Tobacco Brides: Slavery, Indentureship or Empowerment

Rose & Tobacco by Annette at Pixabay

by Sherry Shindelar

Free clothes, linens, and household goods, and a 50-acre plot of land that will stay yours even after you marry. That’s what the ads said. The Virginia Company knew their market. In 17th-century England, getting married wasn’t as simple as falling in love and saying, “Will you marry me? I will. And I do.” The average man and woman had to work for years to earn enough money to equip a household before they could marry. For working-class women, that could mean servitude.

Then, in 1619 -1622, the Virginia Company offered a golden opportunity. Their colony, Jamestown, was in desperate need of women. The original settlers landed along the James River in 1607, with 105 passengers and 39 crew members, all male. Hundreds of colonists sailed the North Atlantic to Jamestown in the twelve years that followed and a few women had made the journey, but the colony was still almost all male.

Smith, John, and William Hole. Virginia

The colony’s investors feared that the colony would shrivel into oblivion due to the lack of brides. Too many men came to the colony with plans of making their fortune and then traveling back to England to settle down. A few others found a wife among the Powhatans and forsook the settlement to adopt the lifestyle of the native peoples.

If Jamestown were to survive and thrive, the colony needed families. The problem was how to persuade women to make the four month journey to a place riddled with disease and conflict, with a death rate of nearly fifty percent.

The company’s treasurer came up with a plan: Offer free passage, a dowry of household goods and other essentials, and free land, land that would not be swallowed up by coverture[1] when the woman married.

Ninety women came over in 1620, and another 56 in 1621-1622. And these adventurers were free to choose the husband of their choice, preferably among the wealthy bachelors since the Virginia Company expected to be reimbursed for the expenses of the dowry goods, the passage, and the land, payment to be made in Tobacco leaves, thus the name Tobacco Brides. The amount due was 120 -150 pounds of tobacco leaves, the equivalent of approximately $5,000 in our dollars today. If the selected groom couldn’t afford such a hefty sum, he could make payments.

Perhaps it was not too unlike today’s Bachelorette Show, an eligible bachelorette being courted by an array of strangers vying for her affection and seeking to persuade her that they could be the best providers. Records show that many of the women married within three months of arrival.

John Clark Ridpath's Jamestown Brides

Some have suggested that these women were “sold,” but that is not the case. They had the option to marry whom they chose, or to not marry and return across the stormy Atlantic to England. Becoming a Tobacco Bride offered women a possibility to marry, women who, otherwise, would have had to work years to save up enough to build a dowry or would have had difficulty attracting a husband. In addition it offered land ownership independent of their husband, and much more liberal inheritance laws for women than in England. An enhanced level of independence and the opportunity to select a husband from a stable of eligible bachelors: a winning combination for the bold, desperate, and/or adventurous.

[1] Coverture was a legal practice by which a woman’s legal identity was absorbed by her husband upon marrying.

Sherry Shindelar

Originally from Tennessee, Sherry loves to take her readers into the past. A romantic at heart, she is an avid student of the Civil War and the Old West. When she isn’t busy writing, she is an English professor, working to pass on her love of writing to her students. Sherry is a multi-award-winning writer. She currently resides in Minnesota with her husband of forty years. She has three grown children and three grandchildren.

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