NCGUILFO-L Archives

From: "Betty A. Pace" <>
Subject: [NCGuilford] Slavery in the early VA colony
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 11:22:43 +0000

I thought this was an interesting and informative presentation of the
role of African-Americans in the early days at the Jamestown settlement
in VA. I hope it does not offend anyone. My comments are added in
brackets [...] for clarification.
Betty Pace
--------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Roy Johnson" <>
To:
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 09:09:08 -0500
Subject: [PACE-L] Some historical surprises


I taught history for 31 years of my life, and my history books told of
the
first blacks brought to Jamestownin 1619 by a Dutch slaving ship that ran
aground and then sold their cargo to the colonists. The books said that
the
Jamestown residents were quite startled as they had never seen blacks
before.

I have a copy of the marriages performed in St. Dunstan parish [Stepney,
London] in 1608,
which included the Richard Pace marriage [the Pace patriarch at
Jamestown, VA]. Imagine my surprise as I looked at the other marriages
of that year to find "Sam and Mary, nigers."

First, I was surprised at the word "nigers". I had been under the
impression that the term "nigger" was derived from a corruption of the
Spanish word "Negro", meaning simply "black", evolving first into "Nigra"
then "nigger". However, the word "niger" is LATIN for "black". It now
appears that this term pre-dated the Spanish "Negro", which came into use
only later when most slaves were acquired from Spanish sources. I would
guess that the older term then took on a negative connotation which it
probably did not have in the beginning.

Secondly, the assumption that Richard Pace and the other Jamestown
residents
had never seen blacks is obviously untrue. Richard and Isabella Pace,
William Perry, and others from the St. Dunstan area were undoubtedly
familiar with Africans before they came to America.

Slavery did not exist in English law at that time, but indentured
servitude
did. Most servants had a contract for x number of years, but the law set
a
limit on how long servitude could be in the absence of a contract--I
think
it was 16 years. So those early African-Americans were released after
their
term of servitude and became free men. There is a record of at least one
of
them taking up some land and paying the passage of some white servants
from
England, thus acquiring indentured servants of his own. Not too many
Americans realize that there was once a time when blacks could own
whites.
Also, there are descendents of these early black servants whose ancestors
(in that line, at least) were never slaves.

It took 100 years for American law to create our "peculiar institution"
of
slavery. In the 1600s when a person said he owned "slaves" he was
referring
to his indentured servants, and they could be white, black, or native
American. Gradually laws were passed extending the term of servitude for
blacks and shortening it for whites, until it eventually became a
lifetime
obligation. Other laws forbade black-white and slave-free marriages, and
eventually, required that the children of slaves also be the property of
the
master, making American slavery unlike slavery in ancient Rome or in
Africa,
where this was not the case.

It would be most interesting to know where Richard Pace was when those
first
blacks were brought ashore in 1619, and what he thought. Of course, we
can
only speculate. I suspect that his kindness to the Indian boy Chanco
[saved Jamestown settlers in 1622 Massacre by warning Richard Pace of
impending attack] would
presuppose a similar attitude toward the Africans. I wonder if he knew
Sam
and Mary back in England.

Roy Johnson


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• [NCGuilford] Slavery in the early VA colony by "Betty A. Pace" <>