Virginia.

Young orphans in the Colony, with no one to look to for support, were
bound out, this responsibility being accorded the vestry of the parish
church. In 1646, the York records note that Ann Snoden, an orphan seven
years of age, had no means left for her maintenance. Thereupon, she was
bound out to Captain Nicolas Martiau for nine years, with the provision
that he supply her with food, clothing, shelter, and give her a cow and
a calf and maintain both during her apprenticeship, rendering an account
annually to the court. In 1686, little William Hickman, a year old
infant, was bound out to William Dods of Isle of Wight County to be in
his care and service until he was twenty-one years of age.

Fewer than two score Negroes are listed in Virginia in 1625; they were
not present in numbers in the Colony until about 1660. By then, they
began to supplant white labor and were particularly useful in the
tobacco fields, the latter an ever increasing source of revenue to the
planter. Not all Negroes worked in the fields, however. In the inventory
of Mrs. Elizabeth Digges' estate filed in York County, 1691, three sets
of quarters for Negroes are listed: the home quarters where the house
servants lived, the Indian field quarters where those working in tobacco
lived, and the new ground quarters where were housed the Negroes doing
the heavy work of clearing new ground, a constant operation in Virginia
as the cultivation of tobacco quickly exhausted the soil.

As the Negroes took their places in the Colony as field-hands,
house-servants and craftsmen, the white indentured servant vanished from
the scene. As heretofore noted, the supply was never enough in the
Colony to fill the demand. Moreover, young men, at the conclusion of
their five or seven-year terms, received their allotment of clothing and
supplies, usually a barrel of corn, agreed upon in the indenture, and
joined the small-planter class in the Colony. Especially was this true
when the indenture included a clause granting fifty acres upon
completion of service.

Since Negroes were taught trades on the plantations and some of them
became highly skilled in handiwork, the white artisan had a difficult
time in establishing himself in Virginia. There was practically no white
artisan class. Small planters and their families acquired skills needed
in their daily living, the Negroes becoming the craftsmen on the larger
plantations.

THE HOUSEHOLD

The winters in Vir