Resources
- Jamestown ColonyOn May 14, 1607, a group of roughly 100 members of a joint venture called the Virginia Company founded the first permanent English settlement in North America on the banks of the James River.
- A Short History of JamestownOn December 6, 1606, the journey to Virginia began on three ships: the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery. In 1607, 104 English men and boys arrived in North America to start a settlement. On May 13 they picked Jamestown, Virginia for their settlement, which was named after their King, James I. The settlement became the first permanent English settlement in North America.
- Historic JamestowneOfficial website of historic Jamestowne.
Archives & Reference
- Jamestown: The National Archives (UK)This shows resistance to Jamestown in Virginia, named after King James I, England’s first settlement in North America. It was founded in 1607 with the hope of discovering a northwest passage to the Orient and spreading the Anglican faith.
- Jamestown Colony: Credo ReferenceA Credo Reference landing page on the Jamestown Colony. This page includes links to reference works, journal articles, and a mind map.
- The Jamestown Records of the Virginia Company of London: A Conservator's PerspectiveLibrary of Congress senior paper conservators Sylvia R. Albro and Holly H. Krueger tell the remarkable story of how Library conservators rescued Thomas Jefferson’s colonial Jamestown records from disintegration.
Streaming Media
- Early English Settlements - JamestownKim discusses how after many years of unsuccessful settlements, the English founded the colony of Jamestown in Virginia.
- John Smith, Jamestown and the Roots of AmericaThe principles of supply and demand are a fundamental part of economics and help dictate the prices of goods and services.
- Nightmare in JamestownBubonic plague, starvation, maybe even cannibalism—such were the miseries of life in England’s Jamestown settlement, circa 1609. Four centuries later, this program explores the colony’s story with the help of dramatic reenactments and information on recent historical discoveries. Sophisticated forensics and archaeological methods reveal the contents of Jamestown graves, producing shocking evidence of hunger and disease as well as political intrigue and espionage. Viewers also learn how the Church of England has allowed the attempted exhumation of 17th-century remains—female bones that could hold clues to the Jamestown struggle and to the contributions of an unsung hero named Bartholomew Gosnold. A National Geographic Production. (51 minutes)
- Save Our History: Secrets of JamestownIn 1607, 105 Englishmen crowded onto three ships to cross the Atlantic and make a new life for themselves in North America. They built a fort at Jamestown and established trade with the indigenous people, but things quickly turned bad: the Native Americans became hostile, the land proved unforgiving, and disease broke out. How did Jamestown, long thought to be a near-failure due to the colonists’ apparent incompetence, manage to survive to become the first permanent English settlement? This program spotlights an archaeological dig that is yielding evidence every day of the story of Jamestown’s turbulent first years, including a 400-year-old well and a swamp filled with 1,000-year-old trees. Visits to a firing range, a sculptor’s studio, and a forensics lab shed additional light on Jamestown’s past. Distributed by A&E Television Networks. (45 minutes) Distributed by A&E Television Networks.
Perspectives
Marooned
For readers of Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower, a revolutionary argument for replacing Plymouth Rock with Jamestown as America's founding myth. In school, students are taught two origin stories for Colonial America. The first is the story of the pilgrims- hardworking, devoted, religious people who made a colony and thrived. The second is that of Jamestown, where lazy louts committed treasonous acts and nearly starved to death before they were rescued by food supplies and martial law from England. But both of these interpretations come from English sources- they were written up by the very governors and lords the American people threw off roughly 150 years later. In Marooned, Joseph Kelly reexamines the events of Jamestown and comes to a radically different and decidedly American interpretation of these first Virginians. In this gripping account of shipwrecks and mutiny and America 's earliest settlements, Kelly argues that the colonists at Jamestown were literally and figuratively marooned, cut loose from civilization, and cast into a state of nature. In Jamestown, the British caste system meant little- those who wanted to survive needed to work and fight and intermingle with the nearby native populations. The desperation of the colony meant that for the first time, centuries before Locke or Jefferson penned the words, all men were equal, and the colonists themselves began to insist on being their own masters and choosing their own fates.
