After seeing where James Fort was located and would have looked like, we walked down the path to where historic Jamestown had been built. This unusual building is called the Archaearium, and it houses displays of the history of the first permanent settlement in the new world. Its location is actually on the site of the original statehouse. While the museum looks at history by topics, we’ll take a chronological look at what it had to share.
why the trip across the ocean
Jamestown was possible because of the improvements in European ship design and navigation in the 1400s that meant the Atlantic Ocean could link the Americas, Africa, and Europe instead of separating them.
When Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603, King James of Scotland assumed the throne to become King James I. He used the term “Britain” or Great Britain” to identify his expanded realm, including Ireland and Wales.
1606
Dreams of finding wealth in a new world drew English settlers who were financially backed by the Virginia Company in London.
England was overpopulated and its economy depressed. A new colony across the ocean seemed to many to be a promised land for the unemployed, land for younger sons who wouldn’t inherit land, and profit for merchants and sea captains.
King James I granted a charter in April to London’s Virginia Company for exploration, trade, and settlement in the coastal area from Maine to North Carolina. The Virginia Company consisted of gentlemen (soldiers), nobles, and merchants.
Other goals for the charter were to compete with the Spanish in America, expose Virginia Indians to the Church of England, and turn Virginia’s natural resources into profit.
route across the Atlantic
Similar to the route Columbus took, the first colonists arrived 5 months after they took off in December.
1. In 3 ships, they sailed south to the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa.
2. Pushed by trade winds, they crossed the Atlantic to the West Indies.
3. Here they stopped to take on fresh water and supplies.
4. A northerly sail along the east coast of America brought them to the Chesapeake Bay in 16 days where they looked for a site to land.
5. The men finally arrived at Jamestown on May 13, 1607.
choosing the site
For a couple of weeks, Captain Newport searched the tributary waters of the Chesapeake Bay (just north of Jamestown) for a location that would meet the Virginia Company’s instructions.
the first to settle here
On the 3 ships to make it to the Virginia coast were 100 men and 4 boys (the boys probably worked on the ships). Since they were expecting push back from the Indians, most of the men were gentlemen soldiers.
In the early 17th century, those born to the wealthier classes, but not the first born who could inherit land, found a military profession suitable. They commanded troops and decided on tactics. The men who came to Virginia had experience on the battlegrounds of Europe, came equipped to fight with up-to-date arms, armor, and methods of warfare.
Historians haven’t been kind to these men because they didn’t contribute to sustaining the colony by helping out the laborers. But their essential role in the military colony was protection, not labor.
In addition to the laborers listed here, men with the following skills were included in the first group of 100 settlers: carpenters, blacksmith, barber, bricklayers, mason, and a tailor.
local natives
During the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the 10,000 square miles of the Chesapeake region was inhabited by the Tsenacommacah. Powhatan was the Chief of Chiefs who ruled over nearly 15,000 people, but his authority wasn’t absolute over all the territory. He ruled by threat of force and by marriage alliances and persuasion.
He was wary of the English, offering them maize in trade instead of the gold they were hoping for.
The colonists felt no immediate threat from the Virginia Indians who seemed to want to be friends. However, within 2 weeks more than 100 Virginia Indians attacked, wounding 10 colonists and killing 2. At this point, John Smith records that the decision was made to fortify the fort.
In January 1608, the “First Supply” of around 100 skilled tradespeople from England increases the fort’s small population and brings them some supplies.
In September 1608, John Smith is elected President of the colony; he will soon issue the edict that “he that will not work shall not eat.”
In October 1608, Captain Newport returns to Virginia with the “Second Supply” of immigrants and supplies. Some 70 new immigrants arrive, including 8 “glasse-men” of either German or Polish origin, as well as two women, Mrs. Thomas Forrest and her maid, Anne Burras.
However, because of the drought and attacks by the Indians, men died. By the end of 1608, the population of the English in Virginia fell to 38.
drought
Not only did the colonists settle in a difficult area to live in, but they also came at a bad time—the worst extended drought in 700 years. The colonists, desperate for food, first traded for corn from neighboring tribes. However, when the tribes began to refuse to give them food because they were short on food also, the settlers assumed the Powhatan were lying and began using force to take what they wanted.
In October 1609, after Capt. George Percy replaces Capt. John Smith as leader, Smith is badly wounded in a suspicious gunpowder explosion and forced to return to England. The ship’s departure is the signal for the Powhatans to attack the English all along the James River.
When these 200 more English arrived, Powhatan refused to supply maize and ordered a siege that reduced the colonists to eating vermin in the winter of 1609-10 and is called the “Starving Time.” All but 60 colonists are dead by the end of the year. This is the first Anglo-Powhatan War.
Starvation, sickness, or the Indians were responsible for killing 2 out of 3 settlers during this time.
Colonists ate anything they could, including shoe leather. Evidence has found that 2 horses brought from England had been butchered for their meat and bone marrow. Hacked dog jaws reinforce the desperation that the settles must have felt to turn on their companion animals. Evidence is even found of cannibalism.
Meanwhile, in the summer of 1609, the “Third Supply” of 9 ships and 500 immigrants leave England for Virginia, but a hurricane scatters the fleet and wrecks the flag ship Sea Venture on a reef in Bermuda. All 150 onboard are saved and soon begin rebuilding 2 boats from the wreckage.
In August 1609, the 8 ships that survived the hurricane arrive at Jamestown with about 300 men, women, and children and few provisions to feed them.
In May 1610, those who had been onboard the Sea Venture finally made it to Virginia, finding only 60 starved survivors and the fort in ruins.
Two important men were among this new group. One was John Rolfe who later married Pocahontas and who also was responsible for bringing tobacco to Virginia.
On June 7, Sir Thomas Gates, as the acting governor of the colony, decides to abandon Jamestown and return to England with the survivors. On June 8 as Gates’s convoy is coming down the James River, he meets the resupply ships led by Governor Thomas West, known as Lord De La Warr, who demands that they all return to Jamestown (our tour guide archeologist said it was because he wanted a place and a people to govern). On June 10, Lord De La Warr orders the settlers to clean up and reestablish James Fort. They repair the church and being constructing new buildings. Jamestown is saved.
early years
In 1608, the first substantial Jamestown church was built and is the earliest Protestant church yet found in North America.
John Rolfe’s history
John Rolfe and his first wife were on the Sea Venture with Governor Sir Thomas Gates when the the hurricane shipwrecked it on Bermuda. Their newborn daughter didn’t survive, and her mother died shortly after reaching Virginia.
On April 5, 1614, Rolfe marred his second wife, Rebecca (Pocahontas). He also served as the secretary of the colony and as a council member in the first General Assembly. He died in 1622 when sailing back to England.
This union of an English gentleman and the favored daughter of Powhatan formally ended hostilities between the 2 peoples that had begun almost 5 years earlier. But what about her kidnapping?
The English learned that Pocahontas was among the Patawomeck and orchestrated her capture. She was kept under close guard for nearly a year at James Fort. During her captivity, she observed English customs, learned the language, and met planter John Rolfe. Eventually she converted to Christianity and took the name Rebecca. Rolfe ask for and received permission to marry her from her father, Chief Powhatan, and Governor Thomas Dale.
Virginia Company’s investors saw her conversion and marriage as a good thing. To the English, she was an Indian “princess” and living proof that the Native peoples of Virginia could be converted to Christianity and English ways.
In 1616, John, Rebecca and her young child, Thomas, traveled to England to promote the Virginia colony. She was a sensation, and the aristocracy and gentry flocked to see her.
Within 5 years of her death, the peaceful coexistence that her marriage brought ended in terrible violence and war when her uncle saw an opportunity to order a massive sneak attack that killed hundreds of colonists. The Powhatan Indian confederacy rapidly declined after her uncle’s attack in 1622 failed to stop English colonization.
her legacy
Church of England in Virginia
Establishing the Church of England (Anglicanism) in Virginia was fundamental to the transfer of English culture and beliefs to the New World.
While Catholics were officially barred from the colony, artifacts (crucifixes, rosaries, pilgrim badges) from Jamestown prove that some Catholics did live here.
coins in Jamestown
Since the Virginia Company was supposed to meet the colonists’ needs in exchange for commodities shipped back to England, why were coins that pre-dated the 1607 fort found during recent excavations?
how early colonists lived
House sites and household goods found in the fort give an indication of what the buildings were like inside and out. While most of the men lived in crowded barracks-like conditions, some of the gentlemen had privacy in their own dwellings, even if just a simple pit house or a tent.
Some individuals may have had a table and chairs, benches, or stools to sit on, but simple chests could also serve all these functions. Beds would have been the most expensive pieces of furniture in the early years. One iron bed bolt, with brass rings used to hold curtains around beds, indicate that some gentlemen had this luxury in the fort.
Few candlesticks were found during the excavations, probably because of the high cost of candles in the early 17th century. For most colonists, inside light came from fireplaces.
natural resources
One of the reasons for creating a colony was to send natural resources back to England. Timber in Virginia must have seemed like a limitless commodity to early colonists. Walnut, oak, pine, and cedar offered opportunities to export clapboards, masts, barrel staves, paneling, and planks. The forests also supplied raw materials for producing potash and soap-ashes, as well as pitch and tar for shipbuilding.
Other industries to support England include silk production, wine- and beer-making, and iron smelting. Glass manufacture that was tried in 1608 and again in 1621 relied on skilled craftsmen from Germany and later from Italy.
changes in homes
In Jamestown’s first years, survival was most important, and the settlement was more a trade station than a residential town. The first homes were tents and pit houses. Then earthfast houses with support posts set directly in the ground became the norm. Eventually cobblestone foundations were used.
House on the left is from 1607 and represents mud-and-stud structures, pit houses, and post-and-frame structures. In the middle is a house from the 1620s where brick foundations with post-and-timber frames were built. On the right is a house from the 1630s where 2-story brick structures were built.
This ends our look at the early years at James Fort. Next we’ll see how the city grew and evolved.
