The Jamestown Brides: The Untold Story of England’s “Maids for Virginia” by Jennifer Potter (review)

The history of the United States is a story of immigration. For over four hundred years, immigrants to North America have risked tremendous dangers and suffered severe hardships in the hope of achieving a better life for themselves and their families. The Jamestown Brides: The Untold Story of England’s “Maids for Virginia” explores the history of one of these first immigrant groups: young, single English women recruited by the Virginia Company to immigrate to Jamestown to find husbands among the mostly male colonists. The Virginia Company believed the women would make these men more settled and that they would raise money for the company’s coffers through reimbursements from the women’s future husbands.

Like most Jamestown immigrants, these women faced great risk, but they also faced the possibility of great reward. Consequently, it is surprising that author Jennifer Potter writes that the fundamental question the book seeks to answer is whether these women were victims or adventurers, “women prepared to invest their persons rather than their purses in the New World” (p. 7). Clearly, the Jamestown brides, as well as nearly all other voluntary immigrants to the Virginia colony, were both.

As Potter carefully details, Jamestown was founded as a profit-making enterprise, and the welfare of the colonists was never the priority. Moreover, even if the colony had been given greater care and resources, disease, starvation, and conflicts with the local Indian tribes meant that colonization was always going to be a dangerous enterprise. Potter vividly describes how both men and women suffered the colony’s hardships and profited from its opportunities, yet she struggles to characterize the Jamestown brides as anything other than victims. This characterization is unfair, but it is also understandable. As the book reveals, for many of the women the decision to immigrate was a fatal mistake.

Shortly after the women arrived in Jamestown, large numbers were killed in a horrific Indian attack. Moreover, although the Virginia Company could not have known about the impending attack, the company’s lack of concern for the women’s deaths can be characterized as a second victimization. As Potter writes, “I remain shocked that I found not a single expression of regret from the leaders of the Virginia Company . . . about sending so many of these women to their deaths” (p. 308). Thankfully, this ill-treatment is one Potter can and does remedy.

Although The Jamestown Brides mostly confirms previous understandings of the Virginia Company’s bridal immigration program, the book’s important contribution is in combating the women’s historical erasure and restoring their individuality. For so long, the Jamestown brides have been clumped together as one undistinguishable mass—a group of women sharing general physical, financial, and familial characteristics. Potter provides the details and stories that have been missing. For example, she reveals that many of the brides were recruited from the friends and family of Virginia Company personnel. She also notes that others came from the theater region of London and may have attended and been inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest, his play about adventures in the New World. Further, she shows that at least one woman was likely fleeing a quarrelsome and possibly abusive brother. Such information provides a clearer picture of who these women were, why they chose to immigrate, and whether it was a reasonable decision.

The book also offers revealing new details about the women’s lives after their arrival. Potter uncovers legal scheming and treachery, scandalous gossip, daunting feats of heroism, and stunning financial successes. Finally, after relating the rich details of these women’s lives, Potter concludes that, like the prominent men have, “all the settler women who endured Jamestown’s privations in those early years deserve a church memorial” (p. 309). Through The Jamestown Brides, Potter has created this memorial. It is a fitting tribute.