Tenacious is an interesting adjective. Part of its meaning can be defined as persistent, not easy to get rid of, or enduring. All of these words describe the historic women who make up Jamestown Settlement’s Tenacity, a special exhibit that runs through January 5, 2020.

The exhibit is remarkable in that it includes documents such as the 1621 Ferrar Papers and the 1625 Colony Muster, both on loan from the Master and Fellows of Magdalene College, Cambridge and the National Archives of the UK respectively. Other notable pieces include items such as a period clothing and furniture.

Joining me in this episode to discuss Tenacity is Nancy Egloff, a returning guest, who was very instrumental in Tenacity’s creation.

LINKS TO THE PODCAST:

• The Tenacity Interview on Libsyn
• RSS Feed
• VA History Podcast on iTunes
• VA History Podcast on Podbay
• VA History Podcast on Stitcher
• VA History Podcast Store

Names of the women in Virginia are displayed on the “Tenacity” exhibition stairway. Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation Photo.

Court Cupboard, ca. 1650-1670, Courtesy of Early Southern Decorative Arts. Gift of Frank L. Horton.

Ducking Chair, English traditional 17th Century, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation Collection.

Embroidered bodice, circa 1610, Courtesy of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Ferrar Papers Interactive screen. Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation Photo.

Muster of Virginia, ca. 1625. Angelo a negro woman on the Treasurer, Courtesy of the National Archives of the UK.

Page from the Ferrar Papers, Master and Fellows of Magdalene College, Cambridge, UK, FP 309, 3r watermark.

SOURCES:

1. Breen, T.H. and Innes, Stephen. Myne Owne Ground: Race and Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1640-1676. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
2. Brown, Kathleen. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
3. Heywood, Linda and Thornton, John. Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
4. Kierner, Cynthia; Loux, Jennifer; and Taylor-Schockley, Megan. Changing History: Virginia Women Through Four Centuries. Richmond, VA: Library of Virginia, 2013.
5. McCartney, Martha. Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers, 1607-1635: A Biographical Dictionary. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2007.
6. McIlwaine, H.R., ed. Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia.
7. Meyer, Virginia and Dorman, John F., eds. Adventurers of Purse and Person, 1607-1624/5. Order of First Families of Virginia, 1987.
8. Potter, Jennifer. The Jamestown Brides. London: Atlantic Books, 2018. (Due out in America through Oxford University Press in June, 2019).
9. Rountree, Helen. Pocahontas’s People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia Through Four Centuries. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.
10. Snyder, Terri. Brabbling Women, Disorderly Speech and the Law in Early Virginia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.
11. Sturtz, Linda. Within Her Power: Propertied Women in Colonial Virginia. New York: Routledge, 2002.

ADDITIONAL LINKS:

• The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation
• The House of Burgesses – Interview with Nancy Egloff
• Commemoration 2019

All photography used on this site is owned and copyrighted by the author unless otherwise noted. The Featured Image is the Tenacity exhibition logo, copyright Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation.

Music used for this episode – Louis Armstrong and the Mills Brothers,”Carry Me Back to Old Virginia” available on iTunes, and “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” from Solomon by George Frideric Handel played by New York Virtuosi.