Chapter 4: American Life in the Seventeenth Century, 1607-1692
Subject:
A.???The Unhealthy Chesapeake 1.?????Life in the American wilderness was nasty, brutish, and short for the earliest Chesapeake settlers; malaria, dysentery, and typhoid took a cruel toll, cutting ten years off the life expectancy of newcomers (half of people born in early Virginia/Maryland did not survive to twenty) 2.?????The disease-ravaged settlements of the Chesapeake grew only slowly in the seventeenth century, mostly through fresh immigration from England; the majority of immigrants were single men in their late teens and early twenties, and most perished soon after arrival a.?????Surviving males competed for the affections of the extremely scarce women, whom they outnumbered nearly six to one in 1650
