Women Who Anchored Empire: Ireland, Roanoke, and the Jamestown Brides | Tudorcon Talk

Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors

Heather Teysko

History

4.6 • 624 Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2026

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What role did women actually play in England’s early colonial experiments? In this Tudorcon 2025 talk, Colleen Parker explores the overlooked but essential role of women in early English colonization, beginning in Ireland and continuing through Roanoke and Jamestown. Rather than treating women as background figures, this talk shows how they functioned as household managers, negotiators, landholders, cultural intermediaries, and, in many cases, the key to whether a colony survived at all. Topics include: • Women in the Irish plantations as a testing ground for colonization • The role of women in Roanoke and the mystery of Virginia Dare • The Jamestown Brides and why “mail-order brides” is a misleading label • Women as property holders and legal actors in early Virginia • Daily survival, childbirth, labor, and negotiation with Native communities This is a rich, thoughtful look at how women shaped colonization on both sides of the Atlantic. 📣 Tudorcon 2026 Updates Speaker proposals for Tudorcon are open until February 15. If you’d like to present at a future Tudorcon, the submission form is linked below. 🎉 Flash Sale We’ve also announced Nathen Amin as our Tudorcon keynote. A limited-time flash sale is running this week ...save 15% with the coupon code BEAUFORT. 👉 Speaker form and tickets are all here: https://tudorcon.englandcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey friend, this is another TudorCon 2025 talk from this past TudorCon in October, three, four months ago.
0:07.8	Before we jump in, I want to set the scene for this talk because it is one that I genuinely loved when I heard it.
0:14.0	This is a TudorCon session by Colleen Parker exploring early women colonial settlers, starting in Ireland, moving through Roanoke and
0:22.8	Jamestown. What I really appreciate about this talk is that it doesn't treat women as a side
0:28.6	note in the story of colonization. Colleen puts them at the center as household managers,
0:35.1	negotiators, landholders. Sometimes the only reason that these early colonies
0:41.0	survived at all. So if you wondered how ideas about English colonization were tested in Ireland
0:47.6	before crossing the Atlantic or how women functioned as anchors in places like Roanoke
0:54.0	and Jamestown.
0:55.4	This talk will absolutely take you down a very, very satisfying rabbit hole.
1:00.6	A couple of quick notes before we begin.
1:03.4	If watching this talk makes you think I would love to give a talk like this,
1:07.1	speaker proposals for TudorCon 2026 are open for another couple of weeks until mid-February.
1:12.5	I will put the speaker submission link in the comments below.
1:16.5	We've also just announced Nathan Amin as our TudorCon 26 keynote.
1:22.3	To celebrate, we are running a flash sale on TudorCon tickets this week.
1:26.5	You can save 15% with the coupon code Beaufort, like as in Lady Margaret Beaufort.
1:32.1	All of the links are in the comments below.
1:35.8	All right, settle in.
1:36.8	This is a rich, very thoughtful talk, and I'm so glad to be able to share it with you here.
1:42.5	Turning it over now to Colleen Parker. I'm really excited to be here, very nervous. I've presented products before. Basically, this took me down a rabbit hole. I'm researching the Jamestown Brides for a novel that I'm working on. And then that started on the whole, well, what was beforeestown? I mean, obviously, we all know.
2:04.6	But this just took me down the rabbit hole. So I hope it brings you guys down the same rabbit hole of nerdiness. Oh, why are we not on? Now it's not working. I should have let you do it.
	...

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