Essay On Chesapeake Settlers

English settlers constructed their labor systems in the Chesapeake from the settlement of Jamestown in 1607 by using propaganda and head rights: which is a legal grant of land to settlers in exchange for service. The head right system was introduced in Virginia it gave each superior of the household the right to fifty acres of land for himself and another additional fifty acres for each grown family member in exchange for service. Virginia and Maryland both appointed the “head right” system to encourage the import of servant workers under their terms, whoever paid the passage of a worker received the right to acquire fifty acres of land; extremity therefore collected the benefits of landownership from the system. Servants that were brought to America experienced many months at sea, a small troop of soldiers, recruits, and nobles from England completed a 3000-mile journey across the Atlantic and stepped off their ship to greet an unknown new land. In 1607 the land they chose to live on became the first permanent settlement of the British in North America.
The English ruler King James I granted a contract to a private company known as the Virginia Company to build a settlement in …show more content…
At first, Chesapeake farmers hired indentured servants, women and males from England that signed a contract that sold their labor for a period of five to seven years in exchange for passage to the American colonies in hopes of obtaining land and harvest in tobacco crops. However, by the 1680s, irregular tobacco prices and the growing limiting amount of land in the region made the Chesapeake less alluring to men and women willing to agree on the head right system. The limited amount of indentured servants meant that the price of their labor deals increased, and many Chesapeake farmers began to look for alternative source of