The women of Jamestown

No wonder the new exhibition at Virginia’s Jamestown Settlement is titled “Tenacity,” said James Lee in The Washington Post. The artifacts on display tell the stories of the first women to live in colonial Virginia—all of whom fought desperately for survival, whether they were English, African, or Native American. Anne Burras was left the lone woman among 200 settlers not long after her 1608 arrival. She married two months later, miscarried after receiving a whipping, survived an attack by Native Americans, and eventually bore four daughters. I read dozens of such stories between displays of artifacts such as a “ducking chair,” a hateful device used to waterboard women who chattered too much. More heartening were the stories of Cockacoeske, leader of the Pamunkey, and Elizabeth Key, a mixed-race woman who sued for her freedom. As a gallery wall panel implores, “Remember the names of these women and speak them.”