History of North America

How did the settlers in Virginia earn their living before tobacco?

The first English settlers to Virginia didn't have a cash crop for the first ten years of their existence -- just survival gardening. Tobacco didn't replace maize and wheat as Virginia's main crop until roughly 1737.

The colonists tried several early commercial ventures to generate income during Virginia's infancy: gold (found by the Spanish centuries before); lumber (there was quite a bit at first for export, but the trees ran out as time marched); naval stores such as pitch, tar and turpentine from pine forest distillation (an English monopoly); raising livestock that required land to graze and was costly.