1 teacher’s guide primary source set Jamestown After five grueling months at sea, a small group of soldiers, laborers, and aristocrats from England com- pleted a 3000-mile journey across the Atlantic and stepped off their ship to greet an unfamiliar new land. The year was 1607 and the land they chose to live on became the first permanent settlement of the British in North America. Virginia. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003669843/ Historical Background From England to Asia At the dawn of the seventeenth century in Europe, explorers and their patrons focused on the centuries- old goal of finding a Northwest Passage from Europe to East Asia. Though it was already well known that there was a significant landmass—the Americas—in the Atlantic Ocean, sailors and explorers were often charged with finding water routes around it. Such was the case as the year 1606 drew to a close. The English monarch King James I granted a charter to a private company known as the Virginia Company to build a settlement in the Chesapeake Bay area of North America. As in other attempts at settlement, two of the primary goals were to find gold and to find a water route to Asia. The original Jamestown was also intended to be strategically located far enough from the James River that it would not be in the firing range of ships belonging to hostile powers such as Spain. A City on the Swamp On December 20, 1606, around 100 members of the Virginia Company sailed across the Atlantic. They reached the Chesapeake Bay in April 1607, and they established a settlement on an island up the James River on May 14, naming it “James Towne” after the current monarch, James I, as was the habit of English settlement. Initial hostility between the colonists and a confederation of native groups led by Chief Powhatan led the settlers to establish forts. Nonetheless, the two groups often engaged in trade, which provided a source of food for Jamestown when settlers were only beginning to clear land for agriculture. A lack of basic hygiene combined with food shortages and cold weather to cause a number of deaths. By the autumn of 1607, it was apparent that colonists had not worked enough to ensure a stable food supply. Many of those who came with the Virginia Company were aristocrats who refused to demean themselves with agricultural labor. More- over, Jamestown was in a swampy location, which gave rise to epidemics and disease. loc.gov/teachers
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Teacher Guide: Jamestown - Library of Congressloc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/primarysourcesets/jamestown/... · after De La Warr’s arrival, largely from the efforts of John
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teacher’s guideprimary source set
JamestownAfter five grueling months at sea, a small group of
soldiers, laborers, and aristocrats from England com-
pleted a 3000-mile journey across the Atlantic and
stepped off their ship to greet an unfamiliar new land.
The year was 1607 and the land they chose to live on
became the first permanent settlement of the British