A Brief History of the Chesapeake World

By Christopher Finke

Dr. Thomas Carney

University of Baltimore
HIST380: Chesapeake World
December 12, 2013

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A Brief History of the Chesapeake World
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the world. The vast array of fauna living in
and around the bay makes the area habitable. The fertile soil surrounding the bay allowed the
area to be profitable where large quantities of tobacco and wheat were grown and then shipped
overseas. The history of the area is of wide assortment with Jamestown being the oldest
permanent English settlement. The Chesapeake area also saw the first set of slaves put to work
and, later, the development of a legal system to keep them there.1 The significance of chattel
slavery were far reaching, effecting old nations (such as England) and new nations (such as the
United States) alike well into the 19th century. Even as these contexts and situations were
cultural, they were driven by economic forces and changes. These frameworks of the
Chesapeake world, local economy, labor, and demographics, were all goaded in their progression
by economic forces.
Before getting into the major topics of the bay area, one must first understand the
boundaries, both physically and temporally, under which the history of the Chesapeake world is
written. The physical boundaries of the Chesapeake world have some obvious inclusions. First,
there is the bay itself with all of the life within it. Second is the land adjacent to the bay with
their direct access to the Chesapeake. Finally, there are those areas that are not adjacent to the
bay, but still have direct access to the Chesapeake. These areas would include much of the land
near the Potomac, James, York, and Rappahannock Rivers. The land around the bay is further
demarcated into three divisions: tidewater, piedmont, and frontier.2 The tidewater and piedmont
are divided by the fall line, which are marked by the first set of rapids or falls along a river, with
the tidewater being closest to the bay itself. The frontier is that area where settlers come into
direct contact with Native Americans. This area moves further and further west as time goes on
because of westward expansion.
The temporal boundaries are not so convoluted. The Chesapeake World begins with the
founding of Jamestown in 1607 by the Virginia Company.3 Being given a charter from the
crown, this becomes the first permanent English settlement in North America. The opposite side
of this boundary is not as clear. The Chesapeake world ends around the 1820s. At this point the
major characteristics of the region have mostly disappeared. The nature of the region had
changed from an agrarian society that grew tobacco with slave labor to an urban area that grew
wheat and corn; it was moving to industry for economic success.4

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The history of the Chesapeakes economy begins with the reason for its foundation. The
Virginia Company hoped that gold would be found in America, gold that would refill the coffers
of the English and help them defeat the Spanish and French.5 In addition, a Chesapeake
settlement would provide trade with Indians, [and would be] for searching for a Northwest
Passage.6 As this dream became an impossibility, a new export became king: tobacco. John
Rolfe introduced sweet tobacco to Virginia in 1615, it grew well and was exported to Englands
market.7 This cash crop created the economic opportunity that would be necessary to draw
migrants to the Chesapeake instead of places like Ireland, continental Europe, or even the larger
English cities.8 Large swaths of growing land being available, many migrants prior to 1660 who
managed to complete servitude would have a good chance that they would achieve a
comfortable position in society.9
The early tobacco market was extremely successful. Nevertheless, by the late 1600s the
boom would end and so would the heretofore reliably high tobacco prices.10 In fact, the price of
tobacco stagnated for thirty years forcing planters to grow other crops and to invest in crafts.11
However, planters had never strictly grown tobacco. Lois Green Carr observes that the most
basic food crop was corn, but after time planters also took time to plant grain crops.12 This
move into the grain market required farmers to have carts and their accoutrements, plows, and
harrows.13 When tobacco prices were high these tools could be imported, but when prices
stagnated, it became more cost effective to invest in craftsmen who could make the goods
domestically. More diverse crops required more diverse tools, which in turn required more
diverse craftsmen to make them.14 When tobacco made a short recovery, the artisan population
saw a downturn.15 The tobacco bust again forced planters to diversify and wheat eventually
overtook tobacco as the major crop of the Chesapeake.16
These large tracts of land could not, of course, be taken care of by the owner and their
families. Outside labor was necessary for the existence of the viability of tobacco, and therefore
the viability of the early settlements. This necessity helped push up real wages for indentured
servants, which in turn increased the Chesapeakes draw factor.17 This cycle worked well for a
time. Work was needed and there was opportunity to be had. Most of the individuals interested in
moving across the Atlantic were not rich, but they were from yeoman and artisan families.18
The rich had opportunity in England and therefore had no reason to leave.19 However, those in
the middle and lower classes saw great opportunity along the tobacco coast.

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These economic classes of people could not afford the passage to the Chesapeake. A
system was then devised whereby a person would sell their labor for a period of years (usually
five to seven years) in exchange for passage.20 Their contract, known as an indenture, would
usually belong to the ships captain. The indenture would be sold on arrival to one of the many
landowners needing labor. Therefore, the migrant would work the period of their indenture on a
plantation as an indentured servant. After the time had been served, the servant would be given
tools, land, and some tobacco (then used as currency); these were known as freedom dues.21
Prospects eventually improved in England and Europe, slowing the flow of migrants to the
Chesapeake.22 These servants were the backbone of the labor force until midcentury, at which
point chattel slaves became a more economically viable option.23
This new form of bondage is seen as having originated from indentured servitude.24
Slavery is easily seen as a lifelong variation of indentured servitude. This status was first placed
on Africans, who were introduced to the bay area in 1619 with a questionable legal status.25
Those questions were answered by the 1660s when legal changes were made that began to take
away the rights of Africans. In 1662, a law was passed stating that any child born to a female
slave, be the father free or slave, black or white, became a slave.26 Slavery in the Chesapeake
was not an individuals status but was a generational status that could be passed on to children.
This lifelong status made slavery more appealing to planters than indentures. For one
thing, slaves never earned freedom dues since their service time could not expire. For another
thing, plantation owners would not have to purchase new servants every five years. Instead, they
could make a ten, fifteen, maybe twenty year investment in a slave. Slaves were also more prone
to abuse. Slaves could be worked harder and given less.27 This increased the profits of
landowners and kept costs down.
Not all Africans were slaves, however. Some became free, whether by earning it, being
given it, or by outliving an indenture (as some of the first Africans did).28 Some of these freed
slaves became affluent, such as Anthony Johnson of Pungoteague Creek or Azaricum Drighouse
of Northampton County.29 In the early 17th century, these men were able to buy land, win court
cases, and, in some instances, own slaves.30 However, even the success that these men had was
not perpetual as their freedom tottered quite literally on the brink of de facto enslavement.
Theirs was a constricted world.31 Men like Johnson and Drighouse became economic successes
and were able to overcome their class of birth.

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The law began to change at midcentury. The legal codes that evolved in Virginia
between the 1660s and the 1720s allowed a piecemeal abridgement of the liberties of free
blacks.32 Even the growth of freedmen as a class was curtailed by legislation making
manumission much more difficult than it had been for much of the seventeenth century.33 These
changes were so impactful to the Johnsons that their larger extended family moved from Virginia
to Maryland.34 Bacons Rebellion in1676 pushed legislatures to further codify slavery and even
the status offree blacks deteriorated.35 By 1700, Africans were fully, legally, and culturally
enslaved. Those free blacks that still lived in Virginia were urged to leave by their neighbors.36
Slaves were not the only inhabitants of the land surrounding the Chesapeake Bay. People
of many backgrounds came to the tobacco coast. Most immigrants were English, but substantial
groups also came from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.37 As mentioned previously, there was little
in the Chesapeake to attract men of established fortune in the mother country.38 James Horn
notes that while social status was not transferred to the New World this did not prevent a
person from doing well socially, because political power followed economic power.39 Those
who arrived earlier in the colonys history had the best opportunities for economic, and therefore
political, success because they could acquire the best land on which to grow tobacco.
Nevertheless, the life of these migrants was not easy. The life of hard subsistence was
lived by these people. High mortality rates abounded and the turnover was so quick that some
basic English traditions were unable to take root for some time.40 Early death was not unusual
even for those of landed and material wealth.41 Population levels were therefore difficult to
maintain, and even harder to increase in the early years. Natural population growth was slow due
to most of the inhabitants of the Chesapeake being male.42 Men outnumbered women by a six-toone count in 1630, an increase from the years prior.43 These numbers changed, albeit slowly, and
by 1700 the sex ratio for the Chesapeake was about two and a half-to-one.44
Those who could survive and succeed met with gain in some areas. Landed wealth was
relatively easy to come by. The mean size of tracts was between 450 and 600 acres in the New
World.45 An estate this large would have put the owner among the landowning elite in
England.46 Contrarily, material wealth was much the less in the Chesapeake region. Material
wealth has been often measured by possessions at death. Such inventories in England would
rarely describe items as new or old, but the Chesapeake saw the terms old, used,
worn, and broken used often.47 Housing was equally primitive as two-thirds of Maryland

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planters lived in dwellings of a type usually found only among the poorest of English society.48
Migration patterns eventually changed and became steady. More women came to the
colony, making population levels easier to maintain and growth likelier.49 Eventually, there was
not enough land near the bay to support all the new arrivals. Immigrants still sought opportunity,
and therefore land. Ergo, with most of the tidewater land owned by earlier arrivals or depleted
from tobacco growth, immigrants moved inland into the piedmont. While exact numbers cannot
be given for the movement of all peoples into the piedmont, Philip Morgan remarks that by the
latter half of the 18th century nearly one in five tidewater slaves had been transferred west of the
fall line.50 This is most certainly a result of an economic need for labor, which can only be
created by the ownership of farm land that needs tending.
This movement of slaves also shows that they were not immune to the problems around
them. Slaves were brought where labor was needed, and as landowning increased in the
piedmont so too did the need for slave labor. Sex ratios were a problem for the African
population as well, but by the mid 1700s, there were almost as many women as men.51
Second generation Africans, known as Creoles, had come to dominate African piedmont
culture.52 Thus the hierarchical nature that had been in the tidewater between large landowners
and small landowner was somewhat transferred to the slave culture.
The Chesapeake world seems a limited scope of study. Nonetheless, the
interconnectedness of events and economic forces makes the tobacco coast no less interesting.
The local economy became driven by tobacco. The reliance on this crop created problems when
the market stagnated, but even this spurred investment into crafts, industry, and crop
diversification. The labor intensive cash crop required large amounts of land and labor. Early on,
the labor came from indentured servants. However, the prospects in other parts of the world
improved and middle to lower class Englishmen had no reason to come to the Chesapeake. It
then became cheaper to import slaves from the west coast of Africa. These slaves became one of
the defining features of the bay area and later a major point of contention in the early United
States. The peoples of the tobacco coast dealt with population issues from the first, and even
after stabilization still had to migrate westward for economic opportunity. In every instance the
Chesapeake was driven by the economic factors surrounding it: whether it be the dependence on
tobacco, the need for slave labor, or the changing demographics of the area. The colonial
framework that became Maryland and Virginia was compelled by the powers of economy.

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Notes
1. Ty M. Reese, The Slave Trade and Slavery, Converging Worlds: Communities and
Cultures in Colonial America, ed. Louise Breen (New York: Routledge, 2012), 359.
2. Lois Green Carr, Introduction, Colonial Chesapeake Society, ed. Lois Green Carr,
Philip Morgan and Jean Russo (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 12.
3. L.H. Roper, The Chesapeake World, Converging Worlds: Communities and Cultures
in Colonial America, ed. Louise Breen (New York: Routledge, 2012), 123.
4. Lois Green Carr, Diversification in the Colonial Chesapeake: Somerset County,
Maryland, in Comparative Perspective, Colonial Chesapeake Society, ed. Lois Green Carr,
Philip Morgan and Jean Russo (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 369-70.
5. Roper, The Chesapeake World, 129.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 130.
8. Russell Menard, British Migration to the Chesapeake Colonies in the Seventeenth
Century, Colonial Chesapeake Society, ed. Lois Green Carr, Philip Morgan and Jean Russo
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 114.
9. Menard, British Migration, 111.
10. Carr, Diversification, 353.
11. Jean Russo, Self-sufficiency and Local Exchange: Free Craftsmen in the Rural
Chesapeake Economy, Colonial Chesapeake Society, ed. Lois Green Carr, Philip Morgan and
Jean Russo (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 404.
12. See Carr, Diversification, 350; Ibid., 353.
13. Ibid., 354.
14. Ibid., 350.
15. Russo, Self-sufficiency, 405.
16. Carr, Diversification, 357.
17. Menard, British Migration, 116.
18. Ibid., 120.

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19. James Horn, Adapting to a New World: A Comparative Study of Local Society in
England and Maryland, 1650-1700, Colonial Chesapeake Society, ed. Lois Green Carr, Philip
Morgan and Jean Russo (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 146.
20. Roper, The Chesapeake World, 131-2.
21. Ibid.
22. Carr, Introduction, 7.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid., 5.
25. T.H. Breen and Stephen Innes, Myne Owne Ground: Race and Freedom On
Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1640-1676 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 20.
26. Reese, The Slave Trade, 359.
27. Ibid., 360-1.
28. Breen and Innes, Myne Owne Ground, 72.
29. See Breen and Innes, Myne Owne Ground, 7; Douglas Deal, A Constricted World:
Free Blacks on Virginias Eastern Shore, 1680-1750, Colonial Chesapeake Society, ed. Lois
Green Carr, Philip Morgan and Jean Russo (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1988), 275.
30. Breen and Innes, Myne Owne Ground, 11-5.
31. Deal, A Constricted World, 276.
32. Ibid., 276-7.
33. Ibid., 277.
34. Breen and Innes, Myne Owne Ground, 108.
35. Ibid., 107.
36. Ibid., 109.
37. Menard, British Migration, 122.

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38. Horn, Adapting to a New World, 146.

39. Ibid., 147.
40. Ibid., 149.
41. Ibid.
42. Menard, British Migration, 119.
43. Ibid., 129.
44. Ibid.
45. Horn, Adapting to a New World, 148.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid., 161.
48. Ibid., 154.
49. Menard, British Migration, 129.
50. Philip Morgan, Slave Life in Piedmont Virginia, 1720-1800, Colonial Chesapeake
Society, ed. Lois Green Carr, Philip Morgan and Jean Russo (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1988), 437.
51. Morgan, Slave Life, 444.
52. Ibid.