John Smith + John Rolfe
The Virginia Company financed and sponsored the English colony founded at Jamestown in May 1607. The Company expected the colonists to start industrial enterprises in Virginia that would return profits to the investors. Colonists John Smith and John Rolfe both played a significant role in the success and survival of the Virginia colony.
John Smith
John Smith became actively involved with plans to colonize Virginia for profit by the Virginia Company. When the sealed box that listed the names of the seven council members who were to govern the colony was opened, Smith's name was on the list. The harsh winter, lack of fresh water, and the spread of disease made life in Jamestown difficult for the settlers.
In December 1607, he and some companions were ambushed by Indian deer hunters. After killing the other Englishmen with him, the Indians carried Smith back to their powerful chief, Powhatan, to decide his fate. Powhatan was apparently greatly impressed by Smith's self-confidence as well as such mystical instruments as an ivory and glass pocket compass he carried with him. Smith was questioned about his colony and then made a subordinate chief in the tribe. Smith was released in friendship after about four weeks of captivity and returned to Jamestown. Meanwhile, dissent within the colony fermented due to lack of supplies, laziness, and periodic attempts at desertion by many of the colonists. Due to bad government and near chaos, Smith was eventually elected president of the local council in September 1608. He instituted a policy of rigid discipline, strengthened defenses, and encouraged farming with this admonishment: "He who does not work, will not eat." Because of his strong leadership, the settlement survived and grew during the next year.
Over time, Smith became unpopular with the Virginia Company. He was denied further opportunities to return to America due to his independent nature and spent the rest of his life writing books until his death in 1631 at age 51.
John Rolfe:
The English colonists did not like the type of tobacco the Virginia Indians grew. They preferred the fragrant sort that Spanish colonists produced in the Caribbean and sold in large quantities at high prices to London merchants. John Rolfe is credited with the experiment of planting the first tobacco seeds that he obtained from somewhere in the Caribbean, possibly from Trinidad. Rolfe gave some tobacco from his crop to friends "to make trial of," and they agreed that the new leaf had "smoked pleasant, sweet and strong. The remainder of the crop was shipped to England where it compared favorably with "Spanish" leaf.
Pocahontas, daughter of Chief Powhatan, was kidnapped and brought to Jamestown to be traded for English prisoners and weapons that Powhatan held. The exchange never took place. Pocahontas was taken to the settlement at Henrico where she learned English, converted to Christianity, was baptized, and christened Rebecca. It was about this time that she presumably came to the attention of John Rolfe. The marriage between Pocahontas and Rolfe resulted in peace with the Indians long enough for the settlers to develop and expand their colony and plant themselves permanently in the new land.
Over time, Rolfe assumed more prominence in the colony. He became a member of the House of Burgesses. In 1617 tobacco exports to England totaled 20,000 pounds. The next year shipment more than doubled. Twelve years later, one and a half million pounds were exported. The first great American enterprise had been established.
Equiano + Wheatley
Olaudah Equiano was kidnapped and taken from Nigeria, at the age of ten, and sold into slavery. At first he worked for an African master but later he was sold to a European slave trader who shipped him to the Caribbean, then to North America and England. During the next ten years he was sold several times and given different names, as it was the custom for slave owners to rename their slaves. One of his masters, Lieutenant Pascal, was in Britain’s Royal Navy and he gave Equiano the name Gustavus Vassa, after a Swedish King. For several years Equiano lived on board ships. He was forced to work for the British who were at war with France, carrying gunpowder to the guns on the ships. Pascal promised that Equiano would be granted freedom in return for his services to Britain and the King, but instead, he sold him to Robert King, a Captain from North America. King treated Equiano quite differently from the way most slave owners treated their slaves. He encouraged him to study and soon Equiano could read and write in English. He worked for King as a seaman and a clerk, and Equiano was able to save some money from trading at some of the ports they visited. Although King was reluctant to let Equiano go, he was a Quaker and a man of his word, and he allowed Equiano to buy his freedom in 1766, at the age of 21. Equiano returned to sea as a free sailor and made many journeys to different parts of the world, including Central America and the Arctic. Eventually he returned to England to live, where he took a very active role in the growing movement to end the slave trade.
In 1789 he wrote and published his life story, in the form of a narrative, and called it 'The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself'. The book became an incredible success; it was produced in seventeen editions in thirty years and was translated into many different languages. From the time it was published until his death in 1797, Equiano toured the country, reading excerpts from his book and fighting for abolition. The book opened white readers’ eyes to the prejudice, injustice and brutality of the slave trade. It challenged the racist ideas of the time, by showing the humanity and equality of Africans and the inhumanity and inequality of the slave trade.
Phillis Wheatley was born in Senegal about. When she was eight, she was kidnapped and brought to Boston. There John Wheatley bought her for his wife, Susanna, as a personal servant. As was the custom of the time, she was given the Wheatley family's surname. The Wheatley family taught Phillis English and Christianity, and, impressed by her quick learning, they also taught her some Latin, ancient history, mythology and classical literature. Once Phillis Wheatley demonstrated her abilities, the Wheatleys, clearly a family of culture and education, allowed Phillis time to study and write. Her situation allowed her time to learn and to write poetry. Phillis had fewer restrictions than most slaves experienced -- but she was still a slave. Her situation was unusual. She was not quite part of the white Wheatley family, nor did she quite share the place and experiences of other slaves.
In 1767, the Newport Mercury published Phillis Wheatley's first poem, a tale of two men who nearly drowned at sea, and of their steady faith in God. Her elegy for the evangelist George Whitefield, brought more attention to Phillis Wheatley. This attention included visits by a number of Boston's notables, including political figures and poets. A collection of her poems was published in London in 1773. The introduction to this volume of poetry by Phillis Wheatley is unusual: as a preface is an "attestation" by seventeen men of Boston that she had, indeed, written the poems herself:
WE whose Names are underwritten, do assure the World, that the POEMS specified in the following Page, were (as we verily believe) written by Phillis, a young Negro Girl, who was but a few Years since, brought an uncultivated Barbarian from Africa, and has ever since been, and now is, under the Disadvantage of serving as a Slave in a Family in this Town. She has been examined by some of the best Judges, and is thought qualified to write them.
The collection of poems by Phillis Wheatley followed a trip that she took to England. She caused quite a sensation in Europe. She had to return unexpectedly to America when they received word that Mrs. Wheatley was ill. Sources disagree on whether Phillis Wheatley was freed before, during or just after this trip, or whether she was freed later.
Williams + Hutchinson
Roger Williams was born around 1600 in England. He excelled in reading, religion, writing, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Dutch, French, logical thinking, and public speaking. His parents raised him to follow the Church of England, but he became a Puritan minister.
Williams experienced persecution for his religious beliefs and had to leave England. He immigrated to Massachusetts in 1630 to practice his religion. His new congregation liked and respected him. Williams did not believe in taking money for being a preacher. He earned his living by farming and trading blankets and knives with the Native Americans. Soon Williams faced another dilemma—this time with Puritans in Boston. Williams believed each person should follow his or her own conscience. He also thought the church should be involved with the government, and that the Natives, not the King of England, owned the land. One night, Williams had to flee before the Puritans could arrest him. He escaped with his family and some friends to the Narragansett Bay area.
There, Roger Williams purchased land from two Native American chiefs. He received a charter for the colony of Rhode Island from the King of England in 1644. He became a well-known peacemaker between the natives and the colonists. Williams lived to be an old man, but his last years were troubled by land and boundary disputes. King Phillip's War stopped his trade with the Indians and made him poor. In the end, Williams belonged to no church, but still searched for a pure religion.
Anne Hutchinson, and her husband, along with their 15 children, relocated to the Puritan colonies of New England, sailing to America with John Lothrop and other colonists, in the hopes of practicing their faith in an environment more favorable to the new ideas of Puritanism. Anne had high hopes for a life in the colonies, thinking it would be a haven for those who wished to worship God as they saw fit.
She held meetings in her home to boldly promote her idea that God’s grace alone was the key to salvation. But the colony’s leaders opposed preaching by a woman, insisting that only men should exercise public influence. She was accused of sedition, or trying to overthrow the government. And she faced banishment if convicted. Hutchinson's "crime" was expressing religious beliefs that were different from the colony's rulers. In the year 1637, in Massachusetts Bay Colony, that was against the law--especially for a woman. Hutchinson believed that people could communicate directly with God--without the help of ministers or the Bible. This was in direct contradiction with the established religion. Local ministers taught that people could only find God by following the teachings of the Bible. And that only they could interpret the Bible correctly. At meetings she held in her Boston home, Hutchinson criticized the teachings of the colony's ministers. In 1637, John Winthrop and other puritans declared her ideas heresy and banished her from Massachusetts Bay. Rhode Island attracted Baptists, Quakers, and Jews. Lacking a majority for any one faith, the Rhode Islanders agreed to separate church and state, they believed that mingling church and state corrupted religion. Hutchinson and her family moved to Rhode Island searching for religious freedom.