In the shipping-lists and other records of the first settlement of Virginia, a large proportion of the colonists are carefully designated “gentlemen.” The circumstance, that the clergyman and surgeon-general have the honor to be mentioned in this company, but the untitled physician and surgeon are reckoned among the common people, will indicate pretty clearly the meaning of the distinction.

In the first ship, there are fifty “gentlemen,” with one hair-dresser, one tailor, one drummer, one mason, one blacksmith, four carpenters, and but eight professed laborers.

Speaking of the immigrants by the first three ships, Captain John Smith, in his autobiography, says there were not two dozen that had ever done a real day's work in their lives, before they left England. Of these, eight were Dutchmen and Poles. The rest of the nominal laborers had previously been gentlemen's lackeys and house-servants, or were bankrupt tradesmen and desperate loafers. “Ten good workmen would have done more substantial work than ten (of the best of them) in a week.”

To keep them all from perishing, Smith was obliged to drive them to work almost at the sword's point; and when he had the whole responsibility of government to occupy his mind, and its various duties of superintendence to take up his time, he himself did more hard and irksome manual labor, with his own hands, than any other man in the colony.