What were you thinking, Adam Thorowgood? Why did you do it?
Recorded in the land records of the Lower County of New Norfolk on February 8, 1637, Captain Adam Thorowgood was granted “150 acres, due for transportation of 3 Negroes.”2 Adam had become a success by 1637. He arrived in Virginia in 1621 as a 17-year-old indentured servant eager to learn the skills of a successful planter. He married well, recruited his own indentured servants, became a planter-merchant, was elected a Burgess, and was appointed to the Governor’s Council. Through good management of his affairs, he secured the largest land grant at that time in Lower Norfolk (Virginia Beach), and, with his English family connections, he even received a recommendation from the King’s Privy Council. He had achieved all that by age 33 without owning a single enslaved person. He had acquired his land and wealth through providing opportunities for willing English workers to come to Virginia– until that February.1
Adam Thorowgood, by then a Captain in the local militia, had transported over 100 English headrights whose names were recorded. Unlike his white indentured servants, the unnamed Africans had not willingly agreed to pay for their passage with their labor. His purchase appeared as an insignificant entry in the 17th century land records, yet it was a pivotal life moment. How seriously did Adam consider his decision? As the son of a minister, did his soul wrestle with a moral decision or was it a business decision based on “others are doing it?” As three more workers and 150 acres were not critical to his success and there were few Africans in the Colony, was it done for status? being part of the next new trend? “wise” planning for the future?
Virginia’s First Africans
The first Africans arrived in Virginia in August 1619 before the Pilgrims or New England Puritans ever stepped foot in North America. They arrived, not bringing their hopes for freedom from oppression and dreams of unlimited possibilities, but with sadness for their lost homes and liberty as well as fear for the future. The United States recently commemorated 400 years since the first Africans were brought to Point Comfort (Hampton), Virginia, aboard the White Lion commanded by an English privateer John Jope. The White Lion along with the Treasurer, which was owned by the Earl of Warwick, had attacked the Portuguese slave ship St. John de Baptiste which was carrying 350 African captives to Veracruz, Spanish America.
The captains took around 60 of the Africans as booty, of which the White Lion, arriving in Virginia, “brought not anything but 20, and odd Negroes which the Governor [Yeardley] and Cape Merchant bought for vituals…at the best and easiest rates they could.”3 It was a significant moment in the history of the Colony of Virginia and the future United States of America. Their descendants and those of later enslaved persons brought here have been part of the fabric and story of this nation ever since. The descendants of those from Africa are as American as Mayflower descendants who came from England.
Enslaved or Indentured?
When Captain Thorowgood and the early Virginians looked at the world around them, they likely saw what they considered justification. Although Virginia had been the first permanent English colony founded, it was not the first to be brought captured Africans. The first Negro was taken to English Bermuda in 1616, only three years after the settlement of that island. In 1619, when Virginia got its first twenty or so, Bermuda had nearly 100 Black Africans, who, having been captured from slave ships, continued in bondage.4
In Bermuda and Virginia, a few Black Africans were fortunate to have time-limited service and were granted or able to buy their freedom. Some historians have suggested that the status of Africans in Virginia was initially unclear as there were no official laws about slavery until the 1660s, and they should be considered indentured, not enslaved. However, as early as 1623, Bermuda passed a law forbidding Negros from having firearms, which Virginia seemed to copy in 1640 legislating that “all persons, except Negroes” should be provided with arms and ammunition. In 1630, English Barbados passed a law that “Negros … who came here to be sold should serve for life unless a contract was before made to the contrary.” English racism and slavery had taken root.5
Slavery, though, is not just defined by the term of service, but also the conditions under which a person is placed in bondage. No one was going all the way to Africa or even the Caribbean to recruit voluntary indentured servants for Virginia. Persons from Africa were not offered options for time- limited contracts while in their home countries nor did they request transport to the Americas on slave ships. The White Lion and Treasurer were not on humanitarian rescue missions to free those they pirated from the slave ship, but rather sought to profit from them. Slave ship captains brought captured Africans to the Americas against their wills in the most horrendous conditions and sold them to labor involuntarily without recompense or opportunity to return to their homes. That is slavery, whether it was for a few years, a lifetime, or perpetual; whether they were treated kindly or harshly; whether housed with white servants or in slave quarters; whether or not the term “slave” was yet in the legal code or even if they were accorded a few rights.6
Trans-Saharan and East African Slave Trade
The English and early Virginians, though, were not the inventors of African slavery. Before Columbus “discovered” America, Arabs and Ottoman Turks, forbidden from enslaving fellow Muslims, had for centuries been capturing sub-Saharan Africans for forced labor in Africa or transporting them as enslaved laborers and servants to the Persian Gulf and Arabian Penninsula.
While the triangle trade of tobacco, sugar, and slaves spanned the Atlantic in the 17th and 18th centuries, there was also the trans-Saharan and East African trade in gold, salt, spices, ivory, and slaves with major slave markets in the Nile Basin and on Zanzibar Island in the Indian Ocean. It has been estimated that at least 9 million Africans were taken in the East African slave trade which did not end until into the 20th century.7
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
Portuguese mariners started to sell Black African slaves in Lagos, Portugal, 50 years before Columbus sailed and quickly expanded their trade further into the Western Mediterranean and islands off the African coast. By the early 16th century, they were also sending enslaved persons to colonies in the Americas. Most of the 5.8 million enslaved Africans transported by the Portuguese had short lives in the sugar plantations of Brazil and the Caribbean. Although records of the Spanish trans-Atlantic trade are sketchy, it is now believed the Spanish may have taken at least 1.5 million Africans to their Spanish colonies.8
The Dutch were early participants in the slave trade and brought about a million captured Africans across the Atlantic between 1596 to 1829 to their sugar plantations in Dutch Guiana, the Caribbean, and other colonies. The French were also significant slave traders, bringing more than a million enslaved Africans to their Caribbean islands, particularly Saint-Domingue (Haiti). Even the Prussians and Danes joined in the slave trade in the 17th through 19th centuries. 9
English Slave Trade
Being late to colonization, the English were late to enter the African slave trade, but ultimately became the second largest group of slave traders. In the 1560s, Queen Elizabeth I authorized Sir John Hawkins to engage in slave trading directly with Africa, taking around 1,300 Africans to the Spanish Caribbean over 4 voyages to exchange for pearls and other commodities. However, it proved more profitable for English privateers to simply prey on Spanish and Portuguese slaving ships, as with the White Lion and Treasurer. In 1631, the Guinea Company of London merchants were granted rights by King Charles I to trade with West Africa. This was revitalized and reformed into the Royal African Company in 1672 under King Charles II. It is estimated that between 1640-1807, the British transported 3.1 million Africans to the Caribbean, North and South America, and other countries.10
The number of Africans brought to Virginia in the first half of the 17th century was relatively small compared to the number of white English indentured servants. However, as it became harder to entice English laborers to Virginia, planters increasingly turned to using enslaved African workers. By 1650, there were about 300 enslaved persons in Virginia. By 1700, there were 6,000. Virginia became a slave society, dependent on their slave labor. By 1860, the slave population in the United States had expanded to almost 4,000,000 of which about 500,000 lived in Virginia.11
Slavery in New England
In the popular narrative of Colonial American history, slavery is viewed as a Southern sin. However, New England Puritans not only profited from the slave trade early on, but some owned and financed slave ships as well as had enslaved servants and laborers. In 1638, the year after Thorowgood made his purchase, the Salem-based ship Desire took a group of captured Native Americans to the West Indies to exchange for the first shipload of enslaved Negros to be brought to New England.
In 1641, Massachusetts was the first colony to enact a law regarding the parameters of slavery. By midcentury, there were actually more enslaved Africans in the Northern colonies than in the Chesapeake region, although that rapidly changed. In the Boston vicinity, many families transitioned from primarily using white indentured servants to enslaved Africans during the 17th century. However, as in all eras, there were those who embraced humanity, such as Samuel Sewall, the author of the first New England anti-slavery pamphlet, The Selling of Joseph, in 1700, which declared that even slaves, “are the Offspring of God, and have equal Right unto Liberty….” 12
Accountability
Overall, the total number of enslaved Africans imported to the areas that became the United States of America was around 600,000. This was only about 5% of the estimated 12 million enslaved Africans brought to North and South America in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Despite the great migration of white Europeans across the Atlantic from 1580-1700, there were even more who arrived in the Americas in those years as enslaved Africans. However, as the African population expanded in the colonies, the number of enslaved individuals who were bought and sold in the intercolonial trade soon exceeded those brought from afar. 13
Slavery would not have spread across the world, though, without some complicit Africans. Portugal engaged in war in Angola, but most Europeans waited for captured Africans to be brought to the coasts. Prisoners from wars between kingdoms and tribal groupings were sold by enemy groups. In addition, greedy and cruel mercenaries raided rural villages and sophisticated cities to capture and sell Blacks for profit. Countless men, women, and children died in the raids, wars, and horrific marches across Africa to the sea coasts. Many of those who survived then died in the slave ships during the Middle Passage voyage across the Atlantic. Trying to grasp the breath and depth of seventeenth century slavery through this post is not intended to shift or lessen anyone’s responsibility, but rather to extend accountability. 14
Concept of Equality
How could Adam Thorowgood and other decent people of his time not see the shared humanity of the enslaved? Into the 17th century, most Europeans and non-Europeans did not believe all men were equal or that liberty was a God-given right. The concept of equality was not championed by prevailing religious, political, or scientific thought. Pope Nicholas V in 1452 sanctioned Portuguese Christians to “vanquish” and “reduce their [black Gentiles] persons to perpetual slavery…” as a means of conversion and controlling barbarians. Protestant, especially Calvinistic, thought at the time believed men were predestined to their station in life and saw divine providence in the hierarchical social structure. Many New England Puritans, including Governor Winthrop, did not oppose enslaving Africans or Native Americans. Science focused on differentiating species and subspecies which some extended to humanity and the idea of race “inferiority.”15
John Locke, the influential English philosopher, proposed in 1689 that men had a natural right to life, liberty, and property, despite he himself having stock in slave trading companies. Gradually through the 17th and 18th centuries, these principles gained greater acceptance, even if they were not yet inclusive of all mankind/womankind. The American Founding Fathers, while imperfect in their own understandings, attitudes, and actions, were extraordinary and revolutionary in using ideals, not persons or heredity, to create a national government based on principles of equality and liberty. Unfortunately, these rights were not extended to all. We still need to improve.16
Slavery in New Norfolk, Virginia
Adam Thorowgood was not the only one in New Norfolk, Virginia, to own Africans. Argoll Yeardley, the elder son of Governor Yeardley, received his land grant in New Norfolk on February 6, 1637 by including “Andolo and Maria 2 Negroes.” On May 18, 1637, John Wilkins also received land there for importing a Negro. Between 1638 and 1650, at least 33 Africans were purchased in Lower Norfolk County. Among those, Francisco, Emanuell, Antonyo, Lewis, and Maria were sold to Francis Yeardley, Argoll’s younger brother and the third husband of Adam’s widow, Sarah Thorowgood Gookin Yeardley, “to possess and peaceably enjoy…for ever.” A few years later in 1653, Argoll Yeardley sold to John Custis, recently arrived in Northampton, Virginia, his first enslaved person, a girl named Doll. The terms were explicit that Custis was to “have and to hold her and her increase forever.” Although this all occurred before the 1660 slavery laws, those conditions for slavery were clear.17
Legacies
I have found no evidence that Adam Thorowgood himself purchased more than his initial three Africans. He died only three years later in 1640. In his will, Adam did not enumerate the names of or differentiate between his servants, but gave them all to his wife and minor children.18 I will discuss their further family entanglements with slavery in future posts. While some of Adam and Sarah’s descendants continued to own enslaved persons until the Emancipation, others had already willingly freed theirs. Some of their descendants moved North and fought and died as Union soldiers; others supported the Confederacy. The complexity of Adam and Sarah Thorowgood’s legacy is evidenced as one descendant, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, married Robert E. Lee and another, Julia Dent, married Ulysses S. Grant.
I wish I could travel back in time to change the course of history and warn Adam Thorowgood and others not to open that door to slavery. However, neither I, nor any of us, can alter the past, although we can seek to better understand and learn from it. In my time, I can oppose injustice and seek to make my community, my nation, and my world more inclusive, more kind, and more fair as we strive harder for liberty and justice for all. I wish the world could have understood earlier how much Black lives really do matter.
Upcoming Post: Envisioning the Invisible: Thorowgood’s First Home in Lynnhaven, Virginia
- McCartney, Martha W., Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers 1607-1635 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2007), 691-692. ↩
- Nugent, Nell Marion, Cavaliers and Pioneers: Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and Grants, 1623-1800, v. I (Richmond: Dietz Printing Co., 1934), 79. ↩
- Horn, James, 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy (New York: Basic Books, 2018), 85-88. ↩
- Jarvis, Michael J., “Bermuda and the Beginnings of Black Anglo-America,” Virginia 1619: Slavery and Freedom in the Making of English America, Paul Musselwhite, Peter C. Mancall and James Horn eds. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 114-115, 125. ↩
- Horn, 103, 112-114, 239. Jarvis, 125. Billings, Warren M., The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 173-178. ↩
- Horn, 107-108. Morgan, Philip D., “Virginia Slavery in Atlantic Context, 1550 to 1650,”Virginia 1619: Slavery and Freedom in the Making of English America, Paul Musselwhite, Peter C. Mancall and James Horn eds. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 86. ↩
- McDougall, E. Ann, “The Caravel and the Caravan,” The Atlantic World and Virginia: 1550-1624, Peter C. Mancall, ed. (Chapel Hill: The University or North Carolina Press, 2007), 143-149. Horn, 92-94. Koigi, Bob, “Forgotten Slavery: The Arab-Muslim Slave Trade,” Fair Planet Dossier. Accessed online on August 27, 2020 at fairplanet.org/dossier ↩
- Horn, 92-94. Northrup, David, ” The Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic World,” The Atlantic World and Virginia: 1550-1624, Peter C. Mancall, ed. (Chapel Hill: The University or North Carolina Press, 2007), 174, 227. Davis, David Brion, Slavery in the Colonial Chesapeake (Williamsburg, Virginia: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1986), 2-4. Low Country Digital History Initiative of the College of Charleston, “African Laborers for a New Empire: Iberia, Slavery, and the Atlantic World.” Accessed online August 21, 2020 at ldhi.library.cofc.edu ↩
- “Dutch Slave Trade” and “French Slave Trade,” Slavery and Remembrance: A Guide to Sites, Museums and Memory, (Williamsburg, Virginia; The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2020). Accessed online on 8/18, 2020 at slaveryandremembrance.org. Eltis, David, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 37-38, 121-122. Boucher, Philip P., “Revisioning the French Atlantic,”Virginia 1619: Slavery and Freedom in the Making of English America, Paul Musselwhite, Peter C. Mancall and James Horn eds. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 302-304. Weindl, Andrea, “The Slave Trade of Northern Germany from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Centuries,” Extending the Frontiers, Yale Scholarship Online. Accessed 8/15/20 at yale.universitypressscholarship.com ↩
- Eltis, 61-62. Morgan, 102-104. The National Archives, “Britain and the Slave Trade.” Accessed online 8/ 14/20 at nationalarchives.gov.uk ↩
- Billings, 173. Morgan, 85-87. “Virginia Slave Population Map, 1860,” Shaping the Constitution: Resources from the Library of Virginia and the Library of Congress. Accessed online on 9/8/2020 at edu.lva.virginia.gov. ↩
- Warren, Wendy, New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2016), 7, 11-12; 221-222. Whiting, Gloria McCahon, ” Race, Slavery, and the Problem of Numbers in Early New England,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 77:3 (July 2020), 424-427. ↩
- Eltis, 11. O’Malley, Gregory E., Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619-1807 (Chapel Hill: The University ofNorth Carolina Press, 2014). “Slavery in the United States” Accessed online at en.wikipedia.org on 8/5/2020. ↩
- Eltis, 59-60, 147-151. Horn, 115-116. ↩
- Horn, 105- 107. LDHI online. Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution 1770-1823 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 42-44. Warren, 31-33. ↩
- Davis, Problem of Slavery, 45-47. Eltis, 15-18. Douglass, Frederick, “The Constitution of the United States: Is it Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery?” presented at the Scottish Anti-Slavery Society in Glasgow, Scotland on March 26, 1860. Accessed online on September 15, 2020 at blackpast . Uzgalis, William, “John Locke, Racism, Slavery, and Indian Lands,” abstracted from The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race. Accessed 8/18/20 at Oxford Handbooks Online: Scholarly Research Reviews at oxfordhandbooks.com ↩
- Billings, 223. Horn, 111-112. Morgan, 86. Nugent, 53, 75, 81. Walczyk, Frank V., Northampton County, Virginia Orders and Wills 1698-1710, vol II 1704-1710 (Coram, New York: Peter’s Row, 2001), 7, 128. ↩
- “The Thorowgood Family of Princess Anne County, Va.” The Richmond Standard. 26 November 1882 ↩
At the time of 16th century European exploration, the Chesapeake Indians were the dominant tribe on the south side of the James from the Atlantic coast/ Chesapeake Bay area to the Nansemond River. An extraordinary burial site of a Chesapean chief, 
Excavations in the Great Neck area in the 1970s-1990s uncovered the remains of 64 Native Americans which have since been reburied at First Landing State Park. Despite archaeologists finding an abundance of 
The colonists who obtained land grants in 1635 included (in order of their patent date): John Gayre (Feb 13–300 acres); Francis Towers (April 21–200 acres); John Hill (April 21–350 acres); John Parrott (May 29–450 acres); John Sibsey (June 1–1500 acres); Thomas Lambert (June 1–100 acres); Joseph Johnson (June 19–400 acres); Adam Thorowgood (June 24–5,350 acres); Richard Bennett (June 26–2,000 acres); Robert Bennett (June 26–700 acres); Cornelius Loyd (July 2–800 acres); Francis Hough (November 12–800 acres); and Rev. William Wilkinson (November 20–700 acres). Of course, the settlers would have brought their families and servants with them when they moved. While Adam Thorowgood was not the first to receive a patent, he was likely an instigator for the group movement into the Chesapeake area. Based on the Privy Council recommendation, it appears he desired Chesapeake land before 1634 when he visited England.
While some of those who had grants before 1638 had small claims of 50-200 acres for transporting themselves and maybe a wife, a child, and/or servants, others were already notables in the Colony: Capt. Thomas Willoughby; Daniel Gookin, Esq.; John Gookin, Gent. (Daniel’s son and future 2nd husband of Sarah Thorowgood); Jonathan Langwoth, surgeon; Thomas Hampton, clerk; Henry Woodhouse, Gent; Lt. Richard Popeley; Reverend William Wilkinson; Richard Bennett (elected as Virginia’s governor during the English Commonwealth period), and Adam Thorowgood. Francis Mason, Henry Sewell, and William Julian joined them soon thereafter. Some still have local neighborhoods and land features named for them, such as Willoughby Spit, Willoughby Bay, Mason’s Creek, Julian’s Creek, and Sewell Point in Norfolk. The majority of those who patented land in the New Norfolk area lived on their land. 
What made Adam Thorowgood’s story one to be retold while those of some early neighbors have faded away? Perhaps it was a lucky roll of fortune’s dice that Adam both survived in Virginia for 19 years and that the story of his life in Virginia has survived for 399 years.
The tobacco cycle impacted the schedule of ships arriving from and returning to England. Planters worried whether their hogsheads would make it safely across the ocean and then whether English merchants would give them a fair price. Tobacco credit notes became the very currency for purchases and payments in the colony, but one’s profits depended on a fluctuating English market. Neither Thorowgood nor Thomson could afford to lose a shipment.
In the 16th century the great English trading companies opened trade markets for exporting English goods and importing needed and exotic wares. Most notable were the Merchant Adventurers; the Muscovy Company for Russia; the 
The headright system that had been established to encourage English men and women to come to Virginia as indentured servants worked relatively well for immigrants and investors in the second quarter of the 17th century. However, one of the problems was that even when indentured servants managed to survive 4-7 years in Virginia, the planter had to find a replacement when the time was over, unless they entered into a tenancy arrangement. A successful landowner had to deal with constant turnover. Virginia had an insatiable need for workers. (See 
In contrast, the sessions in 1631-32 were groundbreaking as the Assembly decided to review, consolidate, revise, void when needed, and reform the body of laws that had accumulated over the years. This was their first attempt to develop and publish a consistent Code of Law for the Colony. The first review appeared to have taken place by only a partial Assembly as it included only 20 Burgesses representing 13 combined districts and started meeting on February 21, 1631/32. They produced a document of 68 acts which included 15 related to Church matters. Not surprisingly, the “urine collection” regulation did not survive the review. 
Easter has long been regarded as the most important of the Holy Days for Christians. In medieval times, the faithful would prepare by consuming fish, but abstaining from all meat and dairy for 40 days in the observance of Lent. Holy Week started with Palm Sunday and proceeded through Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and finally culminated in Resurrection Sunday with great feasting and festivity. As with Christmas, some pagan aspects were adopted, especially symbols associated with new life and fertility, such as rabbits, eggs, and new chicks. 
As eggs were also one of the forbidden foods in Lent, they were often in great abundance at the Easter Day feast. There was also likely to be roast lamb, replacing the Passover lamb of the Last Supper with the symbol of Christ as the unblemished Lamb of God. In 1407, the Bishop of Salisbury and his 80 guests consumed two lambs as well as venison, veal, beef, pigs and piglets, 20 capons, 48 chickens, and more than 500 eggs! 
Maundy Thursday, named for the mandatum or commandment given by Christ at the Last Supper to love others, had been associated with humility and the washing of the feet of the poor since the fourth century. King John started the English tradition of the monarch giving gifts in 1210 by him donating clothing, forks, food, and other gifts to the poor. In 1213, he gave small silver coins. By 1363, Edward III was both giving coins and washing the feet of selected poor. Nobles were also known to have held their own Maundy distributions, but not necessarily at Easter. 
The decorating and gifting of eggs was an ancient tradition in many cultures. Eggs became a Christian symbol of the resurrection with elaborate decoration particularly popular in the Germanic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Coloring eggs was also adopted in England. The household accounts for Edward I in 1307 included “18 pence for 450 eggs to be boiled and dyed or covered with gold leaf and distributed to the Royal household.” 
Although most colonists did not come to Virginia seeking religious freedom or with intense religious zeal, there was greater diversity of religious beliefs and practices in the early years than is often recognized. Archaeological evidence at the Jamestown fort has revealed that there were some secret Catholics in the fort. The first Puritans in America settled in Virginia years before a group traveled together to Massachusetts in 1630. Adam Thorowgood seemed to have had Puritan leanings himself, as his brother, Thomas, became a noted Puritan preacher in England, and Adam and his wife Sarah had married in a Puritan congregation in England. Sarah’s second husband, John Gookin, was from a staunch early Puritan family. Later, even Quakers established themselves in Virginia. Dissidents would later be forced to leave. 
Lent was probably observed, ending with an Easter feast, though not as elaborate as in England. As the Elizabeth Cittie Parish remained firmly Anglican, except unwittingly during the Commonwealth era, Easter Communion would have been offered and probably Palm Sunday celebrated. I have found no references to other special services during Holy Week in this era in Virginia, although they may have been held. As on other Sundays, they would have likely followed their tradition of “tarrying” before and/or after church, as it was one of the few occasions when the settlers could gather casually with friends and distant neighbors. At the second church site, the finding of numerous pipe stems of the period is evidence of leisure gatherings. 
At the time the English arrived, the Indians at Kecoughtan were a small group living in about 18 homes (yi-hakans) under the Powhatan chiefdom. They had once been a larger tribe, but were conquered by Chief Powhatan in 1597/8 . At the time of the landing, Pochins, a son of Powhatan, was their leader. Captain John Smith later traded with the Kecoughtans (forcibly) for corn and spent a pleasant and memorable Christmas season where “we were never more merry nor fed on more plentie of good oysters, fish, flesh, and wild fowle and good bread, nor never had better fires in England than in the dry smoky houses of Kecoughten.”
The English quickly realized the importance of this Indian territory to control access to the James River. By October 1609, George Percy, as leader of the colony, ordered Fort Algernourne built near Cape Comfort (today’s Fort Monroe). With greater access to fresh water and food sources, those stationed there survived the 1609/10 Starving Time far better than those at Jamestown. However, they made no attempt to rescue Jamestown, but, rather, some secretly planned to return to England. 
This “cittie” originally included much of the area south of Jamestown, but should not be confused with today’s Elizabeth City in North Carolina. For many years, part of the area was still called Kecoughtan, especially near Indian Thicket where their village once stood. There are streets, a high school, and shopping places that continue to carry the name. Ironically, Cape “Comfort” became the site where the first “twenty or odd” Africans were brought to the colony on the privateer vessel The White Lion and traded for supplies in 1619. In 1620, the English in Kecoughtan numbered 28 men, 12 women, and 14 children. 
As early as 1617, the Virginia Company sent over some French colonists to try growing grape vines in a beach area they called Buckroe. In 1620 they tried the cultivation of silk worms without much success. Still, there were 30 colonists living in Buckroe in 1623. Over the years, this Chesapeake Bay beach in Hampton became best known for its production of recreational fun.
Kecoughton/ Elizabeth Cittie quickly developed into a proper town. An Anglican parish had been established in July 1610, making St. John’s Episcopal Church in Hampton “the oldest active, English-speaking congregation in the Americas.” The site of the initial church building is unknown, but the second church whose foundations have been found on the Hampton University grounds was built around 1624. Adam and Sarah Thorowgood and their neighbors would have worshipped there. Several of the upright (or uptight?) men and women of this town were involved in bringing accusations in the first witchcraft trial in the English colonies against Joan Wright who had lived in Kecoughtan .
In the early 1620s, Captain Thomas Neuce, the manager of the Virginia Company of London lands, built two guest houses for the reception of new immigrants when they first arrived. William Capps offered to build one on the west side of the river in 1623 to help with the influx of persons. However, hospitality took a step up when James Knott in 1632 leased land “desiring to keepe a house of entertainment…whereby strangers and others my bee well accommodated…the howse commonly called the great howse.” John Potts, the Virginia governor who was disgraced and discharged in 1630 for stealing cattle, was among those known to enjoy the entertainment (which was a respectable term) in Kecoughtan.
There are no actual buildings that remain in Hampton, or the rest of Virginia, from the second quarter of the 17th century when Adam and the others lived there. Archaeological studies have found that homes both for the wealthy and the common folk were built from the abundant timber in a post-in-ground earthfast manner which did not survive long in Virginia’s climate and soil. In 1986-87, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s Department of Archaeological Research conducted follow-up investigations of an early 17th century site at Hampton University. They found evidence of an early two-bay house of wood and mud possibly from the 1620s that was followed by other houses within 10-15 years “embellished with glass windows, possibly a tile roof, a passage, and a brick-lined cellar.” The artifacts found at the site suggested a “relatively high-status colonial residence,” and they were comparable in the quality, quantity, and point of origin to those found at the capital Jamestown. These findings seem to correlate with economic and societal progress of Elizabeth Cittie.
Like most of the early landowners, Adam Thorowgood bought additional tracts of land. While his purchases were never in dispute, there was extensive litigation over some land claims, particularly in the original areas designated as “company lands” by the Virginia Company. Some colonists had already settled in the areas of Strawberry Banks and Mill Creek, and there were muddled and contested claims after the Company was dissolved in 1624. 
Did I forget to mention that the head of Blackbeard, the Pirate, was placed on a spike on the James River in 1718 to adorn the entrance to Hampton and scare off the pirates?
Or that the first Southern reading of the Emancipation Proclamation was done under the Emancipation Oak in Hampton?
A headright to the British Colonies in the 17th Century was someone whose passage was paid for by another person who in turn received a land grant, typically of 50 acres, for each person brought as an effort to encourage sponsorship of emigrants. The headright was then expected to repay his or her passage, usually through labor as an indentured servant for 4-7 years. Augustine Warner was among the first 35 individuals recruited as headrights by the newly wed Adam and Sarah Thorowgood in England. Augustine accompanied them to Virginia in the Hopewell in 1628. 
Adam Thorowgood brought more headrights than he would have needed to work his own land in 1628, so he would likely have followed the custom of selling indentured contracts to other planters. It is not known where Augustine served his indentureship. However, in 1635, a few years after having finished his service, Augustine obtained his first 250 acres of land, based on sponsoring 12 headrights of his own to Virginia. He purchased “one neck of ground called…Pynie Neck…lying at the new Poquoson.” 
Augustine Warner remained on the Council until his death on December 24, 1674 at the age of 63. He and his wife Mary were buried in the family cemetery at Warner Hall in Gloucester, Virginia.
Although no original structures remain of the first Warner Hall built on the Severn River and this plantation was sold out of the family in 1830, the site has continued to be known by the Warner name. 
Today 
Coming to Virginia as a servant prior to 1626, Adam had received 50 acres of land at the end of his indentureship. Bond servants arriving after that date were promised only “the custom of the country” at the end of their time, which often consisted only of a bushel of corn and a new suit of clothes. Other items could be included if the master agreed. 
The system also worked relatively well for a number of the white English servants during the second quarter of the 17th century when Adam Thorowgood was bringing them over. The threat of death from disease and Indian attacks had decreased in Virginia, and there were still opportunities to find good land, import their own servants, and move up in Virginia society as had Adam. In this period, those who chose to come as servants appear to have been more skilled and better off than many who came either at the beginning or in the last quarter of the 17th century. However, much depended on their masters, as they were considered as “chattel” and could be sold, inherited, or traded while under bondage. Unlike the enslaved, though, their servitude was only for a specified term–if they survived.
Broadsides and pamphlets praising Virginia had been circulated since the beginning. However, many of the desired recruits were illiterate. Thus, much recruitment took place by word of mouth and by setting up recruitment stations at ports, taverns, fairs, and popular gathering places. Letters or testimonials from settlers living in the colonies were read as powerful inducements. There were even ballads sung promoting life in the colonies.
In the early years of colonization, laws had been enacted to allow courts to send orphaned children, vagrants, and convicts to the colonies, even against their will. While this was promoted as a win-win solution to the overpopulation of English cities, these unfortunates were among the most vulnerable to disease and death and often were not productive in the new world. With an unquenchable need for servants in the colonies and a lessening urgency to leave England, some agents resorted to questionable or illegal means to secure them. Kidnapping became a serious concern, leading ports to begin to keep records of those going onboard. 
In the last half of the 17th century, over 4,500 children (under age 21) arrived in Virginia and Maryland without indentureships and were assigned by the courts to involuntary servitude, sometimes to those very justices. In 1660, the Privy Council addressed the problem of “diverse children from their parents and servants from their masters are daily enticed away, taken up, and kept from said Parents and Masters, against their wills, by Merchants, Planters, Commanders of Ships, and Seamen trading to Virginia, Barbados….”
In December 1657, the Hopewell, which had earlier carried so many English to their adventures and indentureships, was transporting enslaved Africans from Angola to Virginia when it was seized off the coast of Africa. 
Since Biblical times, good Christians had been taught to fear the Devil and his evil spirits, but around the 14th century, suspicions developed that the odd ones living in their communities might have sold their souls to the Devil and contracted to do his biding.
As the trial was in September, it is unknown whether Adam had returned to England before the trial started. However, having lived in Kecoughtan the previous years as part of Edward Waters’ household, he may well have known the Wrights or at least heard talk of Joan’s suspicious activities. According to the surviving 
Joan Wright had been asked by Lt. Allington, to attend to his pregnant wife as the midwife, but when the wife discovered that Joan was left-handed and heard the rumors about her, she refused her and had another midwife brought. When Goodwife Wright found out, she was upset. The Allingtons believed she therefore cursed them, and consequently, each sequentially became ill (although of different disorders). Even though they all recovered, the infant succumbed after a second illness more than a month after its birth. 
The Virginia justices found most of the accusations of witchcraft unsubstantiated. The only guilty verdict that remains is for William Harding of the Northern Neck in Virginia, who was accused by his Scottish preacher of witchcraft and sorcery in 1656. The accusations must not have been too serious, for his punishment was only ten lashes and banishment from the county. Nor were the citizens overly concerned, as he was given two months to leave. Katherine Grady was the only suspected witch to be hung, but it was done before she even reached Virginia in 1654 and under the direction of the ship’s captain, not court justices. When the ship encountered a severe storm near the end of its journey, the passengers were convinced that Katherine had caused it through witchcraft. Upon reaching Jamestown, the Captain had to appear before the admiralty court, but its findings have been lost.
This was put to the test in 1698 when John and Ann Byrd sued Charles Kinsey and John Potts for having “falsely and scandalously” defamed them by claiming they were witches and “in league with the Devil.” Kinsey finally admitted to the court that he might have only dreamed that they “had rid him along the Seaside and home” through witchcraft . John Thorowgood, a son of Adam Thorowgood II, was one of the justices on that court which surprisingly did not give a cash award to the Byrds, but rather found for the defendants. However, they chose not to pursue witchcraft charges against the Byrds. 
In 1705, Elizabeth Hill, another neighbor, called Grace a witch, and a brawl between them ensued. Grace filed a complaint of trespassing and assault and battery against Elizabeth. Although Grace prevailed, she received little in monetary damages. Elizabeth Hill’s husband then made a formal charge of witchcraft against her. Accusations included that no grass would grow where she had danced in the moonlight, that she had soured the cow’s milk, and that she had made herself small enough to fly in an eggshell to England and back in one night to get rosemary seeds for her garden. However, rosemary was abundant locally and, ironically, often used to protect against witches. 
Virginia Beach has erected a kindly statue in honor of this misunderstood woman, and the Governor of Virginia recently pardoned her, even though there is no record of her conviction. Grace seems not to have had the sweet disposition portrayed in the statue, but still she serves as a symbol of those innocent “
Witchcraft and the occult are still practiced by some today. While there are those who try to connect with the spirit of the earth and be “good witches,” there are others who have carried out horrific acts. Unfortunately, over the ages, many innocents were sent to their deaths because of the superstitions and suspicions of others. It has been estimated that 85% of those killed in European witch hunts were women. A Puritan preacher of the time, William Perkins, was unapologetic in his explanation: 