Anne Burras

Anne Burras was the first unmarried English woman in the New World known to have survived. She was also the first English woman to marry in the New World and the first to give birth to a known surviving child in the New World. She arrived in Jamestown on September 30, 1608 on the Mary and Margaret, the ship bringing the [http://www.apva.org/history/2ndsup.html Second Supply] as a 14 year old maid to Martha Forest, whose first name was thought to have been lost in history until a grave was found in VA. We now now her first name is Margaret (Martha) Forrest formerly Margaret Foxe. They were the first two English women in Jamestown. Martha Forest was ill from the crossing and did not live long in Virginia. Reportedly she died within the month. Anne was married in November to John Leydon, a carpenter who came on the Susan Constant in May 1607. Their marriage was the occasion of much festivity in spite of the bleak conditions. [Horn, James A Land as God Made It Copyright 2005 p. 118]

The following May, a large group including married women and children sent out by the Virginia Company added to the precarious position of the food supply at Jamestown as their large supply ship the Sea Venture which had been intended to furnish food for all the settlers had been destroyed in the hurricane that struck the fleet near Bermuda. The rest of the ships limped into Jamestown with injured and demoralized passengers. Believing their officers, husbands and friends on the Sea Venture dead only added to the colonists' sorrow and confusion.

Since by then all friendly contact with the Indians had ceased and Anne had been the only woman living in Jamestown, there would have been no one to help her when her baby was born. She must have been very glad to have these women nearby. Anne gave birth to a daughter, Virginia, in December 1609. She and John may have been living at Point Comfort, newly established as an outpost to Jamestown. The Point Comfort residents, while enduring numerous hardships fared better than the inhabitants of Jamestown during the Winter afterward referred to as the Starving Time. They had access to lobsters and hogs at Point Comfort, [Lapallo, Connie Dark Enough to See the Stars in a Jamestown Sky Copyright 2006] while those at Jamestown had nothing after their hogs on Hog Island were deliberately destroyed and their ability to harvest wild game was ended by the angry Indians.

Anne and John Leydon later moved to Elizabeth City. They were there in 1625 on the Muster Roll of the Living and the Dead recorded along with four daughters; Virginia, Margarett, Katherin, and Alice. John received convert|200|acre|km2|1 by patent in Henrico and patented an additional convert|1250|acre|km2|0 with Anne's brother, Anthony Burrows in 1636. The surname of Anne and her brothers; John and Anthony is spelled variously as Burras, Burras, Burrows and Burroughs. Nothing is known of their parentage. Reportedly from London, Anne and her brother, John both came on the Mary and Margaret. Anthony is believed to have joined them in Virginia about 1613 bringing his daughter, Ellen, who married William Harris, surveyor in 1624. The latest known record of Ann being alive was in 1625. Her date of death is not known.

Notes

References

* Horn, James A Land as God Made It Copyright 2005 p. 118
* Lapallo, Connie Dark Enough to See the Stars in a Jamestown Sky Copyright 2006

Further reading

* John Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England & The Summer Isles (Glasgow, Scotland: James MacLehose and Sons, 1907), Vol. 1: 203–05
* Horn, James A Land as God Made It Copyright 2005
* Kelso, William M. Jamestown, the Buried Truth Copyright 2006
* Minton, Giles Big Chief Elizabeth Copyright 2000 ISBN 978-0374265014
* John Smith, A True Relation of Occurrences and Accidents in Virginia, 1608. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/jamestown-browse?id=J1007