Jamestown and Lost Colony Surnames

What's in a Name??

 Roberta Estes

Recently we were able to obtain the records of the Jamestown colonists who share surnames with the Lost Colonists thanks to a contribution from a benefactor.  

The records have been extracted, by surname.  Historic Jamestown has done a superb job of researching their colonists and what information is known about every known Jamestown colonist up through about 1625 is provided on their site for a nominal fee.  You can see all of the biographies by surname at the site. 

 

https://www.historicjamestowne.org/biographies/list.php?letter=A

The information has been incorporated on our website under the appropriate surname.  To view the results, click on this link to go to our website, then click on "surname research", then on the surname you are interested in viewing.  Then click on the Jamestown link.

The following Lost Colony surnames are also represented at Jamestown:

·       Archer (Archard perhaps)

·       Brooke(s)

·       Brown(e)

·       Cooper by variant spellings

·       Ellis

·       Flory/Flower

·       Johnson

·       Kendall

·       Martin

·       Nichols

·       Powell

·       Russell

·       Scott

·       Smith

·       Stephens/Stevens

·       Taverner

·       White

·       Wilkinson

·       Williams

·       Wotton

·       Yonge/Young

Several of these names have several Jamestown colonists.  There are 100 different records in total, so take a look and see if there is anything for one of your surnames.

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Jamestown Well Yield's Centuries Old Artifacts

Excavations have concluded on a mid-17th-century well located in the southwest corner of James Fort's 1608 church. Several artifacts were found in the bottom of the well including a hoe blade stamped with a maker's mark, a pewter spoon also bearing a maker's mark, an axe head, a decorated pipe bowl, fragments of a leather shoe, and dozens of animal bones. These artifacts are in remarkable condition due to the fact that they've remained submerged below the water table for over 300 years. Though the well is located just inside the southwest corner of the church, its position is merely coincidental, as the church had been torn down decades before the construction of the well.

The wells at Jamestown have yielded a remarkable array of artifacts, in large part due to the fact that they were used as trash dumps once they ceased to be used as a water source. The excavations of this well have turned up substantially fewer artifacts than those of previous wells. This may indicate a well that was in private rather than public use. Its small diameter and its mid-17th-century construction date may give credence to this theory. By this time, James Fort had expanded to become Jamestown, and its land was largely held in private hands. If this well was indeed a private one, there were probably less people using it while it was a water source and less people using it as a trash dump once the water turned sour (which probably didn't take too long given its proximity to the brackish James River). That being said, while there were less artifacts found overall, there were still a substantial number of artifacts found at all levels of the well excavation. Finds discovered above the water table include human teeth, beads, pipe fragments, and a portion of a crucible.

 Cont.
 http://www.historicjamestowne.org/the_dig/

This blog is © History Chasers
Click here to view all recent Lost Colony Research Group Blog posts

400 Year old Artifacts Revealing Jamestown's Past

Jamestown pipes sit atop fragments of a sagger, a small, clay, pipemaking oven (file photo).

Photograph courtesy Michael Lavin, Jamestown Rediscovery

Paula Neely in Jamestown, Virginia

for National Geographic News

Published November 29, 2010

Bearing perhaps the earliest printing in English America, fragments of 400-year-old personalized pipes have been found at Virginia's Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World, archaeologists say.

Stamped with the names of Sir Walter Raleigh and other eminent men back in England, the pipes may have been intended to impress investors—underscoring Jamestown's fundamentally commercial nature.

(Explore an interactive guide to colonial Jamestown in National Geographic magazine.)

"Finding these pipes has illuminated the complex political and social network in London that was behind the settlement," said William Kelso, director of archaeology for Historic Jamestowne, a public-private partnership that works to preserve and interpret the settlement site. (See a Jamestown map.)

The personalized clay pipes, which archaeologists say were probably made between 1608 and 1610, also provide new insights into Jamestown's early pipemaking industry.

Detail of a personalized-pipe found at Jamestown.

Photograph courtesy Michael Lavin, Jamestown Rediscovery

Cont.

 

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/11/101129-jamestown-personalized-pipes-virginia-history-colonial-america/

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First Indentured Servants in the New World?

by Janet Crain

By all accounts Fort St. George, in present day Maine, should have succeeded. It was well financed and expertly planned.Established in 1607, it was intended to contain thick battlements, great crenellated gates, several mansions, a church, fifty other buildings, and a walled garden. A dozen cannon pointed toward the sea.

The fort was the brainchild of Sir John Popham, one of the most important and powerful men in England during Queen Elizabeth I's reign. He intended to solve one of England's biggest problem; a huge surplus population of destitute people with no means of support.

Convinced this situation was the primary cause of crime, Sir Popham wanted to sweep up the "dregs" of England and put them to work in the new world earning their keep.


At this time tinkers, vagabonds, gypsies, and wandering artists and actors were considered as prime candidates for this "benefit" to be bestowed upon them, along with felons, and prostitutes, pickpockets and highway men.

Fort St. George was built entirely with enforced transported labor. Later called indentured servitude, this system is American history's best kept secret. Later the European servants were joined by Africans and Indians. There was no difference in their treatment or status. Some had kind masters, many had harsh cruel masters. Only after Bacon's rebellion would the races be treated differently.

Even Thomas Jefferson was deluded when he wrote that only about 2,000 convicts were transported to America and they were mostly sickly men who soon died and left no descendants. In truth there many many more. Add to them those transported for trivial reasons, those sold into servitude by captors, masters or themselves and the unknown number dumped here by Cromwell and it's clear that most of us have these people numbered among our ancestors. Rather than deny them, we should celebrate their will to survive and honor them.

Everything we learn about Jamestown and Fort St. George sheds light on the First Colony at Roanoke. This map is therefore of great interest. The men who planned these settlements, sailed the ships, explored our shores and inland areas were contemporaries. Back in England they knew each other well. They may have schemed and plotted against each other in the Elizabethan Court and later that of King James, but they were cut from the same cloth. And their motives were similar. It was not altruism that brought about this new nation.

Fort St. George (Popham Colony)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 / 43.7532; -69.7884

John Hunt's map

Fort St. George, named for the patron saint of England, was built in 1607 by Popham Colony near Sabino Head, ten miles/15 kilometres south of what is now Bath, Maine, United States. It was abandoned after a year of occupation and is now an archaeological site. ^{[1] [2]}

John Hunt, a draughtsman present at the fort when it was built, drew a map showing^[3] a star-shaped fort including ditches and ramparts, a storehouse, a chapel and more than fifteen structures. It contained nine guns that ranged in size from demi-culverin to falcon. As a result of espionage by the Spanish ambassador to London, Pedro de Zuniga, the map was passed to King Philip III of Spain, in 1608.^[4] It was found in 1888 in a Spanish archive. ^[5] It is unique as the only plan of an initial English settlement in the Americas known to survive.

Related:

http://historical-melungeons.blogspot.com/2008/07/on-misfortune-of-indentured-servants.html

http://historical-melungeons.blogspot.com/2008/07/persons-of-mean-and-vile-condition.html

http://historical-melungeons.blogspot.com/2008/07/persons-of-mean-and-vile-condition-pt-2.html

http://historical-melungeons.blogspot.com/2008/07/persons-of-mean-and-vile-condition-pt-3.html


http://historical-melungeons.blogspot.com/2008/07/persons-of-mean-and-vile-condition-pt-4.html

© History Chasers

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Roanoke Played a Very Important Part in the Birth of Our Nation

The new world was discovered by a Spanish Navigator, North America was colonized by the Vikings, Spain, Portugal and France, its rich Outer Banks fished by the Basque and other nations, but eventually it became a predominately English speaking continent. And 13 small colonies became the United States.

How did this come about? Who were the major players?

Almost four hundred years ago a group of families from England built the first permanent settlement on the shores of the New World. This town Jamestown, Virginia, named after James I, the King of England. Jamestown was not the first English colony in Virginia, but it had been the first one to be successful. Twenty years earlier, a colony had been started about one hundred miles south of Jamestown, on Roanoke Island that proved to be unsuccessful.

On March 25, 1584, Walter Raleigh obtained from Queen Elizabeth a patent to “discover, search, find out, and view” any lands “not actually possessed of any Christian prince, nor inhabited by Christian people.” The patent was approved to “go or travel thither to inhabited or remained, there to build and fortified” for a period of six years.

Within a month Walter Raleigh had dispatched a fleet of two ships commanded by Captains Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe. They sailed from London on April 27th through the West Indies and sighted land off our coast on the 4th of July 1584. Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe entered Pamlico Sound at Ocracoke Inlet and a few days later Barlowe and eight of his men reached Roanoke Island. From early July until mid September a small band of men explored the region as best they could, traded with the Indians, and observed such things as the plants, the soil, the animals, and recorded everything that they could possibly learn about Indians and their way of life.

http://www.blogaboutall.com/2009/11/jamestown-virginia/



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Captain John Smith Set Out to Find the Lost Colonists

Captain John Smith

Only 27 when he explored Chesapeake Bay, John Smith proved
himself an energetic and resourceful leader.

"There is but one entrance by sea into this country, and that is at the mouth of a very goodly bay, 18 or 20 miles broad. The cape on the south is called Cape Henry, in honor of our most noble Prince. The land, white hilly sands like unto the Downs, and all along the shores rest plenty of pines and firs ... Within is a country that may have the prerogative over the most pleasant places known, for large and pleasant navigable rivers, heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation..."

- Captain John Smith, 1612 Smith's Journey

The real Captain (a military rather than maritime title) John Smith arrived at the mouth of the Bay in 1607 after a lengthy and rather miserable voyage across the Atlantic. Taken prisoner under mutiny charges during the trip, he discovered that the King of England had designated Smith a member of the newly formed governing council of Jamestown. The first summer in Jamestown was dreadful, as many men died from disease and malnutrition. To escape the rivalries of the colony, find passage to the western ocean, discover gold and locate the colonists of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, Smith gathered 14 men for a voyage up the Chesapeake. Using only a "two to three tons burden" knock-down boat brought from England, the men set out on June 2, 1608

Cont. here:

http://www.chesapeakebay.net/captainjohnsmith.aspx?menuitem=19591

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Rumors of the Lost Colony in Jamestown, UNC School of Education

William Strachey, first secretary of the Jamestown colony, wrote a history of that colony in 1612. In it, he mentioned several rumors about the fate of the colonists who had disappeared from Roanoke twenty years before.

Here Strachey explains the colonists’ attitudes toward the Indians, which are fortified by what they believe happened to their predecessors at Roanoke.

For the apter enabling of our selfes unto which so heavenly an enterprise, who will thinck yt an unlawfull act to fortefie and strengthen our selves (as nature requires) with the best helpes, and by sitting downe with guardes and forces about us in the wast and vast unhabited growndes of their[s], amongst a world of which not one foote of a thousand doe they either use, or knowe howe to turne to any benefitt; and therfore lyes so great a circuit vayne and idle before them? Nor is this any injurye unto them, from whome we will not forceably take of their provision and labours, nor make rape of what they dense and manure; but prepare and breake up newe growndes, and therby open unto them likewise a newe waye of thrift or husbandry; for as a righteous man (according to Solomon) ought to regard the lief of his beast, so surely Christian men should not shew themselves like wolves to devoure, who cannot forget that every soule which God hath sealed for himself he hath done yt with the print of charity and compassion; and therefore even every foote of land which we shall take unto our use, we will bargaine and buy of them, for copper, hatchetts, and such like comodityes, for which they will even sell themselves, and with which they can purchace double that quantity from their neighbours; and thus we will commune and entreate with them, truck, and barter, our commodityes for theires, and theires for ours (of which they seeme more faine) in all love and freindship, untill, for our good purposes towards them, we shall finde them practize violence or treason against us (as they have done to our other colony at Roanoak): when then, I would gladly knowe (of such who presume to knowe all things), whether we maye stand upon our owne innocency or no, or hold yt a scruple in humanitye, or any breach of charity (to prevent our owne throats from the cutting), to drawe our swordes, et vim vi repellere? (pp. 19–20)

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Seven colonists, including a “young mayde,” apparently escaped the slaughter. The maid may have made a further escape.

This high land is, in all likelyhoodes, a pleasant tract, and the mowld fruictfull, especially what may lye to the soward; where, at Peccarecamek and Ochanahoen, by the relation of Machumps, the people have howses built with stone walles, and one story above another, so taught them by those Englishe whoe escaped the slaughter at Roanoak, at what tyme this our colony, under the conduct of Capt. Newport, landed within the Chesapeake Bay, where the people breed up tame turkeis about their howses, and take apes in the mountaines, and where, at Ritanoe, the Weroance Eyanoco preserved seven of the English alive — fower men, two boyes, and one yonge mayde (who escaped and fled up the river of Chanoke [Chowan]), to beat his copper, of which he hath certaine mynes at the said Ritanoe, as also at Pamawauk are said to be store of salt stones. (p. 26)

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Strachey explains what happened to the colonists after they left Roanoke.

[H]is majestie [James I] hath bene acquainted, that the men, women, and childrene of the first plantation at Roanoak were by practize and comaundement of Powhatan (he himself perswaded therunto by his priests) miserably slaughtered, without any offence given him either by the first planted (who twenty and od yeares had peaceably lyved intermixt with those salvages, and were out of his territory) or by those who nowe are come to inhabite some parte of his desarte lands, and to trade with him for some comodityes of ours, which he and his people stand in want of; notwithstanding, because his majestie is, of all the world, the most just and the most mercifull prince, he hath given order that Powhatan himself, with the weroances and all the people, shalbe spared, and revenge only taken upon his Quiyoughquisocks, by whose advise and perswasions was exercised that bloudy cruelty… (pp. 85–86)

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