storm off the Bermuda Islands, he was delayed at those islands for many months -- and woe to Virginia in consequence!

The "Starving Time" came. The Indians were now hostile and no food could be obtained from them. Men with blanched faces wandered about actually dying for food. The death rate was frightful. Of the five hundred left by Smith the fall before only sixty remained alive in the spring of 1610. These now decided to abandon Virginia and embark in the four little pinnaces that were left them, hoping to reach dear old England. Early in June they gathered together their meager possessions, and with the funeral roll of drums left their cabins behind. Sadly, yet joyfully, they floated down the river to its mouth, when lo! far off in the horizon they beheld a moving speck -- and another and another! They waited -- and up the bay swept the ships of Lord Delaware! They all now returned to Jamestown, and the colony of Virginia was born again.  How slender the thread on which hung the infant life of the firstborn of the United States!

Delaware soon had the colony on its feet, but the next year he returned to England and sent Sir Thomas Dale to govern in his stead. Dale was a man of much ability and strength of character, and as Fiske aptly puts it, "Under his masterful guidance Virginia came out from the valley of the shadow of death." He introduced several radical reforms, the most important of which was the partial abolishing of communism. Before his coming the land and other possessions were held in common; no one owned private property; each man was a servant of the state, and the tendency of many was to do as little as possible. Dale gave each of the old settlers three acres of ground with the right of possessing private property. The effect was to stimulate industry, and from this time there was never a scarcity of food in Virginia. The new governor also

established other settlements along the James, and although he was an austere man, ruled with a hand of iron, and was merciless in his punishment of criminals, his years' stay wrought a great change for the better in Virginia.

In 1612, during the incumbency of Dale, a third charter was granted to Virginia. This charter added the Bermuda Islands to Virginia, empowered the company to raise money by means of lotteries, and was far more liberal than either of its predecessors in granting governmental powers. It is interesting to note the first steps toward democratic government in America as shown by the rapidly succeeding charters of Virginia. King James, blindly devoted to the autocratic theory of government, refused to embody any democratic features in the first charter. The local council was subject to a superior council resident in England, and both were under the instructions of the king. The charter guaranteed the rights of Englishmen to the people, but gave them no voice in their own government. But the colony came to the verge of failure, and in the belief that a more liberal government would enhance the prospects of success, a second charter was applied for and granted. By this charter of 1609, all vacancies in the council, as also the executive office, were to be filled by the vote of the stockholders. This gave the company the character of a body politic, the right of self-government. It was a great advance over the first one in the process of transplanting English government to American soil, a great step toward the more important charter of 1612. By this third charter all governmental power, including the making of their own laws and the choosing of all officials, was given into the hands of the stockholders. But the company did not immediately extend this right to the colonists; it placed local affairs in the hands of a governor of its own choosing. A few years later, however, the liberal element, led by Sir Edwin Sandys, gained control of the company, and to attract new settlers, as well as to curb the power of a profligate or tyrannical governor, the company instructed its governor to call an assembly of the settlers and give them a share in the government. This became the House of Burgesses -- the first representative body in America. Meantime the white and red races were united in Virginia by the marriage of Rolfe and the daughter of the Indian chief Powhatan. This secured peace with the Indians for eight years until the death of Powhatan.

About 1616 tobacco became the staple product of the colony. The English learned its use from the Indians, and marvelously soon after the discovery of the weed, the use of it spread through every civilized land. It was the one thing that found a ready sale in England. Every farmed raised tobacco, and it was grown in the streets of Jamestown; it even became the money of the colony, and the minister and public officers were paid their salaries in tobacco.

The colony was, on the whole, a disappointment to the company that had founded it. One of the main object was the same that had lured Pizarro and De Soto -- a desire for gold. They were not content with the sassafras roots and cedar logs that their ships kept bringing, nor even with the tobacco. When, therefore, the London Company, or Virginian Company, as named by the second charter, were convinced that gold could not be found in that part of America, their interest in the colony was greatly diminished, and to this fact was due much of the anarchy and disorder in Virginia.

After the departure of Dale, the colonists suffered severely for a few years at the hands of a wicked governor, Samuel Argall, who robbed and plundered them in every way in his power. But better times were at hand. At about this time, Sir Edwin Sandys gained the ascendency in the Virginia Company, and his energy and wisdom were soon felt in the colony. One of his first acts was to send the colony, in 1619, one of its best governors, Sir George Yeardley, who became the first to introduce popular government into America.

The most memorable year in the early history of Virginia was 1619. It was this year that witnessed the beginnings of two institutions, opposite in character, each of which was destined to play a great part in the future development of the new nation that was now struggling to be born. The first was government by the people, and the second the institution of slavery. The first was to increase and expand until it developed into the greatest self-governing people in the world's history; the second was to fasten itself like a blight on the free institutions of the same people and in the end to bring about the sacrifice of tens of thousands of human lives. In November of the preceding year the Virginia Company had issued an order limiting the power of the governor of the colony and establishing a legislature of burgesses to be elected by the people.

The first House of Burgesses, composed of twenty-two delegates, met in July, 1619, soon after the coming of Yeardley, and before long the people were living under the laws of their own making, and a "government of the people, for the people, and by the people" thus gained its first foothold on American soil. This granting of a share in the government to the people attracted new settlers, who, from this time, came in ever increasing numbers. This same year of 1619 witnessed the coming of ninety young women to be wives of the colonists. To secure one of these prizes the bachelor planter was required to win the maiden's consent and to pay her passage across the sea (about one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco), and as there were many more men than maidens, the courtship must have been very interesting. Other women were brought from time to time, and family life was soon firmly established in the new colony.

Indeed, from this time forth life in Virginia had its attractions as well as its hardships. The lowing of the herds, the chattering of the fowls, the shouts of playing children, the sound of the builder's hammer, and of the woodman's ax ringing out from the depth of the forest, bespoke a happy and prosperous community. But colonial life still had its misfortunes. A great calamity befell the people of Virginia in 1622 in the form of an Indian massacre. The friendly chief Powhatan was dead, and his brother Opekankano, who had never been friendly to the English, now reigned in his stead. This chief now instituted a massacre in which three hundred and forty-seven of the settlers were killed. The blow was a dreadful one; but the whites, recovering from the shock, pursued the savages with merciless fury, putting to death a far greater number than they had lost. Twenty-two years later this same chief, now an aged man, made a second attack on the settlement, killing over two hundred, but his tribe was again put down with a firm hand and himself taken captive and put to death.

In 1624, the Virginia Company, after a severe struggle with the Crown, was deprived of its charter. The chief cause of this was that the Puritan element, which formed the backbone of the opposition in Parliament, had also gained the ascendency in the Virginia Company. Nor did James likes the action of the company a few years before in extending representative government to the colonists. The result was the loss of the charter. Virginia became a royal colony and so it continued to the war of the Revolution. But the change had little effect on the colony, for Charles I, who soon came to the throne, was so occupied with troubles at home that he gave less attention to the government of Virginia than the company had done, and popular government continued to flourish. Of the six thousand people who had come from England before 1625 only one fifth now remained alive, but this number was rapidly augmented by immigration. Governor Yeardley died in 1627, and John Harvey, a man of little ability or character, became governor. Harvey kept the Virginians in turmoil for some years, but the colony was now so firmly established that his evil influence did not greatly affect its prosperity.

And that was the Virginia that welcomed our ancestors Robert and Sarah (Greniffe) Rockhould and their children.

[I realize that my narrative is not in any particular order, I simply work on a given topic for a while and when it looks like it has became somewhat organized, I publish it here,.  If someday in the future I have the opportunity (time and energy) I will organize it all in correct order and maybe even publish it.  If not, oh well, it's been a real adventure to research it all.  Other segments can be found in previous posts.  Thanks to all who have reviewed and commented on the post. MDR]