Boom Country

Question 1

In what year was The Mayflower blown off course?

Answer 1

It was blown off course in 1620.

Question 2

Where was The Mayflower heading?

Answer 2

It was heading to Virginia.

Question 3

What happens when something is discovered?

Answer 3

People rush in, eager to control it, sell it, and make a handsome profit.

Question 4

What were the places called were The English went to drink coffee?

Answer 4

The English called them coffee houses.

Question 5

What did the Turks and Dutch call coffee?

Answer 5

The Turks called it “Kahve” and The Dutch called it “Koffie”.

Question 6

What was the product that caused the biggest boom?

Answer 6

The product was sugar.

Question 7

What was sugar used for in the Middle Ages?

Answer 7

It was used for medicine and only wealthy lords and ladies could afford.

Question 8

Who began growing sugar on islands off the coast of Africa?

Answer 8

Spain and Portugal were the ones growing sugar there.

Question 9

What were the prime sugar regions?

Answer 9

South America and The Caribbean.

Question 10

What were the two products that The Americas were sending to Europe.

Answer 10

They were sending over sugar and molasses.

Question 11

What could not grow in Virginia?

Answer 11

Coffee and Sugar because it was too cool.

Question 12

How many settlers came to settle in Chesapeake Bay and where were they from?

Answer 12

105 settlers came to Chesapeake Bay from the New Virginia Company.

Question 13

Where did the found Jamestown?

Answer 13

On a flowing river into Chesapeake Bay.

Question 14

Who’s confidence was as large as they’re bushy beard?

Answer 14

John Smith.

Question 15

Why the the common fellow want to hang Smith from the gallows?

Answer 15

They thought he was plotting to kill the colony’s leaders and make himself king.

Question 16

What wouldn’t Smith let colonists do?

Answer 16

He would not let the ones who didn’t pull their own weight eat.

Question 17

What happened to Smith when he was headed up river?

Answer 17

He was captured and taken prisoner by Indians.

Question 18

Who stopped Smith’s brains from being dashed out?

Answer 18

Powhatan’s daughter Pochantas.

Question 19

What almost killed Smith in his sleep?

Answer 19

A sack of gun powder that had caught fire.

Question 20

What did King James think about tobacco?

Answer 20

That it was “loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs.”

Question 21

What would happen after the process of growing tabacco?

Answer 21

When the leaves are seasoned, pack them into large barrels, roll them down to the river, and ship them to England.

Question 22

What was the name the Virginians had for newcomers who faced their first year and lived?

Answer 22

“the seasoning.” If you survived your first twelve months, you were “seasoned”.

Question 23

Who and Why did so many newcomers die in such large numbers?

Answer 23

Newcomers died in large numbers from malaria spread by mosquitoes. They died from typhoid or dysentery spread by germs in the water. They were killed by Indians, unhappy about the land the English had taken to plant tobacco. Even in the 1630s, 1640s, and 1650s colonists died at great rates.

Question 24

What was the average life span of people in Europe vs People in Virginia?

Answer 24

On average, the English who came to Virginia lived to be only thirty-five or forty. Someone who stayed in England, on the other hand, could expect to live to about sixty. And in New England, settlers lived to an average age of seventy.

Question 25

What did Puritans care little about?

Answer 25

They cared little about educating people.

Question 26

What would people in tobacco colonies do once a month?

Answer 26

Life in the tobacco colonies was more isolated, but once a month, neighbors in every county could get together for Court Day, held in the parlor of a well-to-do planter.

Question 27

What would John Clopton do?

Answer 27

He would bow and thank people for their vote.

Question 28

What were the healthier places to live?

Answer 28

Virginia and Maryland.

Question 29

What remained the biggest crop?

Answer 29

Tobacco.

Question 30

What was an indentured servant?

Answer 30

Most people could afford to come to Virginia only as indentured servants. A servant signed a paper (“indentures”) agreeing to work for a period of four to seven years for a master who then in return would pay for the servant’s passage to America and expenses there. Most who signed up were down on their luck. Some who had been forced off English farmlands with no place to work or to stay.

Question 31

What were freedom dues?

Answer 31

“freedom dues”: a new set of clothes, tools, and fifty acres of land.

Question 32

Who was a special case and what was their name?

Answer 32

Consider the case of a young man who came to the colony in 1621. He survived his first year’s seasoning, escaped death in a big Indian attack of 1622, and lived nearly fifty years more, to die one of Virginia’s few old men. Legal documents list his name as Anthony Johnson, though he was Antonio when he arrived. And even that was not his original name, which we don’t know. All we know is, he was listed as “Antonio a Negro.”

Question 33

What were the details about Antonio and his wife?

Answer 33

Antonio and his wife, Mary, worked for a white planter, either as servants or slaves, and eventually gained their freedom. Antonio changed his name to the English-sounding Anthony Johnson. At his death, he owned several hundred acres of land, a herd of cattle, and several slaves.

Question 34

What did Antonio tell his neighbor?

Answer 34

Only about three hundred Africans lived among the thirteen thousand settlers. Dozens became free. “I know mine own ground and I will work when I please and play when I please,” Johnson told one neighbor.