The Unhealthy Chesapeake

• Life in the American wilderness was harsh due to diseases such as malaria and typhoid being deadly with only a few people living to 40 or 50 years

• Women were scarce in the early days of the colonies, causing men to fight over them

• Chesapeake region had a 6:1 male to female ratio

• Very few people knew their grandparents

• A third of all the brides in a Maryland county were pregnant before their weddings (was considered to be scandalous)

• Virginia was the most populated colony as it had 59,000

The Tobacco Economy

• The Chesapeake Bay Colony was good for tobacco cultivation with it exporting 1.5 million pounds of tobacco yearly in 1630s and by 1700, it exported 40 million pounds a year

  • Availability of tobacco led to failing prices with farmers continuing to grow more

• Most laborers were indentured servants but after seven years of labor, they had the hope of freedom

• The laborers’ conditions were brutal with owners being unwilling to free their servants (extended contracts for small mistakes)

Frustrated Freemen and Bacon’s Rebellion

• There were many free, poor, and landless single men in the late 1600s that were frustrated by the lack of land, work, money, and women

• Nathaniel Bacon led a rebellion against the hostile conditions in 1676, known as “Bacon’s Rebellion”

  • The people, involved with the rebellion wanted land and were resentful towards Virginia governor, Berkeley’s friendly policies towards Indians

• Bacon’s men attacked Indian settlements after the governor refused to retaliate for a series of savage Indian attacks on the frontier

• In the middle of his rebellion, Bacon died of disease, with Berkeley ending the uprising

Colonial Slavery

• In the 300 years, following the discovery of American, only 400,000 of 20 million African slaves were brought to the United States

• By 1680, many landowners were afraid of possibly rebellious white servants

• By the mid-1680s, black slaves outnumbered white servants in the plantation colonies

• More sales were imported after 1700, with slaves accounting for nearly half of Viriginia’s population in 1750

• Most of the slaves were from West Africa

• To deal with issues of slave ownership, the slave codes dictated that slaves and their children would remain the slaves of their masters or life, unless they were freed, voluntarily

Africans in America

• Slave life in the South was difficult due to growing rice being much harder compared to growing tobacco

• Many slaves in America evolved their own languages with them blending their native tongues with English

  • Slaves contributed to music with instruments such as the banjo and bongos

  • Few slaves became skilled artisans (carpenters, tanners, or bricklayers)

• Most slaves had to do work such as clearing swamps

• A slave revolt in 1712 led to the death of a dozen whites, with 21 slaves being excuted

• South Carolina blacks revolted and tried to march to Spanish Florida in 1739, but failed

Southern Society

• Extended clans such as the Fitzhughs, Lees, and the Washingtons owned tracts of real estate and dominated the House of Burgesses in Virginia and came to be known as the First Families of Virginia

• The largest social group in Virginia was that of the farmers

• Schools and churches were slow to develop due to their being few cities in the South

The New England Family

• There was clean water and cool temperatures in New England which caused disease to not be as prominent as it was in the South

• The first New England Puritans had an average life expectancy of about 70 years

• Women usually married in their early twenties and gave birth every two years until menopause

  • A typical woman could be expected to have 10 babies and raise about 8 of them as death in childbirth wasn’t uncommon

  • In the South, women had more power than men as the men typically died young as women could inherit money

• In New England, the men had more power

• Men didn’t have absolute power over their wives in New England but did have power over women

• Adulterous women had to wear the letter “A” on their bosoms if they were caught

Life in the New England Towns

• New towns in New England were chartered by colonial authority

  • Towns commonly had a meetinghouse surrounded by houses

  • Towns with more than 50 families had to provide education while towns with more than 100 families had to provide secondary education

• Massachusetts Puritans established Harvard College to train men to become ministers in 1636

• Puritans ran their own churches

• Democracy in Congregational church government led to democracy in political government

The Half-Way Covenant and the Salem Witch Trials

• There was a new type of sermon called “jeremiads”

  • In jeremiads, preachers looked down upon parishioners for their wanting piety in their hopes to improve faith

• Troubled ministers announced a formula for church membership and called it the “Half-Way Covenant”

• All people could participate in the church

• In the early 1690s, a group of Salem girls made claims about being bewitched by certain older women

• These claims of bewichment led to a with hunt that ended with the execution of 20 people (19 hanged, 1 pressed to death) and 2 dogs

• Meanwhile, in Europe there were larger scale with-hunts occurring

• The hysteria surrounding Witchcraft ended in 1693

The New England Way of Life

• New Englanders became great traders due to the hard New England soil

• New England was less ethnically mixed compared to its neighbors

• The climate in New England encouraged agriculture and industry

• Slavery didn’t work as it wasn’t necessary due to New England being made up of small farmers, not plantations

• Rivers were short and rapid

• Fishing became a popular industry

The Early Settlers’ Days and Ways

• The early farmers commonly woke up at dawn and went to bed at dusk

• Not many events were held at night unless they were seen as “worth the candle”

• People who emigrated from Europe to America were mostly lower middle class citizens hoping for a better future in the New World

Makers of America: From African to African-American

• Africans brought new languages, music, and cuisines to America

• Africans worked in the rice fields in South Carolina due to their resistance to disease in comparison with Indians and their knowledge of growing rice

• The first slaves were men with large groups of African slaves living together on plantations by 1740

• Female slaves were expected to labor in the plantations, spin, weave, and sew

• Most slaves became Christians with many adopting elements from their native religions

• Christian songs were used by slaves as code for the announcmenet of the arrival of a guide to freedom