Many people in the Southern colonies sought to make money and then go back to England where they could enjoy their riches. At first many young men came without families, but families eventually came to the Southern colonies. The richest families relied on chattel slavery for their labor needs and thus did not need many children. Since it took a lot of land in order to make money with the cash crops, one was often far away from one's neighbors. It was not uncommon for people to die at young ages due to malaria and yellow fever outbreaks.
In New England, families settled there in order to raise their children as both English in culture and Calvinist in religion. Many families had several children—the average family had 5.5 live births per household. These children combined with extended kin made up the labor force of the self-sufficient farms. Since the church was the most important part of the community, people had small landholdings and lived close to each other.
Women were more likely to die in childbirth than they were due to diseases carried by mosquitoes; it was not uncommon for men to remarry at least once. Since all male children desired their own farms once they became adults, this led to the gradual expansion of small farms to the West. New England also had more cities as many people turned away from the cold climate and sought their fortunes in shipping, fishing, and whaling.
Motives for English migration to North America
In leaving England, all of the English settlers sought freedom and opportunity, whether economic or religious. Most of the initial group that arrived at Jamestown in 1607, and most of those who followed to Virginia, sought to gain riches. Maryland became a sort of refuge for Catholics but eventually offered broader religious freedom. The Pilgrims who arrived at Plymouth in 1620 were motivated largely by the desire for religious liberty. Those Puritans who came sometime later and established the Massachusetts Bay colony had religious motives, but they also wanted to capitalize on trade with the native tribes.
Settlement patterns
Approximately 120,000 English settlers came to the Chesapeake (Virginia and Maryland) between 1607 and 1700. Roughly 21,000 came to New England. In both cases, the flow of settlers subsided during the latter half of the century. After the 1650s, most English emigrants, numbering roughly 23,000, went to the Middle Colonies of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Toward the end of the 1600s, slavery began to replace indentured servitude in Virginia. Owing to the import of slaves, the black population became substantial by the end of the century, making up about ten percent of Virginia's population in 1700.
In the 1600s, most of the settlers were young single men from the lower classes of English society. Those who could pay for their own passage to North America (officials, clergy, landowners) came as freemen; however, roughly sixty percent of settlers came as indentured servants. They agreed to work off their debt for several years and were then granted freedom.
Population growth and family life
In the Chesapeake in the 1600s, population growth was slack, owing to harsh conditions of life, short life expectancy, and the small number of women. The ratio of men to women in Virginia in the 1600s was between 5:1 and 4:1. Most of the women who came to the colony were indentured servants and could not marry until completing their term of servitude. This circumstance, coupled with high death rates, stood in the way of any substantial population growth. The situation was roughly the same in Maryland.
By 1642, approximately 21,000 Puritans settlers had arrived in New England, namely in the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies. What is sometimes called the "great migration" wasn't that great compared to the migration to the Chesapeake; however, most of the settlers came to New England as families. That meant that there was more of a balance between men and women. They also tended to be older and better off. The result was fast population growth. The white population of New England was 91,000 by the end of the century.
While the Chesapeake was a society of individuals, New England was based on community consistent with the Puritan ethic.
In his Give Me Liberty, Eric Foner provides a nice summary of these settlement patterns and population dynamics, not only for the 1600s but also for the 1700s.
New England was settled mainly by families, as the settlers were commonly Puritans seeking religious freedom in the New World. By contrast, the Chesapeake was originally settled by single men looking for their fortune or by indentured servants (both men and women). Later, many slaves were forcibly brought to the South, while few went to New England. The population growth in the Chesapeake was slower than in New England at first, as there were fewer families in the Chesapeake. There are several factors that explain these differences. The climate in the Chesapeake was swampy and caused high mortality rates from disease, unlike the cold, rocky New England climate. In addition, the South was conducive to growing tobacco and other crops that required a great deal of labor; this need was met by indentured servants and, later, slaves. New England, on the other hand, was better suited to small family farms.
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