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In 1660, a young woman identified as "Mrs. Ann Toft," aged seventeen, mysteriously appeared on the Eastern Shore of Virginia and, in conjunction with one of the most powerful and notorious of the early settlers, Edmund Scarburgh II, began patenting large quantities of land at a rate unequaled by any person in the region. She acquired white and Indian servants, represented her own and Scarburgh's business interests, and in a few years was one of the richest individuals-and the richest woman-on the entire Eastern Shore. She had personal connections with the governor of Connecticut and the lieutenant governor of Nevis and, in 1671, she was the only person singled out by name in a report to the Council of Foreign Plantations in London encouraging settlement in Jamaica, where Toft already owned land. During these years, she also settled at a remote plantation named Gargaphia and, with apparently no husband, produced three daughters with the somewhat unusual names of Arcadia, Attalanta, and Annabella. When Scarburgh died in 1671, Toft quickly married Daniel Jenifer, a Maryland planter, and together they managed her vast holdings, secured excellent marriages for her daughters, and produced a son with the equally unusual name of Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer. As a married woman, she appeared less and less in the records and died in 1687. Her great-grandson, who carried her son's unusual name, represented Maryland at the U.S. Constitutional Convention.
Anne (or Ann) Toft's eleven-year stint as an unmarried land speculator, entrepreneur, and international trader, as well as her apparent long-term sexual relationship with one of Virginia's most prominent planters, certainly raises questions about the extent and limits of female power. At the same time, the activities of her business partner and probable paramour, Edmund Scarburgh II, also forces consideration of the extent and limits of male power. Edmund arrived in Virginia as a seventeen-year-old in 1635. A marriage about the same time produced five or six children born between 1639 and 1649. Upon arrival, he took over his late father's modest estate and immediately began his own land acquisition program, which netted him at least 34,000 acres on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay by the time he and Anne began their business and personal relationship. He bought and sold...