[Footnote 20: Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_, II, 88.]
The third tobacco-producing colony, North Carolina, was the product of
secondary colonization. Virginia's expansion happened to send some of
her people across the boundary, where upon finding themselves under the
jurisdiction of the Lord Proprietors of Carolina they took pains to keep
that authority upon a strictly nominal basis. The first comers, about 1660,
and most of those who followed, were and continued to be small farmers; but
in the course of decades a considerable number of plantations arose in the
fertile districts about Albemarle Sound. Nearly everywhere in the lowlands,
however, the land was too barren for any distinct prosperity. The
settlements were quite isolated, the communications very poor, and the
social tone mostly that of the backwoods frontier. An Anglican missionary
when describing his own plight there in 1711 discussed the industrial
regime about him: "Men are generally of all trades and women the like
within their spheres, except some who are the posterity of old planters
and have great numbers of slaves who understand most handicraft. Men are
generally carpenters, joiners, wheelwrights, coopers, butchers, tanners,
shoemakers, tallow-chandlers, watermen and what not; women, soap-makers,
starch-makers, dyers, etc.
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