William Claiborne - Early Life and Emigration To America

Early Life and Emigration To America

Claiborne was born in Kent, England in 1600 to Thomas Clayborn, an alderman and lord mayor from King's Lynn, Norfolk who made his living as a small-scale businessman involved in a variety of industries, including the salt and fish trades, and Sarah Smith, the daughter of a London brewer. The family name was spelled alternately as Clayborn, Clayborne, or Claiborne. William Claiborne, who was baptized on 10 August 1600, was the youngest of two sons. The family's business was not profitable enough to make it rich, and so Claiborne's older brother was apprenticed in London, becoming a merchant involved in hosiery and, eventually, the tobacco trade.

However, Claiborne was offered a position as a land surveyor in the new colony of Virginia, and arrived at Jamestown in 1621. The position carried a 200 acre (80 hectare) land grant, a salary of £30 per year, and the promise of fees paid by settlers who needed to have their land grants surveyed. His political acumen quickly made him one of the most successful Virginia colonists, and within four years of his arrival he had secured grants for 1,100 acres (445 hectares) of land and a retroactive salary of £60 a year from the Virginia colony's council. He also managed to survive the March 1622 attacks by native Powhatans on the Virginia settlers that killed more than 300 colonists. His financial success was followed by political success, and he gained appointment as Councilor in 1624 and Secretary of State for the colony in 1626. Around 1627 he began to trade for furs with the native Susquehannock on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay and two of its largest tributaries, the Potomac and Susquehanna Rivers. To facilitate this trade, Claiborne wanted to establish a trading post on Kent Island in the Chesapeake Bay, which he intended to make the center of a vast mercantile empire along the Atlantic Coast. Claiborne found both financial and political support for the Kent Island venture from London merchants Maurice Thomson, William Cloberry, John de la Barre, and Simon Turgis.