The particular plantation system proved accordingly but an episode, yet it
furnished a transition, which otherwise might not readily have been found,
from Virginia the plantation of the London Company, to Virginia the colony
of private plantations and farms. When settlement expanded afresh after the
Indians were driven away many private estates gradually arose to follow the
industrial routine of those which had been called particular.
The private plantations were hampered in their development by dearth of
capital and labor and by the extremely low prices of tobacco which began at
the end of the sixteen-twenties as a consequence of overproduction. But
by dint of good management and the diversification of their industry the
exceptional men led the way to prosperity and the dignity which it carried.
Of Captain Samuel Matthews, for example, "an old Planter of above thirty
years standing," whose establishment was at Blunt Point on the lower James,
it was written in 1648: "He hath a fine house and all things answerable to
it; he sowes yeerly store of hempe and flax, and causes it to be spun; he
keeps weavers, and hath a tan-house, causes leather to be dressed, hath
eight shoemakers employed in this trade, hath forty negroe servants, brings
them up to trades in his house: he yeerly sowes abundance of wheat, barley,
etc.
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