Temperance Flowerdew, Lady Yeardley (b. 1587 – d. 1628)[3][4] was an early settler of the Jamestown Colony and a key member of the Flowerdew family, significant participants in the history of Jamestown. Temperance Flowerdew was wife of two Governors of Virginia, sister of another early colonist,[5] aunt to a representative at the first General Assembly[6] and "cousin-german" (first cousin) to the Secretary to the Colony.[7]
Flowerdew was one of the few survivors of the winter of 1609–10, known as the "Starving Time", which killed almost ninety percent of Jamestown's inhabitants.[citation needed] Later, upon the death of her second husband, George Yeardley, Flowerdew became one of the wealthiest women in Virginia.[8] Upon her death, the estate was transferred to her children despite the efforts of her third husband to claim it.[8][9]
Flowerdew was named one of the Virginia Women in History by the Library of Virginia in 2018.[10]
^James P. C. Southall. “Concerning George Yardley and Temperance Flowerdew: A Synopsis and Review.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 55, no. 3, 1947, pp. 259–66. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4245492. Accessed 20 Aug. 2024.
^Dorman, John Frederick, Adventurers of Purse and Person, 4th ed., v.3, pp861-872
^"Although George Yeardley acquired the thousand acres that he named Flowerdew Hundred in 1619, it seems very likely that some settlement had begun there before that date, for his brother-in-law Stanley Flowerdew took a shipment of tobacco to England in the same year, probably grown on the same property." Flowerdew Hundred: the archaeology of a Virginia Plantation by James Deetz, p. 19
^Ensign Edmund Rossingham, son of Temperance's sister Mary, represented Flowerdew Hundred in the first General Assembly in 1619. Southall, James P.C., "Concerning George Yardley and Temperance Flowerdew", William and Mary Quarterly, Jul 1947
^Charlotte Fell-Smith, ‘Pory, John (bap. 1572, d. 1636?)’, rev. David R. Ransome, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2007 accessed 28 Sept 2011
^ abDonaldson, Evelyn Kinder. "Squires and Dames of Old Virginia, 1950" p. 21 Los Angeles, Calif: Miller Print Co., 1950
^Sturtz, Linda, Within Her Power: Propertied Women in Colonial Virginia, New York: Routledge (2002) p.24