Intertwined Stories: The Origins of Slavery in Virginia

In Intertwined Stories, we’re taking a deeper dive into the history behind the podcast Intertwined: The Enslaved Community at George Washington’s Mount Vernon by bringing you extended versions of some of the interviews with the series' contributors. 

The origins of Mount Vernon’s enslaved community are linked directly to the early history of slavery in Virginia. Although the first enslaved people arrived in Virginia in 1619, slavery did not become the dominate labor system in the Chesapeake Bay region for more than a century. 

As we heard in Episode 1 of Intertwined, race-based slavery developed slowly in the Chesapeake. Colonists, merchants, and competing nations made a series of choices that interwove slavery into the fabric of Virginia’s society and economy. 

To learn more about how and why this happened, we talked to Dr. John C. Coombs, a professor of history at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. We also chatted about the connections between Barbados and Virginia that made Virginia an important part of the transatlantic slave trade long before it was a site of mass enslavement. 

Intertwined is narrated by Brenda Parker and is a production of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association and CD Squared. Full transcripts, show notes, and bibliographies for Intertwined are available at www.georgewashingtonpodcast.com.