On this day in 1606, King James I issued a charter to The Virginia Company with the objective of colonizing the eastern coast of America. The coast was named Virginia, after Elizabeth I, and it stretched from present-day Maine to the Carolinas. The company’s shareholders were Londoners, and it was distinguished from the Plymouth Company, which was chartered at the same time and composed largely of gentlemen from Plymouth, England.
John Rolfe had introduced new and better strains of tobacco from the Caribbean. Cultivation of Rolfe’s new tobacco strains produced a strong commodity crop for export for the London Company and other early English colonies and helped to balance a national trade deficit with Spain. The company failed in 1624, following the widespread destruction of the Great Massacre of 1622 by indigenous peoples in the colony, which decimated the English population. On 24 May, James dissolved the company and made Virginia a royal colony from England with propertied male colonists retaining some representative-government through the lower house, the House of Burgesses.
Irony alert!
Signses…
April 9, 2025
Today is the birthday, in 1959, of American guitarist, singer, and songwriter Brian Setzer, guitar, vocals, The Stray Cats who spearheaded the neo-rockabilly movement of the early 1980s. They scored the 1980 UK No.9 single ‘Runaway Boys’, and the 1983 US No.3 single ‘Stray Cat Strut’. He later worked with his swing revival band, the Brian Setzer Orchestra. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEtbfzMLVWU
