The Mail-Order Brides of Jamestown, Virginia

[Draggingtree]

The Mail-Order Brides of Jamestown, Virginia

In its early days, the first English settlement in America had lots of men, tobacco, and land. All it needed was women.

 

“First comes love, then comes marriage,” the old nursery rhyme goes, but historically, first came money. Marriage was above all an economic transaction, and in no place was this more apparent than in the early 1600s in the Jamestown colony, where a severe gender imbalance threatened the fledgling colony’s future.

 

The men of Jamestown desperately wanted wives, but women were refusing to immigrate. They had heard disturbing reports of dissension, famine, and disease, and had decided it simply wasn’t worth it. Consequently, barely a decade after its founding in 1607, Jamestown was almost entirely male, and because these men were unable to find wives, they were deserting the colony in droves.

 

An immediate influx of women was needed to save the floundering colony; its leaders suggested putting out an advertisement targeting wives. The women who responded to this marital request and agreed to marry unknown men in an unfamiliar land were in a sense America’s first mail-order brides.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/the-mail-order-brides-of-jamestown-virginia/498083/

[Geee]

@Draggingtree - sounds like the "Kings Daughters" of Canada - of whom I have quite a few GG - would love to read but your link is missing

[Draggingtree]

@Draggingtree - sounds like the "Kings Daughters" of Canada - of whom I have quite a few GG - would love to read but your link is missing

Ops, sorry I have added it

[Geee]

 

@Draggingtree - sounds like the "Kings Daughters" of Canada - of whom I have quite a few GG - would love to read but your link is missing

Ops, sorry I have added it

 

 

Thanks

[Geee]

@Draggingtree that is so interesting. The same thing was happening in Canada(New France) at around the same time:

 

 

First, Filles a Marier:

http://www.many-roads.com/2009/09/02/filles-a-marier-marriageable-girls/

Then later:

Kings Daughters

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Daughters