Terry Foreman on 8 Jul 2012  •  Link

The Colony of Virginia (also known frequently as the Virginia Colony, the Province of Virginia, and occasionally as the Dominion and Colony of Virginia) was the English colony in North America that existed briefly during the 16th century, and then continuously from 1607 until the American Revolution (as a British colony after 1707). The name Virginia was first applied by Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth I in 1584. After the English Civil War in the mid 17th century, the Virginia Colony was nicknamed "The Old Dominion" by King Charles II for its perceived loyalty to the English monarchy during the era of the Commonwealth of England.

In 1620, a successor to the Plymouth Company sent colonists to the New World aboard the Mayflower. Known as Pilgrims, they successfully established a settlement in what became Massachusetts. The portion of what had been Virginia north of the 40th parallel became known as New England, according to books written by Captain John Smith, who had made a voyage there.

In 1624, the Virginia Company's charter was revoked by King James I and the Virginia Colony was transferred to royal authority as a crown colony. Subsequent charters for the Maryland Colony in 1632 and the Carolina Colony in 1665 further reduced the Virginia Colony to coastal borders it held until the American Revolution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_of_Virginia

San Diego Sarah on 30 Apr 2023  •  Link

In 1662 the Virginia Assembly passed a law that children should be held, bond or free, "according to the condition of the mother." This was to meet the case of mulatto children, born of black mothers, in the colony.

It was thought right to hold heathen Africans in slavery; but, as mulattoes must be part Christians, a knotty question came up, for the English law in relation to serfdom declared the condition of the child must be determined by that of the father.

The Virginia law opposed this doctrine in favor of the slave-holders. Some of the negroes brought into Virginia were converted to Christianity and baptized. The question was raised, "Is it lawful to hold Christians as slaves?" The General Assembly came to the relief of the slave-holders by enacting a law that slaves, although converted and baptized, should not therefore become free.

It was also enacted that killing a slave by his master by "extreme correction" should not be esteemed a felony, since it might not be presumed that "malice prepense" would "induce any man to destroy his own estate."

It was also enacted, as an evasion of the statute prohibiting the holding of Indians as slaves, "that all servants, not being Christians, imported by shipping, shall be slaves for life." Indian slaves, under this law, were imported from New England and the West Indies.

Freed slaves were then subjected to civil disabilities.

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/slavery/history-slav…