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Subject:
Re: first blacks
From:
Brent Tarter <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 17 Dec 2001 08:20:02 -0500
Content-Type:
text/plain
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text/plain (57 lines) 
William Thorndale, "The Virginia Census of 1619," MAGAZINE OF VIRGINIA
GENEALOGY 33 (1995): 155-171, prints an undated enumeration that Thorndale,
from a variety of circumstantial and internal evidence, suggests was
compiled several months before the arrival in the summer of 1619 of the
famous Dutch ship containing what have heretofore been regarded as the first
Africans to reach Virginia. The list that Torndale printed shows that
several persons of African ancestry were in Virginia when the list was
compiled; and if his dating of the document is correct, then there were
black people in Virginia earlier than previously documented.

However.

Martha W. McCartney, "An Early Virginia Census Reprised," QUARTERLY BULLETIN
OF THE VIRGINIA ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 54 (1999): 178-196, argues from other
internal and circumstantial evidence that the list was actually compiled at
a later date, which would mean that the Africans listed on the census
probably did not arrive prior to the summer 1619 ship.

The dating of the document is the key, and it is not an easy thing to do. I
suspect that the scholarly discussion over the dating of the list is not yet
over.

Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
[log in to unmask]

Visit the Library of Virginia's web site at http://www.lva.lib.va.us


-----Original Message-----
From: paul finkelman [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 17 December, 2001 12:50 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: first blacks


Some years ago someone posted a reference to an article that argued that
blacks arrived in Va. *before* 1619.  Does anyone have that reference.
Is this the accepted view these days?

--
Paul Finkelman
Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Tulsa College of Law
3120 East 4th Place
Tulsa, OK  74104-3189

phone 918-631-3706
Fax   918-631-2194
e-mail:   [log in to unmask]

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