The Chesapeake Bay was a center of early Colonial development. Jamestown, considered the first permanent English settlement (1607), lay just south of Williamsburg and west of Yorktown. The three made up what is called the Historic Triangle. Washington D.C. and Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate, are on the Potomac River which flows into the bay.Jamestown was established as a business adventure not forty years before Mark Manlove moved onto the Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay. The Virginia Company financed the passage of 144 men and boys to the New World. The area was hostile wilderness, and the settlement nearly failed during its first years. Forty died on the voyage and many more from starvation and disease that winter. More colonists were brought in each year, but life was tough, and the colony’s survival was tenuous for several years. They were on the verge of abandoning the settlement in 1610 when supply ships saved it.
I find it curious that Mark Manlove would bring his whole family over. He was definitely not alone. Migration had been heavy in the years since Jamestown, and the population had grown. He no doubt came over with associates, a group that could share the work. Like most, he was most certainly a farmer. The group probably built small shelters that first year. They cleared fields and planted crops - hoping to survive till the following spring.
Marks’s sons, William and Thomas, moved 90 miles north, settling in Kent County Delaware, near present day Dover. William died there in 1694. The next three generations of Manlove’s were born and died in Kent County. The family was there for nearly a hundred years, and then William L. Manlove, of the 6th generation, and his adult son, George, left sometime after 1782.They made the move after Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at Yorktown in October of 1781. That was the decisive event of the American Revolution, and hostilities ended by the spring of 1783. George Manlove was 29 years old at the end of the war so he might very well have participated in the Revolution. He was listed as having served in the War of 1812, so he very likely fought in the Revolution too. I’m guessing they left Delaware in the summer of 1783.
I don’t know why they left a place that had been home so long. There seemed to have been only one male child to survive in each of the preceding generations, so George was going to inherit the farm - if they had one. But, for what ever reason, they pulled up stakes and headed south. William L Manlove’s wife, Hannah (Robinson), had died fifteen years before, so there were only five in the family group: William L, his son George, George’s wife Rachel (Dunning), their daughter Hannah (2 or 3 years) and son William (1 or 2 years). It is likely that other families accompanied them. That was common practice in those days - extended families and neighbors migrated together.
GO TO: Part 3
The primary reasons folks began migrating away from the coastal areas were:
ReplyDelete1) land was becoming depleted because farmers didn't know anything about crop rotation and allowing the soil to rest fallow for a couple of seasons to regain the nutrients necessary for growing crops. They also tended to plant more tobacco than actual food crops as tobacco was often used in lieu of money in the colonies. Because they didn't understand the science of how to keep land healthy enough to grow what they needed to survive, as the land stopped producing bumper crops the planters needed to find new lands that had never seen a plow just to survive.
2) The coasts were also being inundated with new settlers and land prices were soaring, despite the problems with the soil. Most of the new settlers knew even less about farming in America than did the planters who were stripping the soil of their nutrients. Many planters sold their depleted lands at high prices, taking advantage of the newcomers' lack of knowledge about the area, then packed their belongings and went to newly opened areas of the back county where they could buy lush land at rock bottom prices or even free.
Oh, also, the reason people brought their families to the new colonies was that the proprietors offered free land to any person who paid the cost of transportation for others. For every person they paid to transport to the colony, they got between 50-250 acres of free land, depending on which colony you chose to settle in. These land patents were called "headrights." Often planters would come on their own and as they built up their wealth in tobacco they would make arrangements with ship captains to transport their families and often brought in servants who were indentured to work for them for 7 years or more to pay the planters back for the transportation costs. Some planters in Virginia amassed great fortunes in land by transporting more and more indentures to the colony. If they did not need servants themselves, they would sell their indentures to someone who did need workers.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I loved your articles on the Manloves. I am a writer, editor and genealogist current working on a book in which the Manloves are an allied family.
ReplyDelete