This letter from the unknown Sebastian Brandt in the Virginia Colony to a Mr Hojener back in England is a rather sad testament to the harsh life of the early English colonies in America. In it, Brandt shares news, of death and bad health, and requests supplies and his brother to be sent on the next ship. He also gives an insight into the hopes of the colonists regarding the discovery of precious metals and the colony’s relationship with the local Native American tribes. It shows the hard early life of a colony that was the first successful English one of the new land.

Though we do not know who Sebastian Brandt was, we can deduce a little of his life and circumstances from his letter. His talk of looking for precious metals indicates that he may have been one of the many men tempted to help colonise America with the promise of instant wealth. There was an influx of such people in the early stages of colonisation. The Virginia colony owed its success not to precious metals, however, but to its large tobacco crop. Many of the people who sailed to Virginia were young men who were indentured servants, who would work the tobacco crop for a set period of time. This meant an abundance of men and not enough women. The mortality rate of the colony did little to address this imbalance. By this point Brandt’s wife and brother had died and he himself had suffered such illness that he was unable to “travell up and downe the hills” to search for gold, an activity he saw as his primary purpose. Bad diets, long sea journeys and lack of medicine meant that death was always just around the corner and in its first few years alone Jamestown went from 3,000 colonists to around 600.

Though exporting a valuable commodity, Virginia had little in the way of home comforts. Brandt asks for clothing, shoes, food, cutlery, kitchen equipment and even a bed. He also asks for coloured beads “as you knowe the savage Indians use”. The Jamestown colonists had landed in an area that had no fresh water, little land for farming and few game for hunting and their survival depended not only on imports from England but also on trade with the surrounding tribes. Their relationships with these tribes were volatile to say the least. Though they were able to trade, the colonists also had no difficulty engaging in war. This eventually meant that they were able to expand Virginia as they depleted the numbers of the tribes around them in a number of vicious attacks and battles. 

This letter gives the very real sense that Jamestown, Virginia had a hard start in the new world. Death and ill health stalked the new settlement and there was little in the way of human necessaries. However, it was the first successful English colony and it continued to grow throughout the years, proving that life in America was possible, until it became part of the wider area known as the United States.

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