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Immigrants and Their Increase
89
FIGURE 4.1. Population Growth in Virginia and Maryland, 1607-1700
historians have given it scarcely more attention than did the Board of
Trade.2
Wesley Frank Craven is an exception. In a recent essay, Craven argued
that the population of Virginia in 1700 was at most only equal to the total
number of immigrants in the seventeenth century.3 Is Craven correct?
Did continuous waves of new settlers obscure a failure to achieve reproduc-
tive increase in the seventeenth century? If so, why? When and why did
natural population growth begin? This essay, using evidence drawn princi-
pally from Maryland sources, addresses these questions. Only the Euro-
pean immigrant experience is considered. Africans, who had a broadly sim-
ilar demographic history, have been discussed elsewhere.4
Although Craven's argument is persuasive, his evidence is inadequate.
His principal source is the record of headright grants kept by the clerks of
Virginia land office. His conclusion rests on a comparison of the total num-
ber of grants before 1700 with estimates of total population in 1700. How-
ever, as Craven notes, the record of headrights is not a fully reliable guide
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