Early Colonization of England - England’s First Attempts at Colonization

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Unlike Virginia, the colony of Maryland was very different in both its start and way of life. Virginia had been formed by a company while Maryland was formed by a guy by the name of Lord Baltimore. Lord Baltimore was a wealthy and elite man who had the idea of taking all the Catholics from England and moving them to the new world to start growing tobacco. Lord Baltimore never would get to establish his colony due to his death and the task of building the colony would land on his sons. While the initial idea was to have a catholic colony that did not work out due to many lying just to get to the new world. Most turned out to be protestant and so the catholic colony never happened. One thing that would continue to happen was the constant lure to get more people to the new world. They managed to bring people by promising them a free trip as long as they would become servants and since more were really poor people they would take it. Unknowingly these people would sign a contract stating their servitude for 4-7 years and this would also bind their children as slaves. These types of slaves would be known as indentured servants. Most slaves would have their contracts sold to other planters that would then take control of the people and their labor for 4-7 years. As if it wasn’t bad enough for these servants, the planters were not so nice and they were treated poorly. The only good thing that came from this was that the contract contained “freedom dues”. These freedom dues guaranteed the servants tools, clothing, food, and land. The planters were smart enough to give the servants bad pieces of land and servants would not be able to make the land work and would eventually give it back and return to their old masters to become tenants of the land. Even so, most servants would not reach this, 40% would be worked to death and many others would run away.

Apart from the slavery that was there, family life wasn’t so great either. Starting with the of balanced gender ratio with there being only 1 women to every 5 men. With there not being many women 70% of men would never marry due to the fact that they would not find anyone to marry. Many of the women would get so much attention because there weren’t many women available and this resulted in the women letting “loose”. 1/5 had illegitimate kids and 1/3 were pregnant the day they got married. This was a big deal because in England sex was not done outside of marriage. The fact that there weren’t many marriages contributed to fewer births and more deaths. Death exceeded births and diet played a big part in this. The diet of the people was very poor and not diverse at all the thing that people are most was just pork and corn. Poor diet and poor conditions gave the people short life expectancies from just 45-48 years of age. Through all the bad there was always something good to come out of it and this was the role of the women. Unlike in England where women had no rights, in the new world more men were willing to will land to their wives. This resulted in women inheriting property for the first time. There was still though a gender division of labor, men built stuff and worked on fields while women tended to household chores. Life wasn’t any better for kids it was just as difficult. Most kids by the age 12 had lost 1 or both parents and had to grow up quickly. No one was spared from the difficulties of living in the new world. Life might not have been easy but the people continued to progress and thanks to that America is what it is today.