Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers, 1607-1635: A Biographical Dictionary. Martha W. McCartney. Hardcover, 2007, Maps, Index, 833 pp.
In 1607 America's first permanent
English colony was planted on Jamestown Island, in Virginia.
Soon afterwards, thousands of immigrants flocked to Jamestown
and surrounding areas on the James and York Rivers, where they
struggled to maintain a foothold. A number of these
settlers--by their own prodigious efforts or by virtue of
their financial investment in the colony--rose to prominence,
leaving a paper trail that historians have followed ever
since. The majority, however--the ordinary men, women, and
children whose efforts enabled the colony to become
viable--simply escaped notice. As a result, 400 years later,
we're still curious about Virginia's earliest settlers--who
they were, where they lived, and how they lived. To answer
these questions, this book brings together a variety of
primary sources that inform the reader about the colony's
earliest European inhabitants and the sparsely populated and
fragile communities in which they lived, resulting in the most
comprehensive collection of annotated biographical sketches
yet published.
From the earliest records relating to
Virginia, we learn the basics about many of these original
colonists: their origins, the names of the ships they sailed
on, the names of the "hundreds" and "plantations" they
inhabited, the names of their spouses and children, their
occupations and their position in the colony, their
relationships with fellow colonists and Indian neighbors,
their living conditions as far as can be ascertained from
documentary sources, their ownership of land, the dates and
circumstances of their death, and a host of fascinating,
sometimes incidental details about their personal lives, all
gathered together in the handy format of a biographical
dictionary.
Maps provided here identify the sites at which Virginia's
earliest plantations were located and enable genealogists and
students of colonial history to link most of the more than
5,500 people included in this volume to the cultural
landscape--establishing definitively a specific location and a
timeframe for these early colonists. Placing all this in
perspective, an introductory chapter includes an overview of
local and regional settlement and provides succinct histories
of the various plantations established in Tidewater Virginia
by 1635.
Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers, 1607–1635,
connects the dots among the multitude of record collections.
Tens of thousands of separate data points fit together to make
whole lives, real lives, many lives—all told more than 5000
men, women, and children; whites, blacks, and Indians;
freeholders, slaveholders, and bondsmen. Here at last,
conveniently mustered between the covers of one book, is the
largest congregation of Virginia founders since the colony’s
“ancient planters” took leave of James Fort.
Cary Carson, Ph.D.
Vice President, Research Division (ret.)
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
[In Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers, 1607–1635,
Martha McCartney] not only identifies the wealthy and powerful
who were the politically and socially visible members of the
community but provides an unprecedented documentation of those
persons routinely overlooked in history yet whose service was
key to the success of the colony. Presented alphabetically,
those individuals of all social ranks and backgrounds that
could be identified in the early immigrant community are
identified along with the documentation that establishes their
place.
Clarence R. Geier, Ph.D.
Professor of Anthropology
James Madison University
Martha McCartney is the unrivaled authority on the primary
sources relating to Virginia’s first European explorers and
settlers. This lucidly written volume will be of invaluable
aid to scholars, and makes fascinating reading for all those
interested in the period and setting.
Kathleen Bragdon, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Anthropology
The College of William and Mary
About the Author
Martha W. McCartney, a research historian, is a graduate of
the College of William and Mary. She was employed at the
Virginia Research Center for Archaeology for thirteen years
and, as a historian, coordinated the state’s archaeological
National Register and its review and compliance programs. From
1986 on, she has worked as an independent scholar, providing
research support to Virginia’s archaeological community. As a
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation consultant, she was project
historian for the National Park Service’s Jamestown
Archaeological Assessment. She is the author of four books,
plus numerous published articles and reports, and has received
five historic preservation awards. Her book, Jamestown
Island: An American Legacy, was chosen by the National
Park Service as “best in the field” in the book/cultural
history category. Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers,
1607– 1635: A Biographical Dictionary is her most recent
work.
