The Mail-Order Brides of Jamestown, Virginia
In its early days, the first English settlement in America had lots of men, tobacco, and land. All it needed was women.
Marcia Zug Aug 31, 2016
“First comes love, then comes marriage,” the old nursery rhyme goes, but historically, first came money. Marriage was above all an economic transaction, and in no place was this more apparent than in the early 1600s in the Jamestown colony, where a severe gender imbalance threatened the fledgling colony’s future.
The men of Jamestown desperately wanted wives, but women were refusing to immigrate. They had heard disturbing reports of dissension, famine, and disease, and had decided it simply wasn’t worth it. Consequently, barely a decade after its founding in 1607, Jamestown was almost entirely male, and because these men were unable to find wives, they were deserting the colony in droves.
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http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/the-mail-order-brides-of-jamestown-virginia/498083/
