forest for the opening up of new grounds. As a rule, white women were not employed in the fields. This was the case even in the time of the Company,[1] the duties of women being confined to the performance of household duties, to cooking, milking, churning, cleaning, washing, and sewing.[2] It was only when the female servant was an unmitigated slattern in person, offensive in her bearing and dissolute in her conduct, that she was required to do work in the field. Even the strongest of the women were not considered very useful in this sphere, being looked upon as a burden rather than a help. Labor of a purely agricultural character in Virginia was thought to demand less painful exertion than in England. It was neither so taxing nor so long continued. This did not apply to the task of clearing the forest lands, the most severe and trying undertaking, perhaps, which has ever been imposed upon a farm hand. Its performance, however, was restricted to a brief portion of each year and fell more heavily on the axemen, a comparatively small number, than upon the others, who were employed in rolling the trunks into piles and in burning the brushwood. The soil of the new ground was thickly interspersed with roots, but as it was broken up with the hoe, it did not offer any serious obstacles to cultivation. In the long interval in winter between the sale of the crop of the preceding season and the removal of the plants from the beds to the fields, the servants had few important duties to
- ↑ Royal Hist. MSS. Commission, Eighth Report, Appx., p. 41. Thomas Nicholls, writing to Sir John Wolstenholme, April 2, 1623, said: “all that the women did was nothing but to devour the food of the land without doing any day’s deed.” p. 41.
- ↑ Leah and Rachel, p. 12, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III. In 1669, Alice Rogers, a servant of Thomas Spilman, of York County, complained in a petition entered in court that her master made her “work in the ground.” Vol. 1664-1672, p. 385, Va. State Library.
