Pretend that you are an American colonist living in the time period we discussed in class. Write a letter to a friend or family member who still lives back home in Great Britain. Your letter should follow standard letter format. It needs to include at least 2 facts or events from the American Revolution. Facts should go in order and the date of your letter should be consistent with those facts. (Ex. Don’t date your letter for 1775 if you talk about the Declaration of Independence which happened in 1776.) It also needs to be creative, emotional, and entertaining. Letter Rubric:

___/10 pts – 2 facts or events

___/10 pts – Order of events and date of letter are accurate ___/10 pts – Correct friendly letter format

___/10 pts – Creativity and emotion

The first English settlers in Jamestown, Virginia, who arrived in 1607, were eager to find gold and silver. Instead they found sickness and disease. Eventually, these colonists learned how to survive in their new environment, and by the middle of the seventeenth century they discovered that their fortunes lay in growing tobacco.

This 1622 letter from Jamestown colonist Sebastian Brandt to Henry Hovener, a Dutch merchant living in London, provides a snapshot of the colony in flux. Brandt, who likely arrived in 1619 in a wave of 1,200 immigrants, writes of his wife’s and brother’s deaths the previous year almost in passing. He mentions that, due to his own illness, he “was not able to travell up and downe the hills and dales of these countries but doo nowe intend every daye to walke up and downe the hills for good Mineralls here is both golde silver and copper.” Most of Brandt’s letter is devoted to its real purpose: putting in orders for cheese, vinegar, tools, spices, and other assorted goods from the London Company that were not available in Virginia. Interestingly, he promises to pay in tobacco and furs—not in the gold and copper he’s looking for.

We know little about Brandt. He does not appear in any known existing official records, and historians presume he died not long after writing this letter. The glimpse he offers into early Jamestown serves as a tan

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