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Digital History ID 3790

Interpreting Primary Sources

Reading 1:

So lamentable was our scarcity that we were constrained to eat dogs, cats, rats, snakes, toadstools, horsehides, and what not. One man out of the misery he endured, killing his wife, powdered her up to eat her, for which he was burned. Many besides fed on the corpses of dead men, and one who had gotten insatiable out of custom to that food could not be restrained until such time as he was executed for it.

Journals of the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1624, on life in Virginia during the Starving Times

Reading 2:

Since I came out of the ship, I never ate anything but peas, and loblollie (that is water gruel) as for deer or venison I never saw any since I came into this land, there is indeed some fowl, but we are not allowed to go, and get it, but must work hard both early, and later for a mess of water gruel, and a mouthful of bread, and beef, a mouthful of bread for a penny loaf must serve for 4 men....

Richard Frethorne, 1623

Reading 3:

The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship which was then riding at anchor and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror when I was carried on board. I was immediately handled and tossed up to see if I were sound by some of the crew, and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions too, differing so much from ours, their long hair and the language they spoke (which was very different from any I had ever heard) united to confirm me in this belief. Indeed such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment that, if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them all to have exchanged my condition with that of the meanest slave in my own country. When I looked round the ship too and saw a large furnace or copper boiling and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted my fate; and quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted....

I was not long suffered to indulge in my grief; I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life; so that the loathesomeness of the stench and crowding together I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything. I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; soon to my grief, two of the white men offered eatables, and on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands and laid me across the windlass, and tied my feet while the other flogged me severely.

In a little time after, amongst the poor chained men I found some of my own nation which in a small degree gave ease to my mind. I inquired of these what was to be done with us; they gave us to understand we were to be carried to these white people's country to work for them....The white people looked and acted, as I thought, in so savage a manner; for I had never seen among my people such instances of brutal cruelty, and this not only shown toward us blacks but also to some of the whites themselves. One white man in particular I saw, when we were permitted to be on deck, flogged so unmercifully with a large rope near the foremast that he died in consequence of it; and they tossed him over the side as they would have done a brute....

Olaudah Equiano, a slave, 1793

Reading 4:

When the ships have for the last time weighed their anchors in England, the real misery begins with the long voyage. For from there the ships, unless they have good wind, must often sail eight, nine, ten or twelve weeks before they reach Philadelphia....But during the voyage there is on board these ships terrible misery, stench, fumes, horror, vomiting, many kinds of seasickness, fever, headache, heat, boils, constipation, scurvy, cancer, mouth rot, and the like, all of which come from old and sharply-salted food and meat, also from very bad and foul water, so that many die miserably....

Among the healthy, impatience sometimes grows so great and cruel that one curses the other, or himself and the day of his birth and sometimes come near killing each other....Few women who give birth to children on the ship escape with their lives and many a mother is cast into the water with her child as soon as she is dead. Children from one to seven years rarely survive the voyage; and many a time parents are compelled to see their children miserably suffer and die from hunger, thirst, and sickness and then see them cast into the water. I saw such misery in no less than thirty-two children in our ship, all of whom were thrown into the sea....

When the ships have landed at Philadelphia after their long voyage, no one is permitted to leave them except those who pay for their passage. The others, who cannot pay, must remain on board the ships till they are purchased and are released from the ships by their purchasers. The sick always fare the worst, for the healthy are always preferred and purchased first; and so the sick and wretched must often remain on board in front of the city for two or three weeks, and frequently die....

The sale of human beings in the market on board the ship is carried on thus: Every day people come from the city of Philadelphia and other places and go on board the newly-arrived ship that has brought and offers passengers for sale....When they come to an agreement, adult persons usually bind themselves in writing to serve from 3-6 years according to their age and strength. But very young people, from ten to fifteen years, must serve till they are twenty-one years old.

Many parents must sell and trade away their children like so many head of cattle, for if their children take the debt upon themselves, the parents can leave the ship free and unrestrained but as the parents often do not know where and to what people their children are going it often happens that such parents and children, after leaving the ship, do not see each other again for many years, perhaps no more in all their lives.

Gottlieb Mittelberger, a German Redemptioner, 1750

Reading 5:

Many of these slaves we transport from Guinea to America are prepossessed with the opinion that they are carried like sheep to the slaughter, and that Europeans are fond of their flesh; which notion so far prevails with some as to make them fall into a deep melancholy and despair, and to refuse all sustenance, tho' never so much compelled or even beaten to oblige them to take some nourishment....I have been necessitated sometimes to cause the teeth of these wretches to be broken, because they would not open their mouths, or be prevailed upon by any entreaties to feed themselves; and thus have forced some sustenance into their throats.

John Barbot, 1682

Questions To Think About

1. Why do you think the Virginians were incapable of feeding themselves--when the Indians were able to grow corn, the woods were filled with game, and the rivers were covered with geese and filled with fish?

2. Why did these individuals migrate to the New World?

3. Describe their experiences in migrating to America.

4. What do these quotations tell us about colonial attitudes toward labor?

Demographic Conditions in the English Colonies

Starving times: Crude death rate first winter
Jamestown	Plymouth
638 (per thousand)	490 (per thousand)

In 1607, the Susan Constant discharged l05 passengers;
six months later, two-thirds were dead.

Between l607 and l624, 6,000-10,000 colonists arrived;
but only l,275 remained alive.

Child Mortality in New England
180-200 of every l,000 died first year	35-40 percent failed to reach adulthood

Death rate for infants in Salem, Mass. (per thousand)
	17th century	18th century
Girls	313	178
Boys	202	105

Causes of Death in New England
Epidemic diseases:
smallpox
diphtheria
pneumonia
measles
scarlet fever		killed 30 per l,000 during mid-l8th century
tuberculosis		killed 20 percent

Comparative Death Rates
Jamestown, after l630	40-50 per thousand
French and English villages	40 per thousand
New England	24-26 per thousand

Maternal mortality

1.5-2 percent death rate per pregnancy

Average Life Expectancy at Age 20 During the Seventeenth Century
Married Women in Middlesex County, Virginia	39
Married Men in Middlesex County, Virginia	48
Women in Andover, Massachusetts	62
Men in Andover, Massachusetts	64
Women in Plymouth, Massachusetts	62
Men in Plymouth, Massachusetts	69

Growth of the Colonial Population
	South	Difference
1640	26,634	26,037	596
1670	111,935	107,400	4,535
1700	250,888	223,071	27,817
1740	905,563	755,539	150,024
1770	2,148,076	1,688,254	459,822

Questions To Think About

1. How did life expectancy in the Northern and Chesapeake colonies compare? What implications might this have upon the nature of family life in the two regions?

2. What factors may have contributed to the discrepancy in life expectancy in the two regions?

3. Why might women have had a shorter life expectancy than men?

Declining Mortality, 1780-1820
	1780	1820
Northern states Total population	28 per thousand	20 per thousand
Infants	180-200 per thousand	140-160 per thousand

Population Statistics
Population growth rate	3.5 percent
Doubling time	20-25 years
Average number of children per family	7-8 surviving children

Marriage Rate
New England in the early 18th century
men		98 percent
women		93 percent
End of the l8th century
women		78 percent

Average age of marriage for women
New England	20
Maryland	18

Declining Fertility Proportion of families with 6 or more surviving children
pre-1700	75 percent
1700s	67
1800-30	40
1830-60	20
1860-1900	10

Questions To Think About

1. How does the growth of the colonial population compare to the growth of the American population today?

2. What were the major contributors to the growth of the colonial population?

3. What factors may have contributed to the decline in fertility after 1800?

Interpreting Statistics

The Roots of American Slavery

Slave Imports into the Americas, 1500-1870
Area	Number of imports	Proportion	Proportion of black population in the Americas in 1825
British North America	523,000	6 percent	25 percent
Spanish America	1,687,000
British Caribbean	2,443,000	17 percent	10 percent
French Caribbean	1,655,000
Dutch Caribbean	500,000
Danish Caribbean	50,000
Brazil	4,190,000
Old World	297,000
Total	11,345,000

Slave Population in the Colonies, 1650-1770
Year	North	South	Total
1650	Copyright 2021 Digital History