Colonial+Life+in+the+17th+Century,+Chapter+4

1. Life in the Chesapeake Colonies
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a. Disease i. Malaria, Typhoid, and Dysentery ii. Average life expectancy decreased by 10 years iii. ½ of the people born in Virginia and Maryland didn’t live to 20 iv. ½ of those didn’t make it to the age of 50 b. Immigrants i. Most immigrants were single males in their late teens and early twenties that were indentured servants ii. Most perished soon after arrival iii. In 1650, Men outnumbered women 6 to 1 iv. Eventually acquired immunities to the diseases v. Virginia was the number one population, and Maryland was number three in the 18th century c. Tobacco i. Intense tobacco cultivation quickly exhausted soil ii. In the 1630’s, the Chesapeake colonies exported 40 million pounds a year iii. Indentured servants become the work force that cultivates tobbaco iv. Indentured servants might get punished by longer terms of servitude d. Bacon’s Rebellion i. In 1676, mostly rebel frontiersman under the leadership of Nathaniel Bacon revolted ii. Disliked Virginia’s Governor William Berkley’s policies towards the Indians iii. Attacked and burned Jamestown iv. Bacon suddenly died from disease and the resistance was quelled v. The rebellion had ignited the smoldering unhappiness of landless former servants, and had pitted the backcountry frontiersmen against the gentry of the plantations.

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2. Life in the New England Colonies
a. Facts i. Did not have the disease problem that the southern colonies had because of cool temperatures stopped the spread of microbes and clean water. ii. Puritans had life expectancy similar to American’s today b. New England Families i. Tended to migrate as families instead of individuals ii. Women typically had babies every two years until menopause iii. Raising children became a mother’s full time occupation iv. Had stable family life which contributed to a low premarital pregnancy rate v. Where as southern women were allowed to inherit property from their husbands, Puritan women gave up their property rights when they married. vi. If a woman was widowed, they had property rights. vii. Women’s rights were beginning to develop but they still were not allowed to vote. viii. A husband’s power over his wife was not absolute, in New England Authorities could and did intervene to restrain abusive spouses ix. Also, midwifes were primarily women bonded by the common travails of motherhood. c. Life in New England Town i. Puritanism was a uniting factor in a community for moral health ii. New towns were legally chartered by the colonial authorities, and the distribution of land was entrusted to the town fathers called “proprietors.” iii. When the proprietors received a land grant, from the colonial legislature, they moved to that place with their families and laid out the town iv. The town consisted of meetinghouse (which served as a place of worship and a town hall), the village green (for the militia to do drills), and each family would receive land (a woodlot for fuel, tract for crop growing, and another tract for pasturing animals). v. Towns of more than fifty families were required to provide elementary education. vi. Harvard College was established in 1636 for higher learning vii. Puritans ran their own churches and Congregational Church government led logically to democracy in political government. viii. The town meeting, Thomas Jefferson said, was “the best school of political liberty the world ever saw.”

3. Southern Society
a. Social Hierarchy develops i. The top of the Social Hierarchy system was a small group of powerful planters. They had huge numbers of slaves and land which gave helped them monopolize the regions economy and political power ii. Before the civil war, 70% of the seats in the House of Burgesses were dominated by families established in Virginia before 1690 (Fitzhugh’s, Lee’s, and Washington’s) iii. Hard working individuals to solve problems of plantation management. iv. Beneath them were the small farmers; the largest social group v. They planted their modest amounts of land, might have had a couple of slaves, but led a hand-to-mouth existence vi. Under them were the landless whites, most of which were former indentured servants vii. The lowest class were the black slaves viii. City growth was not common in the South, the plantations were where southern life revolved. b. Slavery

[[image:SlaveBoys.jpg width="385" height="255" align="right"]]
i. 400,000 African slaves ended up in North America ii. Indentured servants supply became low because in the 1680’s, England’s rising wages made more people stay in England. There was now a need for more labor. iii. In 1698, the Royal African Company lost its charter; Americans, Rhode Islanders specifically rushed to cash in. Supply rose steeply. iv. African slaves were from the west coast of Africa who had been captured by African Costal tribes. v. Survivors of the long journey with sometimes as high as a 20% death rate ended up at auction blocks in Rhode Island, Charlestown, and South Carolina vi. Virginia in 1662 decreed conditions for black slaves. The slave codes made them, and their children, slaves for life. Not even conversion to Christianity could qualify them for freedom. vii. Slavery began in America for Economic Reasons, at the end of the 17th century; racial discrimination powerfully molded the American slave system.

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viii. African slave rebellion’s never matched Bacon’s rebellion.

4. The Half-Way Covenant
a. The half-way covenant was a modified version of the covenant. b. In this new agreement, the adherents still had to admit to baptism, but not “full communion.” c. By conferring partial membership rights in the once exclusive Puritan Churches, the half-way covenant weakened the distinction between the elect and others which diluted the spiritual purity of the original settler’s community

5. The Salem Witch Trials
a. Was caused by a group of adolescent girls who claimed to have been bewitched by a certain older woman in 1692 b. Twenty were killed because of the accusations. c. The superstitions grew from prejudices’ of age, and also unsettled religious conditions of the Massachusetts’s village. d. Most of the accused women were property-owning women and associated with Salem’s burgeoning economy e. Ended in 1693 when the governor’s wife was accused and the Governor acquitted everyone.

=**Chronology**=
 * 1619 - First Africans arrive in Virginia
 * 1636 - Harvard College founded
 * 1662 - Half-Way Covenant for Congregational membership established
 * 1670 - Virginia assembly disfranchises landless freemen[[image:bacon_confront.jpg width="260" height="196" align="right"]]
 * 1676 - Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia
 * 1680's - Mass expansion of slavery in the colonies
 * 1689 - 1691 - Leiser's Rebellion in New York
 * 1692 - Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts

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