Emanuel Driggus (b. c. 1620s-d. 1673) and his wife Frances were

Atlantic Creole Atlantic Creole is a cultural identifier of those with origins in the transatlantic settlement of the Americas via Europe and Africa.Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the East Coast of the United States, Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography an ...

, of the

Chesapeake Bay Colony The Colony of Virginia, chartered in 1606 and settled in 1607, was the first enduring English colony in North America, following failed attempts at settlement on Newfoundland by Sir Humphrey GilbertGilbert (Saunders Family), Sir Humphrey" (histor ...

. The name ''Driggus'' is likely a corruption of the

Portuguese name A Portuguese name is typically composed of one or two personal names, and a number of family names (rarely one, often two or three, sometimes more). The first additional names are usually the mother's family surname(s) and the father's family su ...

''Rodrigues'' as he was born in the Portuguese colony of

Ndongo The Kingdom of Ndongo, formerly known as Angola or Dongo, was an early-modern African state located in what is now Angola. The Kingdom of Ndongo is first recorded in the sixteenth century. It was one of multiple vassal states to Kongo, thoug ...

(as were others among the

First Africans in Virginia The first Africans in Virginia were a group of "twenty and odd" captive enslaved persons originally from modern-day Angola who landed at Old Point Comfort in Hampton, Virginia in late August 1619, whose arrival is seen as a beginning of the his ...

, such as John Graweere and Angela). The two first appear in a record of sale in 1640 to Captain Francis Potts; at the time they arranged for a contract of limited indenture for their two children in service."Individual Stories- Individual Heroes"
, ''Slavery and the Making of America'', WNET, accessed 30 September 2011 The Driggus couple had other children, who were born into slavery. In 1657, Captain Potts sold two of their children, Thomas and Ann Driggus, to pay off some personal debt. Driggus was freed after the death of Potts in 1658. By then he was a widower and had remarried, but he continued to provide for the enslaved children from his first marriage. He bequeathed a horse to his daughters Francy and Jane before his death in 1673."The Slave Experience: Family"
''Slavery and the Making of America,'' PBS, accessed 30 September 2011 His son Thomas Driggus eventually married a free black woman; because she was free, their children were born free. According to the principle of ''

partus sequitur ventrem ''Partus sequitur ventrem'' (L. "That which is born follows the womb"; also ''partus'') was a legal doctrine passed in colonial Virginia in 1662 and other English crown colonies in the Americas which defined the legal status of children born t ...

'', adopted into Virginia law in 1662, children born in the colony took the status of their mother. This principle, which contributed to the expansion of

chattel slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

, was widely adopted by other colonies and incorporated into state laws after the

American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of ...

References

Further reading