Children of Mixed Lineage in the Colonial Chesapeake

The second chapter follows the development of English society’s response to the rise of mixed-heritage children in the colonial Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland from the 1690s into the early eighteenth century. This was a critical period for the establishment of hypodescent ideology in North America, as colonial officials in both Virginia and Maryland passed laws that sought to prohibit interracial relationships and inhibit racial intermixture. Colonial magistrates and planters wanted to regulate “Mulattoes” in order to keep them in bondage and many cases appear in county and provincial court records that identify longer period of indentured servitude and punishment for “white” Europeans, especially women, who engaged in relationships with “Negro,” “Indian,” and “Mulatto” men. Cases of “bastardy” and “fornication” began to appear with greater regularly in the Tidewater Chesapeake and often included additional punishment for interracial unions, along with thirty or thirty-one years of servitude for Mulatto children with “white” mothers, as colonists established that slavery would pass through the maternal line.