additional fifty acres for his
wife and fifty for each child or other member of the household.[2-30]

When the Government issued a grant for land under this law, the planter
was required to record with the clerk of the county court the names of
all persons for whose transportation the claim was made. Some of these
lists have been lost, especially for the period from 1655 to 1666, but
most of them remain, constituting an inexhaustible storehouse of
information concerning the colony and the people who came to its
shores.[2-31] How the papers escaped destruction during the fire which
did so much damage in the Secretary's office at the time of Andros, it
is impossible to say. The explanation is to be found perhaps in the fact
that copies of the records were kept, not only at Williamsburg, but in
the several counties, so that in case of loss by fire new entries could
be made.

Immigration to Virginia continued in unabated volume throughout the
Seventeenth century. The needs of the tobacco plantations were
unceasing, and year after year the surplus population of England poured
across the Atlantic in response. An examination of the list of
headrights shows that the annual influx was between 1500 and 2000. Even
during the Civil War and Commonwealth periods this average seems to have
been maintained with surprising consistency. Apparently the only limit
which could be set upon it was the available space on board the merchant
fleet which each year left England for the Chesapeake bay. Thus in the
year ending May 1635 we find that 2000 landed in the colony,[2-32] while
in 1674 and again in 1682 the same average was maintained.[2-33] At
times the numbers dropped to 1200 or 1300, but this was the exception
rather than the rule. All in all, considerably more than 100,000 persons
migrated to the colony in the years that elapsed between the first
settlement at Jamestown and the end of the century.[2-34]

This great movement, which far surpassed in magnitude any other English
migration of the century, fixed for all time the character of the white
population of tidewater Virginia. The vast bulk of the settlers were
English. An examination of the headright lists shows here and there an
Irish or a Scotch name, and on very rare occasions one of French or
Italian origin, but in normal periods fully 95 per cent were
unmistakably Anglo-Saxon. In fact, such names as Dixon, Bennett,
Anderson, Adams, Greene, Brooke, Brown, Cooper, Gibson, Hall,