The first enslaved Africans arrived in colonial Virginia in 1619, but it took several decades before the institution of slavery was ingrained in law. It is generally recognized that the firm beginning of legal slavery was marked by a 1662 statute proclaiming that free or slave status was determined by the status of one’s mother. Virginia’s slave codes, or slave laws, were revised on several occasions over two centuries. One major revision occurred in 1705, when the Virginia legislature determined that enslaved people be treated as real estate for purposes of sale and inheritance.