The headright system was the primary mechanism for acquiring land in colonial Virginia from 1618 until approximately 1700. Under the system, any person who paid the cost of transporting an emigrant to the colony received fifty acres of land. A settler who paid his own passage received one headright; a wealthy planter who paid for the passage of labourers, servants, or family members received fifty acres per person transported. The system was designed to solve the colony's chronic labour shortage while simultaneously distributing land. Headright records are among the most important sources for early colonial immigration, because they name the people transported. In the absence of passenger manifests, which were not systematically kept before the nineteenth century, headright patents often provide the only evidence that a named individual arrived in Virginia. When a 'Richard Christian' appears as a headright in Captain Samuel Mathews's 1643 Rappahannock patent, or a 'Thomas Christian' patents land independently on the Chickahominy in 1657, these headright entries are the colonial record of their arrival. The system produced a society of large landowners and working poor. A planter who imported sixty labourers could claim three thousand acres. The land was free, but the annual quitrent to the Crown was not, and the land had to be settled and cultivated within three years or the patent lapsed.