John Rolfe’s Letter to Sir Edwin Sandys about Enslaved Africans

When John Rolfe related in a letter to Sir Edwin Sandys that “20 and odd Negroes” had been off- loaded by a Dutch ship at Point Comfort in 1619, he had no notion of the lasting importance of his account. The seemingly casual comment recorded the first documented case of Africans sold into servitude to British North America. Purchased as indentures in the labor-starved Virginia colony, these twenty-some souls disappeared into the anonymous pool of workers transported to the colony during its first decades. The origins of the Africans and their ultimate fates have long been debated by historians and others studying the account. Rolfe provided little detail and made no further mention of the group.