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This article explores youth, female agency, and the colonial marriage market in seventeenth-century Virginia through the case of Lucy Burwell. Even before her fifteenth birthday Lucy was the object of Governor Francis Nicholson’s courtship efforts, which she famously refused. Drawing on Nicholson’s surviving correspondence with Lucy and her parents, the article reveals the growing disparity between early modern English and Virginian perspectives on youth, authority and agency on the marriage market. Whereas Lucy and her parents believed in her right to choose her own partner, Nicholson invoked her youth as proof of immaturity when addressing her parents, while emphasizing his faith in Lucy’s decision making when addressing her. Lucy actively navigated female information networks to assess suitors, using advice, gossip, and reputation as tools of social control. This case study calls for a reassessment of early American marriage conventions, recognizing how settler societies provided young women with unexpected forms of autonomy distinct from English norms.