Raleigh Croshaw, Colonial Jamestown Investor

What would you do if you could claim hundreds of acres of land?

Raleigh Croshaw came to the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1608 as part of the ‘Second Supply’ group sent from England to the struggling colony with much-needed supplies and more colonists. He was a member of the Virginia Company of London, listed as one of the ‘adventurers’, meaning he was an original investor in the colony.

Croshaw was a gentleman merchant in England and a canny businessman intent on making the most of his investment. He spent time among the Powhattan Indians learning their ways, was a friend of John Smith, husband of Pocahontas, and took an active part in the defense of the colony, having a high opinion of the First Nations and their warfare.

As the colony established itself, Croshaw was in the thick of the action, holding office and receiving commissions to trade. He also paid for the transport of other colonists who couldn’t come up with the fare themselves, thereby receiving their labor on his farms for 3 to 7 years in repayment, plus land grants from the Company for helping to populate the colony.

This way of distributing the land mostly ignored the pre-existing ownership of the Native American people who lived there. Sometimes the English simply stated that they owned the land through right of discovery or right of conquest. Sometimes a treaty was negotiated with a local tribe, but mostly, these were outright land seizures. Later, land was also assigned for militia rights and by land grants awarded by the Governor at his discretion.

When exploration made it clear that there were no stores of gold to be had in Virginia - like the treasure the Spanish were plundering in South America - the English decided that tobacco, a crop with sacred meaning to the Powhattan people, would be a viable cash crop.

Tobacco, however, required lots of land and labor, so the governor began offering 50 acres to new immigrants who could pay their own way to the colony, and 3 acres to those who had worked off their 7-year indenture. These land grants were called ‘headrights’ because they were calculated per ‘head’ of people who met the criteria.

For those who couldn’t pay their way, the 50-acre headright usually went to the person who financed their trip to the colony. Someone like Croshaw or a ship’s captain. These headrights could be sold, so an investor could go home with cash as opposed to the title of land they didn’t want.

Headrights were also granted for bringing slave laborers to the colony, and the first shipment of recorded slaves was in 1638 when a mixed cargo of white indentured people and African captives arrived in Virginia.

And so it was that in 1623, “Captain Rawleigh Crashaw of Kequotan, gent., and ancient planter, was given 500 acres at Olde Poynte Comfort, ‘due for his personal adventure and transportation out of England of his servant and his wife who came in the Bona Nova in 1620.’

Five Hundred Acres.

Raleigh Croshaw had at least two sons, and one of them, Major Joseph Croshaw, inherited his father’s lands and added to them either by transporting new colonists or by purchasing the land outright. Here’s how it would have worked:

Joseph received or purchased the rights to a certain number of acres, say for paying the way for a group of colonists to travel from England to Jamestown. He then filed those rights with the county court. Next, he would go out looking for the land to claim with those rights and survey it – maybe he went out himself, or maybe he hired someone else to do the exploring, we don’t know.

Once the desired land was identified, Joseph went back to the court to deliver the survey, and the Secretary of the Colony prepared a ‘patent’ or land deed based on the survey. Once the Governor approved the patent, it was delivered to Joseph, the new landowner.

But wait, there’s more! Once a patent was issued, the land had to be settled within 3 years, trees had to be cleared and crops planted, or ownership would revert to the colony.  This work was known as ‘improving’ the land.

No land could be left untouched.

Between 1638 and 1659, Joseph Croshaw received at least nine patents for 7,200 acres, including his father’s original 500 acres in the area around what is now Williamsburg.

If you sold that much land in Virginia today, you would make about $172 BILLION.

And what did Major Joseph Croshaw do with all this land? Remember, he had to ‘improve’ it within three years, so he probably had indentured English settlers, some Native Americans, and a growing number of African slaves working on it, clearing and planting tobacco and food crops.

Joseph also amassed political power, becoming a burgess of the county and a Major in the colonial militia. His daughters married into the Governor’s family and more land was acquired. This extended family hung on to power for generations, accumulating more and more land, slaves, and power.

One final note about this illustrious land baron. The name or identity of his first wife, the mother of eight of his children, is not given in any document. She wasn’t that important, evidently. This means there is no evidence that she was Pocahontas’ cousin or the daughter of various proposed English couples as is often claimed.

I am descended from Major Joseph Croshaw and his unidentified wife, are You?

Learn More

·       The Virginia Archive is an awesome source for many things, here are a couple of relevant topics:

o   Headrights: https://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/va4_headrights.htm

o   Jamestown and Seventeenth-Century Virginia: https://lva-virginia.libguides.com/jamestown

·       Raleigh Croshaw at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raleigh_Croshaw

·       Keith Rocco’s Paintings of Jamestown, used in my video, give a good idea of what it may have been like in a (very clean) Jamestown: https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery.htm?id=caf0e659-155d-451f-67145e627f75f18a

·       Raleigh Croshaw at WikiTree with a good discussion of sources, etc.: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Croshaw-6

To view copies of the original land grants, visit this site and search ‘Croshaw’:

https://www.lva.virginia.gov/