Excerpt from Lotteries in American History The lotteries thus sanctioned were largely subscribed to, the Grocers' Company of London and other guilds taking shares, and we even find two London churches adventuring 6 in Virginia lottery tickets. The first lottery was drawn in both June and July, 1612, and a second was drawn November 17, 1615, all moneys of the adventurers being paid in to Sir Thomas Smith, treasurer, to inable us to make good supplies to the colonie in Virginia. The drawings were often post poned to enable the numbers of the lottery to be filled up. The amount realized from them was about but upon the House of Commons protesting against the Virginia Company's lotteries as an illegal raising of money without Parliamentary sanction, they were terminated in 1621, by an order in council. The earliest notice of an American lottery I have found (although it was not the first) was in Andrew Bradford's American Weekly Mercury, Philadelphia, February 23, 1720. It advertises a new brick house, corner of Third and Arch, for which 350 tickets, at 20 shillings each, were to be drawn. John Read and Henry Frogley have given 500 bond to the mayor to see a fair drawing. Soon after, lotteries appear to have become common, and their attendant evils led to the pas sage of an act as early as 1729, by the legislature, forbidding lotteries under a penalty of 100. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.