A SURVEY OF AMERICAN HISTORY

Unit 1: Colonialism and NationhoodPart 3: The Virginia Colony

THE VIRGINIA COMPANY ESTABLISHED IN 1606

APRIL-MAY 1607English settlers arrived in Chesapeake Bayand founded the settlement of Jamestown.

THE FIRST CHARTER OF VIRGINIA (1606)

• Established the Virginia Company of London and granted it land in North America. Company members wanted to mine for gold on the land.

• Issued by King James I, thus installing the English monarchy as the sovereign of the land granted to the company.

• Required settlers to spread Christianity in North America.

• Extended the customary rights of Englishmen to anyone born in a North American colony.

THE FIRST CHARTER OF VIRGINIA (1606)

• Also granted land to the Plymouth Company of London and identified a zone of overlap between Plymouth land and the Virginia Company land grant.

• Members of the Plymouth Company settled at Popham in present-day Maine in 1607.

• In 1608, the Popham settlement failed and the Plymouth Company faded away.

THE JAMESTOWN SETTLEMENT (1607)

• The first permanent English settlement in North America.

• Settlers arrived on three small ships: the Discovery, the Susan Constant, and the Godspeed.

• Settlers departed England in December 1606 and arrived in Chesapeake Bay in April 1607.

• The settlement was governed largely according to Biblical law.

• The settlement was founded on territory belonging to the tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy.

THE JAMESTOWN SETTLEMENT (1607)

• The settlement came close to failure, with more than sixty of the original 104 settlers having died by 1608. Starvation and disease were the two most common causes of death.

• A long period of starvation continued until 1609. This problem led settlers to attack and raid the villages of nearby Native American clans, resulting in war with the Powhatan tribes.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH: SETTLER AND AUTHOR

John Smith sailed to Chesapeake Bay with the Virginia Company, but Christopher Newport, the captain of the voyage, charged him with mutiny and ordered him to be executed upon arrival in North America.

Luckily for Smith, new orders were received when the members of the company reached their destination and those orders appointed Smith as one of the settlement’s leaders. As a result, Smith was spared from death.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH: SETTLER AND AUTHOR

“He that will not work shall not eat.”

When Newport left the settlement to seek out new supplies, Smith took command. He led the settlers through the so-called ‘Starving Time’ with occasional help from the Powhatan people, with whom he had a good relationship.

A SURVEY OF AMERICAN HISTORY

Unit 1: Colonialism and NationhoodPart 3: The Virginia Colony