THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 29, 1996 TAG: 9601290090
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines
Information uncovered after almost four centuries shows that the early Virginia colonists, long depicted by historians as a greedy bunch of ne'er-do-wells, may not have been nearly that bad after all.
Documents uncovered show that Virginia's colonists were, instead, educated men with a broad spectrum of trades and talents, and refined, practical women, many of whom came to the New World with their households.
Dr. David R. Ransome, a historian, found the lost archive of the Virginia Company for 1619-24, as well as English records of Virginia activities dating into the 1660s, while researching records at Cambridge University.
The documents, known as the Ferrar Papers, show that Virginia colonists were ``more typical of England as a whole, rural as well as urban, the successful as well as the defeated,'' Ransome wrote in the most recent issue of The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography.
The colonists were ``thus, after all, not so unlike their more obviously bookish compatriots who sailed for New England in the following decades,'' Ransome wrote in the journal published by the state Historical Society.
Previously, ``our picture of immigrants to Virginia derived from the inflated rhetoric of partisan pens,'' said Dr. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, a New York University historian specializing in early American settlement.
``The Ferrar Papers offer the opportunity for a stunning re-evaluation of Virginia's founding years,'' she said. The papers are named for John Ferrar, who was deputy to Sir Edwin Sandys, the Virginia Company's treasurer.
Dr. Nelson D. Lankford, the Virginia Magazine's editor, said the findings will revolutionize the history of that early period of settlement.
Ransome located more than 500 Virginia largely unrecognized items in documents in the Old Library of Cambridge University's Magdalene College. The records contained detailed information on about 250 of the 3,000 or more people who came to Virginia between 1619 and 1622.
According to the records, ``They were socially respectable and came recommended by responsible citizens; they had domestic and in some cases dairying skills; and they traveled with their families' blessing.''
The papers show that the men were somewhat older than the women with an average age of about 24 for the men and about 20 for the women. The group also had a wide array of skills necessary in a developing colony.
Many also traveled with other family members, the records show, as well as with hundreds of books, predominantly on religious and practical topics.
``The literacy and high educational level of the immigrants to New England have long been taken for granted,'' Ransome wrote. ``Now the careful record keeping of the Ferrars also allows us to suggest that the Virginians were not as culturally far from their northerly compatriots as has been thought.'' by CNB