Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/537

 in the valley of the Roanoke or Moratock River, after selecting a secure position and providing an abundant supply of ammunition. In 1646, Fort Henry on the Appomattox with six hundred acres attached was granted to Captain Abraham Wood, Fort James on the Chickahominy with four hundred acres to Thomas Rolfe, and Fort Royal with six hundred acres to Captain Roger Marshall, in return for which each was to maintain a band of rangers for the defence of these fortified posts.

In the beginning, the performance of manual services was hardly a less common means of acquiring an estate in Virginia than the performance of religious or administrative services. Every man who became a tenant or servant of the Company previous to the return of Sir Thomas Dale was allowed, at the expiration of the term for which he had bound himself, a patent to one hundred acres of land, and this was perhaps enlarged to two hundred if the owner erected a house upon the second hundred acres in the course of three years. The tenant or servant, by settling in Virginia and there for a certain length of time devoting his physical powers to the cultivation of the lands of the Company, was looked upon as having placed himself upon the footing of the shareholder who had invested twelve pounds and ten shillings in its stock, and he was, therefore, on the expiration of the time prescribed in his covenants, entitled to the same extent of soil, with probably the right to the same additional area upon the performance of the conditions applying to an ordinary shareholder.