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From:
john pearce <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 4 Jan 2002 15:41:54 -0500
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I have been following the wonderful responses of many colleagues to your
inquiry, and would add my recollection (without specific references to
give right now--though I could find some if necessary) that Lois Green
Carr and other historians at the St. Mary's City Commission in St. Mary's
City, Maryland, did very intensive demographic studies and analysis for
Maryland and in some cases for the broader region.

John

John Pearce
James Monroe Museum/Mary Washington College


On Wed, 2 Jan 2002, Netti Schreiner-Yantis wrote:

> Dear List:
> 
>           Perhaps I should be directing this question to a medical list
> rather than historical, but I have found the people on this list have a
> broad range of knowledge, so hope you don’t mind my asking you.  My question
> is:  Has anyone ever heard any discussion on the subject of malnutrition as
> the cause of slow population growth during the first ten years of
> colonization in Virginia?    I have a neighbor who was in a concentration
> camp in Indonesia during WWII and she said they could tell which women were
> literally “sleeping with the enemy” because--as the result of getting extra
> food from the guards with whom they were sleeping--they had their menstrual
> periods, while those who were almost starved had no periods.
> 
>           The fact that there were NO women in the first fleet, and only a
> few in the next two or three, accounts for no children living who had been
> born between 1608 and 1611.   There were women coming in on the ships after
> 1610, however, and it would seem there should have been some 13 or 14-year
> olds included in the 1624/5 Muster.   I was surprised, therefore,  at the
> apparent nonexistence, in 1625, of  any child born in Virginia before 1615.
> Have any of you read any literature that might bring some light upon this
> subject?   And has anyone a current medical reference to the part nutrition
> plays in reproduction?   And in the survival of infants born of
> malnutritioned mothers?
> 
>           I have put the 1624/25 Muster of inhabitants of Virginia into a
> database and done a statistical analysis of the children listed in it.
> There were 122 children, but only 83 for which there is an age given.  All
> the sixteen children listed over the age of 10 had been born in England and
> immigrated to Virginia.   In case anyone is interested, the children who had
> been born in Virginia included: three aged 10 years; one aged 9; two aged 8;
> four aged 7; four aged 6, two aged 5; ten aged 4;  seven aged 3; eight aged
> 2; six aged 1; and fourteen aged under 1 year.
> 
>           There were 163 married couples, all of which were of childbearing
> age, but there were only 122 children.   Only about half the couples had any
> children at all.  It is possible some of them had been married less than a
> year, but this still seems to be a large number of childless couples.  Was
> this because the infant mortality was still very high?
> 
> Netti Schreiner-Yantis
> 
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=============================================================================
John N. Pearce                              voice/voicemail:  (540) 654-1311
Center for Historic Preservation / James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library
Mary Washington College                     fax:  (540) 654-1068
1301 College Avenue                         
Fredericksburg, VA 22401-5358               e-mail:  [log in to unmask]
=============================================================================

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