There is very little justification for including silk culture as an
enterprise in the agricultural history of the Jamestown Colony. It
was one product that was usually placed first in recommendations of
the authorities who sponsored the settlement of Virginia.
In keeping with the improved status of the social and economic life
of England, in the latter years of the sixteenth century, came a
desire for finer and more lustrous fabrics in their articles of
dress. Serges and tweeds, woven from the fleeces of their
coarse-wooled sheep, no longer satisfied the fastidious tastes of the
ruling aristocracy. Even calicos from far-away Calcutta were esteemed
fit for royal inaugural gowns. Silk was the last word in luxurious
garb.
Silkworms had been reared in the Orient from ancient times. These
moths had been domesticated for so many years they had become fully
dependent on human aid for existence. They could crawl but could not
fly. While silk brought fabulous prices on the world's market there
were numerous reasons why its culture never succeeded in America. The
handling of the creeping, crawling, ill-smelling worms was
objectionable to anyone not accustomed from childhood to the task.
Old people and young girls who were the ones employed in rearing
silkworms in the Orient received the equivalent of a few cents a day
for their labor. Such cheap help was not available in Virginia.
Perhaps, the most serious objection of all was the lack of a suitable
food supply for the worms. A silkworm from the time it hatches from
the egg till it spins its cocoon devours a mass of green forage.
Leaves of the mulberry tree are its favorite diet. In fact, without a
supply of mulberry trees, successful silk culture is out of the
question. Growing a crop of trees had to precede the rearing of
worms. This took several years. Nevertheless, the directions of the
London Company urged in season and out that the colonists should
produce silk.
Governor Wyatt, in 1621, was instructed: "Not to permit any, but the
council and heads of hundreds, to wear gold in the clothes, or to
wear silk till they make it themselves." Nothing came from this
order. In 1656, the agitation for silk became so intense, the General
Assembly was forced to take action. First, an experienced silk
grower, an Armenian by the name of George, was sent to the colony,
and the General Assembly was ordered to give him four thousand pounds
of tobacco to keep him in the country. Another law, passed that year,
ordered that each planter set out ten mulberry trees for each one
hundred acres of land he owned. These trees were to be fenced, to
protect them from horses and cattle, and to be kept weeded. This law
was repealed, two years later, as it "seems rather troublesome and
burthensome than any waies advantageous to the country." The law was
re-enacted in 1661 but given a three years delay as it was impossible
to get mulberry trees. The General Assembly, in 1657, voted a bounty
of 5000 pounds of tobacco to any planter producing 100 pounds of
wound silk. There were no claimants. Two years later, the bounty was
increased to 10,000 pounds of tobacco and the amount of silk required
was reduced to 50 pounds. Again the results were negative. Then a
bounty of fifty pounds of tobacco for each pound of silk was ordered.
The effects from all these orders are summed up in an act of the
General Assembly in 1663 which reads:
George, the Armenian, having proved the making of ten pounds of
wound silk, it is ordered there be paid him for his
encouragement in the levy according to act.
It is assumed that George received 500 pounds of tobacco. What became
of the silk is not recorded. A few years later the price per pound of
wound silk was fixed by the General Assembly at 20 shillings or two
hundred pounds of tobacco.