toms, their pride in family and race, their laws and their
possessions. With something of nostalgia for home, they often named
their plantations for the family estates in England, and the locales, in
which they settled, for the shires or the communities near their old
world homes. They did not seek to create a new race, as did the Spanish
in settling Louisiana who designated themselves _Criollo_, but to remain
Englishmen in the new world. To this end they were willing to struggle
and overcome a wilderness. In so doing, they sharpened their native
acumen, awakened their inherent resourcefulness, and eventually in the
eighteenth century, established themselves as a free and independent
people.

Their manner of living in Virginia was determined, not so much by
design, as by force of circumstances. Available land and tobacco were
determining factors in developing large plantations along the main
waterways and small plantations in the hinterlands. Self-sufficiency was
concomitant with their way of life.

Although, in several acts of the Assembly, the first in 1680, efforts
were made by authorities to create towns, establish central warehouses,
and so bring the people together, such attempts met with only partial
success. Towns that were projected, in 1680, in expectation of
developing centers of population, were difficult to promote. Once
started, they languished, as did Warwicktown in one of the eight
original shires. Except for its ports of entry, such as Jamestown,
Norfolk and Kecoughtan, Virginia in the seventeenth century was not
adapted to urban living.

Upon arrival in Virginia, the colonists faced a vast forest. Before
them in the April sunshine was a massive wall of shimmering green in the
stately pines, cedars and holly, intermingled with the freshly unfolded
leaves of the venerable oak, walnut, hickory and beech. There were no
grassy plains, no open fields, save the garden plots of small tribes of
Indians. Clearing the land, in itself, was a tremendous task.

The choice acreage ever in demand by the colonists was, of course, the
open land found in and near the Indian villages. Many a land patent
later embraced an Indian field. The Company lands in Elizabeth City were
the fertile fields of the Kecoughtan Indians, who had been driven from
their habitations there, in 1610, after the murder of a colonist,
Humphrey Blount. Following the massacre of 1622, the natives were
relentlessly driven from their villages and