Can you help trace the family of Ann Tanner, a young English woman from Essex County, sent to Virginia 400 years ago and traded for tobacco as a planter’s bride? Historian Jennifer Potter, author of The Jamestown Brides, would like to hear from you.
In 1621, 27-year-old Ann Tanner from Chelmsford in Essex sailed to Virginia on the Marmaduke to find a husband in the New World. She joined a shipment of 56 brides dispatched to the colony by the near-bankrupt Virginia Company of London.
Ann’s father Clement Tanner was a husbandman living in Chelmsford. She also had a saddler cousin, Thomas Tanner, living in Aldgate, London.
Ann may have married one of two recent arrivals to the colony: Thomas Doughtie or Nicholas Baly.
If you have any information about the Tanner family in Chelmsford, or Ann’s life in Virginia, contact Ms. Potter through her website, www.jenniferpotter.co.uk, where you can find out more about the story.
Read more about Ann Tanner and the search for her in the Essex Record Office’s blog post, From Chelmsford to Jamestown: the story of a bartered Essex bride.
