diately following their introduction was due to the separation of the sexes, as disclosed by the records. Thus, of the eleven at Fleur de Hundred, in 1623, one alone apparently was of the female sex. Two, perhaps all, of the three at Jamestown were women. The only negro at Jamestown Neck was a man. This was also true of the one on the plantation lying across the river from Jamestown. Of the four negroes at Warrasquoke, two were women.[1]
An examination as to the ownership of the negroes in 1625, reveals the fact that there was greater opportunity for their increase at that time than in 1623. On one of the tracts of public land which Governor Yeardley had under cultivation, there were five female slaves and three male. Richard Kingsmill and Captain West respectively were in possession of one male slave. Abraham Piersey, the former Cape Merchant, a man of considerable fortune, was the owner of four male slaves and two female. On the plantation of Captain Tucker, there was a family of slaves composed of a husband, wife, and child. There was also a slave husband and wife on the Bennett estate.[2] The names which these negroes bore would seem to show that they had been captured, as has been suggested, on the high seas, and had after their arrival in the Colony been given English appellations; the name of one alone is of Spanish origin, the negress who had been brought in by the Treasurer being known as Angela. When at a later period slaves were imported into Virginia from the Spanish West Indies, it was the custom of many who bought them as a basis for patents, to retain their Spanish desig-
- ↑ List of the Livinge and Dead in Virginia, Feb. 10, 1623, British State Papers, Colonial, vol. III, No. 2; Colonial Records of Virginia, State Senate Doct., Extra., 1874, p. 41. Angela at Jamestown was doubtless the woman brought in by the Treasurer.
- ↑ See Hotten’s Original Lists of Emigrants to America, 1600-1700, pp. 202-265.
