Colonial Virginia Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering key concepts, people, and historical developments in colonial Virginia from the lecture transcript.

John Rolfe

An English colonist who married Pocahontas and introduced a high-demand hybrid strain of tobacco to Virginia in 1614 that grew well and tasted pleasant.

Indenture

A labor contract lasting usually seven years that 80% of migrants signed to come to Virginia in exchange for passage, food, housing, and potential freedom dues.

Freedom Dues

Payment granted to an indentured servant upon completing their contract, which could include land, livestock, cash, tools, or nothing at all.

Atlantic Creoles

The first generation of approximately 20 Africans brought to Jamestown in 1619 by a Dutch ship captain, who arrived with the same status as white English indentured servants.

House of Burgesses

Created in 1619 by the Virginia Company, this representative legislature composed of prominent landowners was the first representative self-government in English North America.

Kinship Networks

Extended family structures comprising cousins, uncles, aunts, or fellow servants that substituted for the nuclear family due to high colonial mortality rates.

First Families

The wealthiest group of large landholders and slave owners in Virginia, forming a planter elite that made up roughly 1% of the population and dominated political power.

Bacon's Rebellion

A 1676 uprising led by Nathaniel Bacon against Governor Berkeley, marking the first rebellion against English government in the colonies and leading to the permanent codification of racial slavery.

Governor Berkeley

The colonial governor of Virginia who refused to send a militia to defend frontier settlers against Native Americans to protect his own lucrative trade deals.

Nathaniel Bacon

A frontier landowner who organized small landowners, indentured servants, and slaves to attack Indian villages and burn Jamestown to the ground in 1676 before dying of dysentery.