A tobacco bride (or "tobacco wife") is a descriptive name for a young woman that emigrated to Colonial Virginia to marry a settler. Following the settlement of the Jamestown, Virginia colony in the early 1600s there was a vast gender inequality, as most of those who left for Jamestown were men who were tasked with building and establishing the settlement itself.[1] There were about 100 women with families already in colonial Virginia, but there was still a significant gender divide (men to women).[2] Beginning in 1619, young single women from England were offered by Virginia Company of London the opportunity to travel to Jamestown to marry and start families and to increase the population.
The expense of the women's travels fell upon the men of the colony, who paid with 150lb of tobacco to the Virginia Company.[3] These "Maids for Virginia" were incentivized by the promise of land ownership, inheritance rights, as well as their own discretion to choose their own husband (all of which were luxuries not awarded to women in England).[4] [5]
Around 90 women made the decision to travel to Jamestown in 1619. In 1620, ship The Marmaduke added 13 more women to Virginia.[6] The next year, 57 more women were shipped.[7] By 1622, roughly 144 women had arrived to Jamestown. The ages of the women varied; among the youngest of the women was Jane Dier, who was around fifteen to sixteen years old when she departed. One of the oldest women was Alice Burges who was 31 or 32.[8] Many tobacco brides came to America fleeing hardship, but many also suffered once in America.[9] Despite their hardships, these women paved the way for the women of the future by escaping the assigned "maid" role and instead gaining more economic freedom and independence than was given to other women of this time, leading to some to dub them the "Founding Mothers".
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