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Not only did food production increase markedly, but the following year John Rolfe succeeded on his plot in raising the first hybrid tobacco − the key to the colony's future. Seeking a better site than Jamestown, Thomas Dale sailed up the James River (also named after King James) to the area now known as Chesterfield County.
Graves at Historic Jamestowne. The Starving Time at Jamestown in the Colony of Virginia was a period of starvation during the winter of 1609–1610. There were about 500 Jamestown residents at the beginning of the winter; by spring only 61 people remained alive.
James City was a modest farm area with multiple small plantations containing 250 acres of land. The chief crop was tobacco, which remained the cornerstone of Virginia economy for 200 years. [7] James City, itself, sold 60,000 pounds of tobacco to England by 1622. During the early 1620s, tobacco sold for approximately £200-£1,000 for single ...
Tobacco planters favored a technique called “ganging”, where groups of eight to twelve slaves worked fields simultaneously under the supervision of a white superior or a tenured slave. The hardest working slaves, called “pace-setters”, were spread amongst the different groups as an example for those around them.
The birthplace of John Rolfe, born c. 1585, remains unproven. At that time, the Spanish Empire held a virtual monopoly on the lucrative tobacco trade. Most Spanish colonies in the Americas were located in South America and the West Indies, which were more favorable to tobacco growth than their English counterparts (founded in the early 17th century, notably Jamestown in 1607).
The James Fort c. 1608 as depicted on the map by Pedro de Zúñiga. Jamestown, also Jamestowne, was the first settlement of the Virginia Colony, founded in 1607, and served as the capital of Virginia until 1699, when the seat of government was moved to Williamsburg.
Tobacco use had also become common in early American society and was heavily consumed before and after the declaration of American independence in 1776. An estimated 34.3 million people in the United States, or 14% of all adults aged 18 years or older, smoked cigarettes in 2015, a figure that decreased to 13.7% of U.S. adults in 2018. [ 5 ]
Tobacco became so popular that the English colony of Jamestown used it as currency and began exporting it as a cash crop; tobacco is often credited as being the export that saved Virginia from ruin. [15] While a lucrative product, the growing expansion of tobacco demand was intimately tied to the history of slavery in the Caribbean. [16]