Virginia House of Burgesses

The Virginia House of Burgesses was the first legislative assembly of elected representatives in North America.

The word "Burgess" means an elected or appointed official of a municipality, or the representative of a borough in the English House of Commons.

The House was established by the Virginia Company, who created the body as part of an effort to encourage English craftsmen to settle in North America and to make conditions in the colony more agreeable for its current inhabitants.

The House's first session of July 30, 1619, held in Jamestown, was cut short by an outbreak of malaria.

The assembly had 22 members from the following constituencies:

• James City (Captain William Powell, Ensign William Spense),
• Charles City (Sergeant Samuel Sharpe, Samuel Jordan),
• the City of Henricus (Thomas Dowse, John Polentine or John Plentine),
• Kicoughtan (Captain William Tucker, William Capps),
• Martin-Brandon (Captain John Martin's Plantation) (Thomas Davis, Robert Stacy),
• Smythe's Hundred (Captain Thomas Graves, Walter Shelley),
• Martin's Hundred (John Boys, John Jackson),
• Argall's Gift Plantation (Thomas Pawlett, Edward Gourgainy),
• Flowerdew Hundred Plantation or Flowerdieu Hundred (Ensign Edmund Rossingham, John Jefferson),
• Captain Lawne's Plantation (Captain Christopher Lawne, Ensign Washer), and
• Captain Ward's Plantation (Captain John Warde or Capt. John Ward, Lt. John Gibbs or Lt. Gibbes).[6]

Need Geni profiles (remove from this list when done)

• Christopher Lawne http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Lawne
• Sgt Samuel Sharpe http://vagenweb.org/tylers_bios/vol1-31.htm
• Capt Thomas Dowse http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/DOSS/2010-05/1274666809
• John Polentine Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers, 1607-1635: A Biographical Dictionary  By Martha W. McCartney. Page 564
• Robert Stacy http://vagenweb.org/tylers_bios/vol1-32.htm
• Walter Shelley Social Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: An Inquiry Into the ...  By Philip Alexander Bruce. Page 47
• John Boys Genealogical Gleanings in England, Volume 1 By Henry Fitz-Gilbert Waters. Page 312
• John Jackson http://vagenweb.org/tylers_bios/vol1-25.htm
• John Jefferson http://vagenweb.org/tylers_bios/vol1-25.htm
• John Gibbs http://www.conservapedia.com/John_Gibbs_(Burgess)_

Citations

• 6. Stanard, William G. and Mary Newton Stanard. The Virginia Colonial Register. Albany, NY: Joel Munsell's Sons Publishers, 1902. OCLC 253261475, Retrieved July 15, 2011. p. 52.

resources

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:House_of_Burgesses_members
• http://www.jstor.org/stable/4242354
• The Colonial Virginia Register A list of Governors, Councillors and Other Higher Officials, and also of Members of the House of Burgesses, and the Revolutionary Conventions of the Colony of Virginia --- Compiled by William Glover and Mary Newton Standard, published by Joel Munsell's Sons, Publishers, Albany, New York, 1902.
• The Jamestowne Society - Register of qualifying seventeenth century ancestors