In this letter to the New York Times, published on June 9, 1900, L. F. A. Maulsby suggests an unseemly similarity between the plots of Mary Johnston‘s newly published novel To Have and to Hold and The Head of a Hundred (1897) by Maud Wilder Goodwin.
In this pamphlet, published in London on July 22, 1620, the Virginia Company of London summarizes its accomplishments in the past year. Some spelling has been modernized.
In this excerpt from “A Dictionarie of the Indian Language, for the Better Enabling of Such Who Shalbe Thither Ymployed,” William Strachey compiled what he believed to be words spoken by the Virginia Indians of Tsenacomoco who lived in the Tidewater when the Jamestown colonists landed in 1607. Appearing at the end of The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia , Strachey’s dictionary consisted of 400 words, of which 263 accurately represent Algonquian-language words or phrases, according to the linguist Frank T. Siebert Jr.
In this excerpt from the novel Prisoners of Hope (1898) by Mary Johnston, an indentured servant called Godfrey Landless secretly meets with another servant, Robert Godwyn, or “the mender of nets,” to speak of the possibility of rebellion. Johnston’s book is set in Gloucester County, 1663, and is loosely based on the Gloucester County Conspiracy.
On July 21, 1656, in “A Report of a Comittee from an Assembly Concerning the freedome of Elizabeth Key,” the General Assembly ruled that the slave Elizabeth Key should be freed.
In this excerpt from the diary he kept for more than twenty-five years, Landon Carter notes that several of his slaves have run away following a proclamation by the royal governor, John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, promising freedom to slaves who joined British forces during the American Revolution (1775–1783). Carter repeatedly voices his dislike for Patrick Henry and his belief that he (Carter), and not Henry, had taken the lead in opposing the Stamp Act (1765). Finally, he gives evidence of strained relations at home with his son and wife, and brags of his abilities as a physician.
In chapter 5 of the first book of The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia, completed by William Strachey in 1612 and published in 1849, Strachey describes the attire and appearance of the Virginia Indians he encountered, including Pocahontas.
This sonnet, “A Vision Upon this Concept of the Faery Queene,” was written by Sir Walter Raleigh and published as a commendatory verse at the beginning of Edmund Spenser’s epic The Faerie Queen (1590). Raleigh and Spenser met in Ireland, and Spenser modeled after Raleigh his character Timias, a squire who woos the “heavenly born” Belphoebe, modeled after Queen Elizabeth. Some spelling has been modernized.
In this law, “Against ffornication,” passed in its March 1662 session, the General Assembly addressed the problem of indentured servants having sex that produced pregnancies that, in turn, cost masters money and labor.
In this act, “Against Runawayes,” passed by the General Assembly in the session of October 1669, Virginia’s colonial government responds to the problem of runaway indentured servants and slaves.
