Status Updates From American Colonies: The Sett...

1) “They have a saying here: Pennsylvania is heaven for farmers, paradise for artisans, and hell for officials and preachers.” - a quote from a mid-eighteenth century German immigrant.
2) Reading about the conditions on the slave trade boats is brutal.
3) Reading the section on George Whitefield is fun after recently watching “A Great Awakening.” His relationship with Ben Franklin was accurately depicted!

An acerbic acrostic from 1710 on Barbados as a profit-focused place without scruples:

Barbadoes Isle inhabited by Slaves
And for one honest man ten thousand knaves
Religion to thee’s a Romantick storey
Barbarity and ill-got wealth thy glory
All Sodom’s Sins are Centred in thy heart
Death is thy look and Death in every part
Oh! Glorious Isle in Vilany Excell
Sin to the Height - thy fate is Hell.

“From the perspective of the Indians, however, the English had metastasized an especially malignant and voracious tumor that spread with destructive rapidity, imperiling the native world.”

“Instead of a plantacion, Virginia will shortly get the name of a slaughterhouse.” - an English critique on Jamestown’s abysmal fatality rate. Of 10,000 people going to the colony from 1607-1622, only 20% were still alive in 1622.

On the low quality of settlers that went to Jamestown, the president of the Virginia company: “A more damned crew Hell never vomited.”