First Vote in Jamestown Was Start of Democracy

Convened with little fanfare or formality, the first gathering of a representative governing body anywhere in the Americas — the General Assembly of Virginia — met from July 30 to August 4, 1619 in the choir of the newly built church at Jamestown. Following instructions from the the colony’s financial backers, Virginia Company of London, the meeting’s principal purpose was to introduce “just Laws for the happy guiding and governing of the people.” The assembly sat as a single body and was made up of the governor, Sir George Yeardley, his four councilors, and twenty-two burgesses chosen by the free, white, male inhabitants of every town, corporation, and large plantation throughout the colony.