John Boys (fl. 1619–1627), member of the first General Assembly, was a literate gentleman of unknown parentage who may have come from one of several prominent Kentish families. A number of men of that name were born there late in the sixteenth century, and some may have been connected with men of the same name resident in the Netherlands at the same time, but no certain identification has been made. Boys may also have been related to one or more of at least three other contemporaneous Virginia colonists whose surnames, like his, were variously spelled Boys, Boyse, Boise, Boyce, or Boice.

John Boys probably arrived in Virginia aboard the Guift of God early in 1619 in company with the original group of settlers sent to Martin's Hundred, located on the north bank of the James River about ten miles downriver from Jamestown and near the later site of Carter's Grove plantation. Martin's Hundred was one of the particular plantations, large settlements owned by and operated for the benefit of specific groups of investors rather than the Virginia Company of London. Boys was one of two men who represented the hundred in the first General Assembly, which met in Jamestown from 30 July to 4 August 1619. He served on the assembly's first committee, appointed to consider reforms in the granting of land. The following November the governor named Boys one of the colony's four official tobacco tasters, charged with assessing quality and recommending prices for the different grades of that product.

His new post may have encouraged Boys to remain in Jamestown, for on 3 April 1620 some of the proprietors of Martin's Hundred complained to the Virginia Company that "one Boyse" had "forsaken their plantation and settled himselfe elsewhere." If he had been absent then, Boys returned to Martin's Hundred and was serving as its warden by the first months of 1621. His responsibilities included accepting and assigning laborers on behalf of influential investors. He may also have erected the first and most substantial palisaded dwelling at the Martin's Hundred site.

Boys survived the devastating Powhatan uprising of 2 March 1622, but Martin's Hundred suffered the most fatalities of any Virginia settlement. Five of his servants were killed, as were Thomas Boys and his child. The wives of John Boys and Thomas Boys, whom the records do not identify by name, were initially identified as killed, but one or both may have been among the approximately twenty women who were captured. The following year one of the captives, identified only as Mistress Boys, was allowed to return to the settlements and plead for the captives' ransom. Whether she was John Boys's wife is unknown.

What happened to John Boys thereafter is not clear. The few survivors at Martin's Hundred were dispersed to other sites, and when William Harwood arrived in the autumn of 1622 as the new commander of a rejuvenated plantation there, Boys may have been reassigned to transatlantic transport duties on behalf of the investors. Perhaps he sailed to England with the fall 1623 tobacco fleet, as his name does not appear on lists of Virginia inhabitants compiled in February 1624 and in 1625.

In April 1624 Boys's name was first on a petition of "poore Planters in Virginia" who had recently arrived in England and wanted the king to reduce the tax on tobacco. An unidentified grouping of them also complained to the Virginia Company's officers about the conduct of the governor and other officials in Jamestown. On 7 April 1625 colonist William Perry informed the governor that Boys and other Virginia planters had recently been in England and there encountered difficulties in getting their tobacco through customs because "the pryse of Tobacco was very lowe."

Boys disappears from extant Virginia records after 1625 except for a brief mention in the 1628 General Court minutes concerning an earlier, undated incident. English documents appear to show that in the summer of 1627 he imported some tobacco from Virginia. The surname survived in Virginia through descendants of Cheyney Boys, whose relationship to John Boys is unknown. Cheyney Boys, along with Luke Boys, also served briefly in the General Assembly.

John Boys was one of many relatively insignificant figures in Virginia's early history who played specific roles in important events for short periods of time and then faded into obscurity, leaving few documents and no descendants to recount their contributions. The date and place of his death are not known.

Sources Consulted:
Susan Myra Kingsbury, ed., The Records of the Virginia Company of London (1906–1935), 1:331–332 (first quotation), 2:518–522 (second quotation on 519), 3:228–229, 450–451, 4:98, 229; Henry R. McIlwaine, ed., Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia, 2d ed. (1979), 52 (third quotation), 166; Edward Waterhouse, A Declaration of the State of the Colony and Affaires in Virginia (1622), 41–42; Colonial Office (CO) 1/1, fols. 139–154, Public Record Office (PRO), National Archives, Kew, Eng., with facsimile and transcription in William J. Van Schreeven and George H. Reese, eds., Proceedings of the General Assembly of Virginia, July 30–August 4, 1619 (1969), 14–15, 24–25; Philip L. Barbour, ed., The Complete Works of Captain John Smith (1580–1631) (1986), 2:301–302, 309, 315; Ivor Noël Hume, Martin's Hundred, rev. ed. (1991), 340–345; J. Frederick Fausz, "The Missing Women of Martin's Hundred," American History 33 (Mar. 1998): 56–60, 62; tobacco importation recorded in PRO Exchequer Papers (E) 190/31/1 and E 190/32/8; a will of a John Boyse, dated 7 Aug. 1649 and proved 31 May 1650, was written preparatory to a voyage from England to Virginia but cannot be linked to the colonist (Prerogative Court of Canterbury Registered Wills, Pembroke 59, Principal Probate Registry, London, Eng.).

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by J. Frederick Fausz and Daphne Gentry.

How to cite this page:
J. Frederick Fausz and Daphne Gentry,"John Boys (fl. 1619–1627)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2001 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Boys_John, accessed [today's date]).

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