Jamestown, Virginia

Famous Individuals

Captain John Smith arrived May, 1607 and was named to the first council. On September 10, 1608 the Council elected him Governor of Virginia for a one-year term. He was an able leader who understood both the Indians and the settlers' needs and the colony prospered. Captain Smith returned to England in October, 1609 following an accidental gunpowder burn and became Virginia's most effective propagandist and historian.⁽¹⁾

Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan, who ruled the Powhatan Confederacy. Captain John Smith believed she had saved his life twice during the colony's first years. In 1608-1609 she was a frequent and welcome visitor to Jamestown. Her marriage to John Rolfe in April, 1614 helped to establish peaceful relations between the Indians and the English.⁽¹⁾

This large wooden cross was erected by the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities in 1957in memory of those early settlers, the founders of this nation, who died at Jamestown during the first perilous years of the colony. Their bodies lie along the ridge beyond this cross, in the earliest known burial ground of the English in America.⁽¹⁾

Footnotes:

1. Association of the Preservation of Virginia Antiques, see web site: http://www.apva.org/history/index.html.