The 1619 Landing — Virginia's First Africans Report & FAQs | Hampton, VA (2024)
In late August, 1619, 20-30 enslaved Africans landed at Point Comfort, today's Fort Monroe in Hampton, Va., aboard the English privateer ship White Lion. In Virginia, these Africans were traded in exchange for supplies. Several days later, a second ship (Treasurer) arrived in Virginia with additional enslaved Africans. Both groups had been captured by English privateers from the Spanish slave ship San Juan Bautista. They are the first recorded Africans to arrive in England's mainland American colonies.
The landing of the first Africans in Virginia is one of the most significant events we interpret. Although English colonists in Virginia did not invent slavery, and the transition from a handful of bound African laborers to a legalized system of full-blown chattel slavery took many decades, 1619 marks the beginning of race-based bondage that defined the African American experience.
Hampton's status as the location for the first landing is a double-edged sword. We are uniquely positioned to tell a powerful story, but it is a challenging narrative fraught with controversy, myth, and contradictions that strike at the heart of the intersection between American slavery and American freedom.
If for no other reason, it is important we have a conversation about what took place at Point Comfort in 1619 because it forever changed the course of the country. The legacy of this event affects us all and understanding this complex history and legacy helps us to come together as Americans.
~ Luci Cochran, Executive Director, Hampton History Museum
~ Photo credit: 1619 exhibit in the Hampton History Galleries. Photo courtesy of the Hampton Convention and Visitor Bureau.
In late August, 1619, 20-30 enslaved Africans landed at Point Comfort
Point Comfort
17th and 18th centuries
Members of the crew "rowed to a point where they found a channel which put them in good comfort". They named the adjacent land Cape Comfort. Point Comfort formed the beginning of the boundary of the Colony of Virginia.
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Old_Point_Comfort
, today's Fort Monroe in Hampton, Va., aboard the English privateer ship White Lion. In Virginia, these Africans were traded in exchange for supplies. Several days later, a second ship (Treasurer) arrived in Virginia with additional enslaved Africans.
Along with the the first representative legislative assembly in the New World, 1619 also marked the arrival of the first recorded Africans to English North America, the recruitment of English women in significant numbers, the first official English Thanksgiving in North America, and the entrepreneurial and innovative ...
On August 20, 1619, “20 and odd” Angolans, kidnapped by the Portuguese, arrive in the British colony of Virginia and are then bought by English colonists. The arrival of the enslaved Africans in the New World marks a beginning of two and a half centuries of slavery in North America.
Modern historians say the 1619 Africans clearly came as slaves. There is little evidence they were treated as anything other than slaves in Virginia, even though slavery was not formally regulated by law in the colony until years later.
Brazil and British American ports were the points of disembarkation for most Africans. On a whole, over the 300 years of the Transatlantic slave trade, 29 per cent of all Africans arriving in the New World disembarked at British American ports, 41 per cent disembarked in Brazil.
In late August, 1619, 20-30 enslaved Africans landed at Point Comfort, today's Fort Monroe in Hampton, Va., aboard the English privateer ship White Lion. In Virginia, these Africans were traded in exchange for supplies.
Rolfe's letter says the people were traded for food, indicating they were seen as property, and research suggests most of them were kidnapped, meaning they didn't come to America willingly. On top of that, the transatlantic slave trade had been going on for about a century by August 1619.
The fact that some mulattoes would be very light-skinned in appearance, favouring their white parent or grandparent, no doubt accounts for some of the reports of 'white' slaves that exist. But evidence shows also that there were others who were apparently wholly of European ancestry.
The first documented arrival of Africans to the colony of Virginia was recorded by John Rolfe: "About the latter end of August, a Dutch man of Warr of the burden of a 160 tunes arrived at Point-Comfort, the Comandors name Capt Jope, his Pilott for the West Indies one Mr Marmaduke an Englishman. …
The events of 1619 are well documented and the British became the major importers of African slaves to North America, so it has come to mark the start of the slave trade in what was to be the United States.
Slaveholders were given permission to punish enslaved people and would not be prosecuted if the slave died as a result. The law specified punishment, including whipping and death, for minor offenses and for criminal acts. Slaves needed written permission, known as passes, to leave their plantation.
Nottaway County had the highest percentage of enslaved people at 74 percent. In contrast, Hanco*ck County, in the extreme northwestern end of the state, counted only two slaves amid a white population of 4,442.
White southerners prohibited enslaved African Americans from learning to read, restricted their movement, prevented them from meeting in groups, and publicly punished those who attempted to escape slavery. Slave codes also punished white Virginians who assisted Black people in violating the codes.
Of these presidents who owned slaves, Thomas Jefferson owned the most, with 600+ slaves, followed closely by George Washington. Woodrow Wilson was the last president born into a household with slave labor, though the Civil War concluded during his childhood.
Slavery in northern Africa dates back to ancient Egypt. The New Kingdom (1558–1080 BC) brought large numbers of slaves as prisoners of war up the Nile valley and used them for domestic and supervised labour. Ptolemaic Egypt (305 BC–30 BC) used both land and sea routes to bring in slaves.
Joshua John Ward, of Georgetown County, South Carolina, is known as the largest American slaveholder, dubbed "the king of the rice planters". Brookgreen Plantation Georgetown County, S.C. In 1850 he held 1,092 slaves; Ward was the largest slaveholder in the United States before his death in 1853.
In 1619, a Dutch ship with about 20 Africans on board entered a port at the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia. This event is known as the arrival of the first recorded Africans to English North America.
What were the three outstanding events in 1619 that had a great influence on the colonies? Representative government came to America.The first slaves were brought to America.The London Company sent women to America.
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In late August, 1619, 20-30 enslaved Africans landed at Point Comfort, today's Fort Monroe in Hampton, Va., aboard the English privateer ship White Lion. In Virginia, these Africans were traded in exchange for supplies. Several days later, a second ship (Treasurer) arrived in Virginia with additional enslaved Africans. Both groups had been captured by English privateers from the Spanish slave ship San Juan Bautista. They are the first recorded Africans to arrive in England's mainland American colonies.