I love to tease my friends & family with Mayflower (1620) connections that they were latecomers & were really supposed to land in the Virginia Colony north of Jamestown on the Hudson River but got blown off course. If you look at an historical map, you can see that Virginia was huge in those days. But can you imagine what all those prim yankees would have been throughout history & today if they had ended up being southerners?
I also like to tell folks that my ancestors were some of the earliest to come to VA from Great Britain, but that they were met by some of my other ancestors who were waiting in the woods for them. All true, not all proven yet.
In reality we all should know that the 1st successful European colonization of the east coast of what is now the United States was done by the Spanish (Trout's patriarchal DNA) in St. Augustine, FL (1565) & that both Jamestown & Plymouth are merely the 1st successful English settlements. We should also be aware that if England had not been in conflict with Spain at the time, the need to compete with Spain might not have been so great & we all might be speaking Spanish as our 1st language today.
We did go to the actual site of Jamestown & walked around the archeological excavations & the rest of it, but there's not a lot to show you there about what it was like. The capitol of the Virginia Colony was moved from there to Williamsburg in 1699. After that & multiple hurricanes, much of what was there disappeared, or so people thought. The site is right on the James River & they figured there wouldn't be much evidence of it left. Wrong, wrong, wrong! The archeologists are finding lots of evidence buried in the sand.
Jamestowne Settlement
We did go to the actual site of Jamestown & walked around the archeological excavations & the rest of it, but there's not a lot to show you there about what it was like. The capitol of the Virginia Colony was moved from there to Williamsburg in 1699. After that & multiple hurricanes, much of what was there disappeared, or so people thought. The site is right on the James River & they figured there wouldn't be much evidence of it left. Wrong, wrong, wrong! The archeologists are finding lots of evidence buried in the sand.
Jamestowne Settlement
Since the 1st one I visited, I’ve loved living history museums. Jamestowne Settlement is one of those. These are some of the replica ships from Jamestowne Settlement. You can actually tour them.
This is from inside the fort. It's amazing what a small area the people lived in at first.
This is the interior of one of the nicer houses. Of course, I liked the tile.
And this is a storeroom with tobacco hanging in the rafters to dry. Tobacco was the most important crop of the Virginia Colony & it was used just like money. There's even evidence of that in my family history.
Trout spent almost all the time there watching the blacksmith.
There was a tall ships sail-in at Norfolk to help celebrate the quadricentennial. Ships sailed from all over the world. There were fireworks the same day we were at Jamestowne Settlement. Of course, we had to go, & the best way to get there was by ferry over the James River. These are little baby ferries compared to the ones in the northwest, but they accomplished the transporation task.
We found our way to a parking place & walked to the waterfront. We found a good place to watch from & secured the spot, but then had to move for security reasons. We still got to see the fireworks very well. They were being shot off from 3 locations and we could see 2 of them simultaneously.
This was on the ship closest to us before it got dark.
This is the front of the same ship after the fireworks started.
After we got home I discovered that my camera has a fireworks setting. Who knew? Anyway, this was one of my favorite pics from the whole evening.
