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46 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
natives, but that they also began earlier. Most white women who im-
migrated to the Chesapeake in the seventeenth century came as indentured
servants. They were usually in their early twenties when they arrived and
were bound for a four-year term. Some were purchased by planters as
wives, and others had illegimate children while still servants, but most
completed their terms and married before giving birth. Thus the mean
age at marriage for immigrant women must have been about 25 years,
perhaps higher. For native-born white women the mean age at first
marriage in the seventeenth century may have been as low as 16 years,
and it was certainly under 20.4B Perhaps the experience of black women
was similar. There seems no reason to assume that native-born slave
women bore their first child at a later age than whites, while an average
age at arrival of somewhat more than 20 years fits well with what little
is known about the ages of slaves purchased by traders in Africa.49 A
recent study of age at marriage among whites in Charles County has
found that native-born women, on the average, married seven or eight
years younger than had their immigrant mothers.50 If the age at which
black women had their first child in the colony fell as sharply, native fe-
males probably had several more children in Maryland than did women
born in Africa.
Given the prevailing sex ratio in the 17205 and before, there must have
been strong pressure for native-born black women to begin sexual inter-
course at an early age. The inventories yield evidence that they were in
fact young when they conceived their first child. Twenty inventories filed
in Maryland between 1711 and 1730 that associated a woman and her
children and listed their ages were discovered. By subtracting the age of
48 Craven, White, Red, and Blac\, 27-28. Mean age at first marriage for 58
women born in Somerset County, Md., before 1680 was 16.4 years. Calculated from
a register of vital events in Somerset County Deeds, IKL, Hall of Records. Mean
age at first marriage for women born in Charles County before 1680 was 17.8 years.
Calculated by Lorena S. Walsh from a register of vital events in Charles County
Court and Land Records, Q^i, P$i. Mean age at first marriage for women born in
Prince George's County before 1700 was 17.9 years. Calculated by Allan Kulikoff
from published genealogies. For evidence of contemporary recognition of the im-
portance of youthful marriages for the rapid growth of both the black and the
white populations in the Chesapeake see Gooch to Council of Trade and Planta-
tions, July 23, 1730, in Sainsbury et al., eds., Cat. State Papers, 1730, no. 348.
49 Davies, Royal African Company, 300. Patterson suggests that slave women
were usually between 15 and 25 when purchased in Africa, but introduces little
supporting evidence. Sociology of Slavery, 109.
50 Lorena S. Walsh, "Charles County, Maryland, 1658-1705: A Study of
Chesapeake Social and Political Structure" (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University,
in progress).
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