First Africans in Virginia

The first documented Africans in Virginia arrived here in Aug. 1619 on the White Lion, an English privateer based in the Netherlands. Colonial officials traded food for these “20 and odd” Africans, who had been captured from a Portuguese slave ship. Among present-day Hampton’s earliest African residents were Antony and Isabella. Their son, William, was the first child of African ancestry known to have been born in Virginia (ca. 1624). Many of the earliest Africans were held as slaves, but some individuals became free. A legal framework for hereditary, lifelong slavery in Virginia evolved during the 1600s. The United States abolished slavery in 1865.

Hampton, Virginia · United States