15. What number of planters, servants and slaves; and how many parishes are there in your plantation?
Answer. We suppose, and I am very sure we do not much miscount, that there is in Virginia above forty thousand persons, men, women, and children, and of which there are two thousand black slaves, six thousand christian servants, for a short time, the rest are born in the country or have come in to settle and seat, in bettering their condition in a growing country.
16. What number of English, Scots, or Irish have for these seven yeares last past come yearly to plant and inhabite within your government; as also what blacks or slaves have been brought in within the said time?
Answer. Yearly, we suppose there comes in, of servants, about fifteen hundred, of which, most are English, few Scotch, and fewer Irish, and not above two or three ships of negroes in seven years.
17. What number of people have yearly died, within your plantation and government for these seven years last past, both whites and blacks?
Answer. All new plantations are, for an age or two, unhealthy, 'till they are thoroughly cleared of wood; but unless we have a particular register office, for the denoting of all that died, I cannot give a particular answer to this query, only this I can say, that there is not often unseasoned hands (as we term them) that die now, whereas heretofore not one of five escaped the first year.