The colony of Virginia was supposed to ship raw materials back to England, where the material would be fashioned into finished products, and then sold to the world, including back to Virginia. Certainly, Virginia had plenty of raw materials, but one material stands out from all of the rest. That item was wood. England had used too many of her trees to make charcoal for her iron furnaces and iron processing. She had been reduced to importing iron from the Baltic nations to meet the demand. (No large forests left for making charcoal = no domestic iron production.)
Another item that Virginia possessed was water power, but there was a hitch in this. Most of the water power occurred to the west of the fall line. In the Tidewater lands, the streams had little or no fall to them. Without a difference in two adjacent water heights, it is difficult to harness the power of the water. This meant that the region to the west of the fall line was the prime source for mills.
Yet another item that Virginia possessed was iron ore. That she did possess iron ore was known before Jamestown was settled. Again, most of this was to the west of the fall line. Logically, Virginia should have been producing iron to send back to England. The problem was that these resources were to the west, in lands controlled by the Indians, and not by the Europeans. In fact, the first iron furnace in 1622 (sixteen hundred and twenty-two!), near the present site of Richmond on the fall line, was destroyed by the Indians.
A fourth problem was capital, to support an iron smelting and finishing operation; however, this problem could have been settled by English investment, even if no one in Virginia had the capital. Lt. Gov. Spotswood recognized the physical assets shortly after he arrived in Virginia in 1710. He saw that the only missing ingredient was the capital to finance the operation, so he proposed two agencies to supply this. The first was the colony of Virginia itself, but this was not accepted by the Assembly. Next he proposed that Queen Anne might want to do this as a private venture, but she seems to have turned a deaf ear ( if the proposal got as far as a hearing before her).
Spotswood's proposal was made at a very appropriate time, since civilization had reached the fall line, especially on the Rappahannock River. For a hundred years, though, the Virginians had been directing their attention to tobacco. This could be grown in the Tidewater lands. The amount of capital needed was small. Generally, land was available. So, the principal export commodity was tobacco, and Virginians had difficulty in seeing that there might be alternatives to this, even though a single commodity economy is usually subject to wild fluctuations in supply and demand. As has been recounted here, tobacco was the principal reason for the westward push of civilization. The cultivation of tobacco required ever more lands.
Our German ancestors happened to get caught up in this westward expansion, even though such a thought had never entered their minds when they were leaving Germany.
(18 Jun 01)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.