The first woman to foster stability in Jamestown was not an English woman but a native Virginian. Pocahontas, the daughter of Chief Powhatan, was among the first Native Americans to bring food to the early settlers. She was eventually educated and baptized in the English Religion and in 1614 married settler John Rolfe. This early Virginia woman helped create the "Peace of Pocahontas," which for several years, appeased the clash between the two cultures.
The Virginia Company of London seemed to agree that women were indeed quite necessary. They hoped to anchor their discontented bachelors to the soil of Virginia by using women as a stabilizing factor. They ordered in 1619 that "...a fit hundredth might be sent of women, maids young and uncorrupted, to make wives to the inhabitants and by that means to make the men there more settled and less movable...." Ninety arrived in 1620 and the company records reported in May of 1622 that, "57 young maids have been sent to make wives for the planters, divers of which were well married before the coming away of the ships."
As Jamestown grew, women’s work also evolved. Indentured English men and Africans of both sexes constituted an increasingly large part of the agricultural labor force. The importation of more male laborers enabled English women to spend less time working in the tobacco fields. Their transition into more domestic and traditionally female labor was not necessarily easier, and their struggles sometimes became more emotionally difficult because of isolation from others. As Jamestown expanded, colonists did not settle around a main village, but were instead spread around on tracts of land that were barely distinguishable from wilderness. Almost everything eaten and used by the family had to be made by the family, and women bore the brunt of this work as the primary producers of their families’ goods. While male duties required going to town, many women spent months at a stretch without seeing anyone beyond their immediate families. This isolation was even worse for unmarried indentured servants, whose lives were unrelenting toil.The Virginia Company of London began recruiting women specifically as marriage prospects for Jamestown settlers in 1619. Corporate managers believed that “the Plantation can never flourish till families be planted and the respect of wives and children fix the people in the soyle.” The first group of prospective brides, who arrived later in 1619, were described as “one widow and eleven maids for wives of the people of Virginia.”
To be sponsored by the company, an interested woman had to submit a recommendation. The Virginia Company wanted to insure that only “young, handsome and honestly educated maydes” would emigrate. A girl’s employer or other respected person wrote the recommendation with the goal of convincing the company of her virtue and trustworthiness. One recommendation letter, for instance, was written by a churchwarden and described the woman as “an honest sorte & is a woman of an honest lyfe & conversation . . . & so is & ever hathe been esteemed.” The letter was intended to assure the Virginia Company that the woman they were sponsoring would make a respectable wife to the Jamestown settler she chose to marry.
The Virginia Company of London was dissolved in 1624 and Jamestown became a royal colony under the control of King James I. By this time, the Jamestown population was growing rapidly with a large influx of English immigrants. The community had long before outgrown the confines of the original fort structure. Jamestown was the colonial capital with brick stores and homes lining its streets, but colonists had spread far beyond Jamestown. People seeking land for tobacco migrated into Maryland, central and northern Virginia, and south into Carolina. In Virginia, however, Jamestown remained the seat of the General Assembly and urban society.
By 1697, sentiments leaned toward moving the capital of the colony to Middle Plantation, the location of the newly established College of William and Mary, named for King William III and Queen Mary II of England. When the Jamestown statehouse burned in 1698, this idea gained more support. In 1699 the General Assembly moved the capital of Virginia to Middle Plantation, renamed Williamsburg after King William III. Almost immediately, the town lots of Jamestown were absorbed into two large plantations, and Jamestown as an urban center ceased to exist.
Although families were not based around Jamestown any longer, the women who lived on large plantations or farms performed the same duties. They were in charge of the household management, the manufacture of goods for their families, and the care of their children. As the Jamestown settlement faded away, women’s roles remained an integral part of colonial society.
Although the women of Jamestown were never as well known as their male counterparts, their presence was important to the success of the original settlement. Without women, the Jamestown colony never would have achieved the social stability and permanence that is key to civilization.
Work cited:
http://www.nwhm.org/online-exhibits/jamestownwomen/20.htm
http://www.nps.gov/jame/historyculture/the-indispensible-role-of-women-at-jamestown.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocahontas
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