August 1619
Captive Africans sold at Point Comfort
Virginia; Africans taken from the Angola region
In late August 1619, the White Lion brought captive Africans to Point Comfort, where Virginia’s governor and cape merchant bought them for provisions. John Rolfe reported more than twenty people. The captives had been seized at sea from a slave ship carrying people taken from the Angola region.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
Rolfe called the vessel Dutch; research identifies an English privateer operating with a Dutch commission. Point Comfort was the landing place, not Jamestown. Captivity and sale preceded Virginia’s later hereditary-slavery statutes; this was not the beginning of African enslavement in the Americas.
Sources
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, chapter 2, pp. 23–25; supplied print pages, edition/year unidentified
- John Rolfe to Edwin Sandys (January 1619/20), Records of the Virginia Company 3:243 ↗
- Martha McCartney, Virginia’s First Africans: voyage reconstruction and evolving status ↗
- Library of Congress — Virginia Records Timeline ↗