By the latter part of the 17th century, Maryland's plantation economy was firmly established, and as political power shifted from English nobles to wealthy planters and fewer indentured servants came from Europe, demand grew for more and cheaper labor. Slavery was legalized in Maryland in 1664, only 30 years after the colony's founding, and the importation of captured and kidnapped enslaved Africans increased, with Maryland and Virginia importing about 6,000 enslaved people directly from Africa by 1700. By 1719, 30 percent of Maryland's population was of African descent, and enslaved African populations continued to grow for the next 50 years. Enslaved Africans in Maryland came from many cultures, including Igbo, Asante, and Angolan peoples, and many had already endured forced marches to the coast, captivity in fortresses such as Cape Coast Castle, and the brutal Middle Passage aboard overcrowded, disease-ridden ships where they were chained together, abused, and separated by language from both captors and fellow prisoners. Some were carried toward the Patuxent on ships such as the Generous Jenny, while records of many voyages have been lost or did not survive. At the plantation established by James Bowles on 2,000 acres along the Patuxent River by 1699, wealth and status were built through plantation production, public office, and profits from the slave trade, including Bowles's work as an agent for the Royal African Company. Bowles came from a family of English merchants tied to trade in tobacco, sugar, and slaves, was connected to prominent Maryland elite families, and served in the Upper and Lower Houses of colonial government as well as Officer of the Upper Potomac. After Bowles died in London in 1727, his widow Rebecca Tasker Addison Bowles and their three daughters inherited property that included 41 slaves, and after her remarriage to George Plater II in 1729, the Plater family continued to depend on enslaved labor at Sotterley for the next 100 years. Ownership later passed to the Briscoe family in the 19th century, which also relied on chattel slavery, and slavery remained a way of life at Sotterley for 165 years until Maryland emancipated slaves on November 1, 1864.