Significant Historical Happenings By Year: 1618-20.

-1618-

No entries.

-1619-

Twelve years after its founding, in a small wooden church, the first legislative body in America met, in Virginia.1

The number of English colonists at Virginia came up to twenty-four hundred. In addition, there "were five hundred head of cattle, besides horses and goats, together with an infinite number of pigs."

The first African negroes were brought over to Virginia.

-1620-

"Seventy-four English Nonconformists with twenty-eight of John Robinson's church at Leyden formed the historic Pilgrim Fathers expedition, which sailed from Plymouth on 6th September, 1620, in the Mayflower, which was under the command Christopher Jones. The pilgrims came in sight of Cape Cod on the 9th of November, 1620. Before coming ashore they had concluded a compact among themselves: the Mayflower Compact. "The Pilgrim Fathers, having landed, 'fell first on their knees and then on the aborigines.'"

Piracy was "a grave menace to Atlantic vessels."

[Backward In Time (1615-17)]
[Forward In Time (1621-23)]

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NOTES:

¹ Surprise! Surprise! The first piece of legislative business was to "levy a tax of one pound of tobacco on every man and man servant above the age of sixteen, the proceeds to be distributed to the Speaker, Clerk, Sergeant of the Assembly, and the Provost-Marshall of Jamestown, for their great pains and labour." Other laws were passed to fix the price of tobacco (three shillings per pound), to tax excessive apparel and to make attendance at divine service a compulsory matter. Punishment in these days was not something anyone was likely to forget; for instance, a servant, one Thomas Garnet, was "condemned to stand four days with his ears nailed to the pillory for extreme neglect of his master's business and impudent abuse." (Chatterton, p. 204-5.)