1 Rates of prenuptial pregnancy in the Chesapeake colonies were as follows:

 

 

Percent of First Births Within

Place

Cohort

7 mos.

8 mos.

8.5 mos.

9 mos.

Somerset County, Md.

1665-95

23.7%

32.9%

34.2%

36.8%

Immigrants

 

 

 

 

 

Somerset County, Md.

1665-95

9.5%

19.0%

19.0%

20.6%

Natives

 

 

 

 

 

Middlesex County, Va.

1720-36

9.4%

 

15.2%

16.8%

Christ Church Parish

 

 

 

 

 

Gloucester County, Va.

1749-60

2.8%

 

13.9%

13.9%

Kingston Parish

1761-70

12.1%

 

22.7%

24.2%

Richmond County, Va.

1710-19

 

18.7%

 

 

 

1720-29

 

9.8%

 

 

 

1730-39

 

33.3%

 

 

 

1740-49

 

33.3%

 

 

 

1750-59

 

38.5%

 

 

Sources: Menard and Walsh, “Demography of Somerset County,” 23; Lois Green Carr and Lorena Walsh, “The Planter’s Wife: the Experience of White Women in Seventeenth Century Maryland,” WMQ3 34 (1977), 547-48; Daniel Scott Smith and Michael S. Hindus, “Prenuptial Pregnancy in America, 1640-1971: An Overview and Interpretation,” JIH 5 (1975), 537-70; Robert V. Wells, “Illegitimacy and Bridal Pregnancy in Colonial America,” in Peter Laslett et al., eds., Bastardy and Its Comparative History (Cambridge, 1980), 349-61; Lee Gladwin, “Tobacco and Sex: Factors Affecting Non-Marital Sexual Behavior in Colonial Virginia,” JSOCH 12 (1978), 57-78.