Colonial_Life英美概况——纵览·博闻.pdf

Colonial Life In 1775, over two million people lived in the thirteen American colonies and about 500,000 of them lived in Virginia, the largest and most populous colony. Many of these people were farmers or planters who lived and worked on small farms of less than two hundred acres. A relatively small number of Virginians were wealthy planters or merchants, and only about two percent of the population lived in Virginia’s few small towns or cities like York, Nor- folk, Richmond, Williamsburg, or Fredericksburg. About 200,000 of the people living in Virginia were enslaved African Americans most of whom worked in tobacco fields for white masters. A small farmer living in Virginia about the time of the American Revolution was probably concerned mainly with surviving and trying to improve the lives Re-created 18th-century farm at the Yorktown Victory Center of himself and his family. Whether he was a recent immigrant from England, Scotland, Ireland, or Germany, or a native Virginian, he probably hoped to improve his life by earning enough money to secure more land and nicer possessions. How did planters earn a living? To earn a living, planters grew some type of cash crop that could be sold for money or credit in order to buy needed tools, livestock, and household goods which could not be produced on the farm. Before the American Revolution, tobacco was the crop most Virginians grew and sold to English and Scottish merchants. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, however, many farmers began growing grains like wheat, oats and corn. These crops took fewer workers to grow, did not deplete t