Richard REYNOLDS was the first ancestor in our family to set foot on American soil, arriving intidewater Virginia around 1610. He settled on a narrow peninsula of land between the York and James rivers near Chesapeake Bay, in what became York county. It was near Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement on mainland America. Jamstown had been established three years earlier by Captain John SMITH on behalf of the Virginia Company of London, a joint- stock company that held a grant from the King. ( The entire region was given the name Virginia by Sir Walter Raleigh, who had attempted colonization in 1585 on Roanoke Island, off what is now North Carolina. It was known as the Lost Colony, and failed for lack of supplies from the motherland to sustain it ).
The Indians were a threat to the Colony until 1614 when a settler named John ROLFE, married the daughter of POWHATAN, chief of the Tribes in the area. Her name was POCAHONTAS and the marriage halted the menace of raids, and brought an eight year peace. The Indians broke that peace in 1622 when they unexpectedly attacked settlements in the area, killing about 350 settlers.
John ROLFE also made a more lasting contribution...the means for economic survival of the Colony. In 1612 he began to raise tobacco, developed a way to cure it, and demonstrated that it could be successfully exported to markets in Europe. Thus, the settlers were given a way to support themselves.
Before coming to Virginia, Richard REYNOLDS spent his first 35 years in England. He was reared in the county of Kent and married Ann Harrison in Sussex, about 1605 when he was around 30. Richard and Ann raised a large family of eight sons and several unidentified daughters. At least three of the children were born in England but those born from 1610 onward are shown in books on the REYNOLDS family as having been born in York County, Virginia -- the basis for determining when the family arrived in America. They probably came on a ship known to have arrived in 1610 bringing more colonists and supplies -- and one that salvaged the Jamestown settlement following a winter of famine known as "the starving time."
The initial housing for these earliest colonists were simple wooden structures with thatched roofs. Furnishings were almost entirely handmade: thick wooden planks on sturday legs for a table; blocks of wood, small barrels or rough benches for chairs; and bags of straw for mattresses, placed on the floor or bedsteads made of log slabs. Hardly what had been available in England. But as the decades passed and the colony began to prosper, better houses were built and goods to make life better arrived in increasing quantities from the motherland.
The year 1619 brought two new groups to the Virginia Colony. The Virginia Company sent a boatload of women described as, "young, handsome and honestly educated maids" to become wives to lonely settlers. Also, Dutch traders brought Negro slaves to the New World for the first time. The same year saw establishment of the House of Burgesses, the first representative legislative assembly in the Western Hemisphere.
Following in the footsteps of his father with whom he worked with in England, Richard REYNOLDS began operating a trade and shipping business to furnish needed supplies to the Colonies, and carry their produce back to England. With the population growth in Virginia, Massachusetts, and other Colonies over the years, the enterprise expanded to a size large enough to require branches in England, New England, and Bermuda.
Four of his siblings settled in, or were involved with the New World. It is known that his brother Christopher arrived in the Isle of Wight, a Virginia county across the James river, aboard the "Francis and John" in 1622. Fourteen years later, he is recorded as having gotten a patent for 450 acres of land there. Robert also came at an early but undetermined date, and is known to have died in York county. Although Richard's brother George made several trips to Virginia, he did not stay there, but lived in Bristol, England. However four of his children emigrated to the Colonies. Another, William, settled in Bermuda. Some of them probably participated in the business with Richard, particularly the two living in Bermuda and England. He also had nephews who were among the increasing number of colonists moving into such places as Rhode Island and Kennebunk, Maine, the latter then considered a part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. (Taken from: A Family History, by Donovan Faust)
