Free Republic

400 Years After Jamestown: Where Did the Bible Go? In recent decades the British and American peoples have increasingly turned away from the Bible. Few can even remember when the Word of God was revered in our nations, but only a century ago it was considered the source of the “ennobling ideals” that united both nations. by Melvin Rhodes The Bible was missing. I searched through the sanctuary. It must be somewhere. After all, it was a church. I finally gave up and asked a female volunteer if she knew where the Bible was. She explained that it had been...

Christopher Newport was the captain of one of three ships that carried the America's founding colonists 400 years ago and his likeness has been memorialized in bronze at the university named for him in Newport News, Va. Some alumni and history buffs want the monument to get a hook like the one that replaced the right arm Newport lost in battle 17 years before coming to Jamestown. NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) — The swashbuckling sea captain who helped found America's first permanent English settlement lost his right arm in battle nearly two decades before bringing the colonists to Jamestown 400...

A century ago the government erected a monument to honor the 300th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, Va., and carved into it an admonition to "serve and fear God the giver of all goodness." This year, with the government calling the Jamestown founding an "invasion," the sole monument to honor the 400th anniversary is the Jamestown Children's Monument, dedicated yesterday during events held by Vision Forum Ministries...

Test your Jamestown 1607 survival skills: You are a colonist facing winter and need to patch your coat. Besides needle and thread, you need this to wax the thread to make sewing the coat easier: Candle wax Fish oil Ear wax

Test your Jamestown survival skills: You are a doctor in 1607. Other colonists are complaining about loss of appetite, weakness, lethargy and irritability. Some are hallucinating and having seizures. What is your diagnosis? Lousy disease Scurvy Saltwater poisoning

JAMESTOWN – He’s the president, he can do what he wants. On Sunday, George Bush wanted to conduct a 400-piece symphony playing at the 400th anniversary celebration of the first permanent English settlement in America, at Jamestown. Midway through a rousing rendition of “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” Bush took the baton from JoAnn Falletta, musical director of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. While the Anniversary Park crowd of several thousand roared, the president led the musicians for two minutes without a hitch. Bush pointed to all sections of the orchestra, which included young musicians from around the country. He implored...

PRESIDENTIAL NEWS OF THE DAY: President and Mrs. Bush spent most of the weekend in Washington. However, they did travel to Jamestown, Virigina, today to attend the ceremonies marking the 400th Anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown settlement. Here is the AP story as published on the FOX News website: President Bush Celebrates Jamestown's 400th Anniversary JAMESTOWN, Virginia, May 13, 2007 (AP) Fond of promoting the endurance of freedom, President George W. Bush on Sunday hailed America's humble beginnings as a reminder that new democracies require huge sacrifice. "From our own history, we know the path to democracy is...

Bush Playfully Conducts Orchestra in Va. May 13 03:19 PM US/Eastern By SONJA BARISIC Associated Press Writer JAMESTOWN, Va. (AP) - JoAnn Falletta was doing what a conductor should—concentrating on the orchestra in front of her. No wonder it took her a few seconds on Sunday to realize someone behind her was motioning for a try. President Bush. "Smiling at me kind of devilishly," Falletta said. She gave him her baton and stepped aside. Gesturing exuberantly, the president led the orchestra during part of its performance of "Stars and Stripes Forever." "We didn't expect him to know the score so...

On the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown Settlement, Queen Elizabeth II arrived to commemorate the great occasion. And it took some fancy footwork for Her Majesty to run the Powhatan gauntlet. For Her Majesty had been to Jamestown before, 50 years ago, in a less progressive era. As the Associated Press reported, "The last time the queen helped Virginia mark the anniversary of its colonial founding, it was an all-white affair in a state whose government was in open defiance of a 1954 Supreme Court order to desegregate public schools." Now, "massive resistance" is history. And Her Majesty was quick...

President Bush met today with Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in the Oval Office. (Transcript) Later, the president hosted a Cinco de Mayo celebration in the Rose Garden (Transcript) Vice President Dick Cheney welcomed Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh to America and escorted the Queen on a tour of Jamestown, Virginia, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the first English settlement. (Transcript) Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice continued her meeting with the Iraq conference at the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheik in Egypt. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates traveled to Fort...

Queen Elizabeth II will visit Jamestown's living history museum and its archaeological dig site Friday to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement in America. The British queen and her husband, Prince Philip, will be accompanied by Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne. Cheney also is expected to attend a lunch in the queen's honor in Williamsburg. The queen is then scheduled to visit the College of William and Mary before leaving for Kentucky, where she is to watch the Kentucky Derby on Saturday. She's also expected to visit Washington, D.C., and attend a state...

RICHMOND, United States (AFP) - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II headed Thursday for a rare state visit to the United States, to mark the 400th anniversary of an English settlement that laid the foundations of history's greatest superpower. After arriving on a chartered British Airways jet, Elizabeth was due to start her six-day trip in the Virginia capital Richmond and address the state's legislature, which is America's oldest representative body. Virginians from Governor Tim Kaine down brushed up on royal protocol as they prepared to greet the British queen during a walkabout and musical concert at the grounds of the newly...

Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, stepped off a chartered British Airways airplane just after 3 p.m. Thursday in Richmond, Va., signaling the beginning of a six-day American trip. It is her first visit to the United States in 16 years. The queen stopped at the end of a red carpet while both British and American National Anthems were played. Her motorcade left shortly afterward. On Thursday evening, she was expected to take a horse-drawn carriage through Colonial Williamsburg. And while the queen represents a monarchy the United States went to some trouble to get rid of, her...

RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- Terry O'Neill was just a wee lad from Liverpool the last time he got within a few feet of Queen Elizabeth II. Years later, the burly owner of the Beatles-influenced Penny Lane Pub in Richmond plans to have a second brush with English royalty on Thursday -- with a little help from his friends. O'Neill and his wife, Rose, were among thousands of people expected to jam Capitol Square for a glimpse of the queen and her husband, Prince Philip, when the royals arrive to mark the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown colony. "I left England...

Jamestown -- the birth of a nation 400 years ago The replica Jamestown ships, The Susan Constant, center, Godspeed, right, and Discovery ply the waters of Hampton Roads as they make their way to Virginia Beach to participate in the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, Va., Tuesday, April 24, 2007. The centerpiece of the 18-month commemoration of the 400th anniversary of America's first permanent English settlement is almost here after a decade of planning. About two-thirds of the tickets for the 'America's Anniversary Weekend' extravaganza May 11-13 remain available; 31,587 had been sold as of...

The quadricentennial of the Jamestown settlement will be noted this spring. Whether it will be celebrated is a freighted question. Virginia has gone to some expense and effort remembering the founding settlers of 1607. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is serving as honorary chair of what is being called “America's 400th Birthday.” There will be musical performances, lectures and seminars. The Queen of England will visit on May 4 and 5. But emblematic of our troubled understanding of our past and our present discomfort with our national identity, the powers that be in Virginia have decided not to...

'Celebration' banned for Jamestown's 400thEvents marking settlement's anniversary condemn its 'holocaust' Posted: March 8, 20071:00 a.m. Eastern By Bob Unruh© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com This year is the 400th anniversary of the arrival of settlers in Jamestown, 13 years before the Plymouth Pilgrims appeared on America's shores. And there will be discussions on the environmental impact of the settlement and its impact on African-Americans and Native Americans. But there will be no celebration. "You can't celebrate an invasion," Mary Wade, a member of Jamestown 2007 organizing committee, has stated. After all, Indian tribes "were pushed back off of their land, even killed. Whole tribes...

VIRGINIA BEACH - For 400 years, the history of early Virginia has focused on the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown. But Randy Amici believes history has overlooked something important - a possible settlement and a fort more than 60 miles away, near what is now Fort Story in Virginia Beach. It was called Henrytowne, and Amici thinks it may have been established as early as 1610. Amici's findings have stirred up a historical hornet's nest among others who question whether Henry-towne ever existed. Today, Amici will take his conclusions to Williamsburg, where an intrigued group of Virginia historians will...

A sherill has just been shot on Butterwood Drive in Jamestown, NC. There are at least 40 LEOs at the site along with paramedics and EMTs

RICHMOND, Va., Jan. 31 (UPI) -- NASA plans to take four coins and a 400-year-old artifact into space to honor early U.S. explorers. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration plans to take the two sets of coins and the artifact from historic Jamestown aboard space shuttle Atlantis, scheduled for launch in March to the International Space Station. The artifact, a metal cargo tag reading "Yames Towne," was unearthed at Jamestown -- the 1607 site of the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. Two sets of Jamestown commemorative coins, authorized by Congress and recently issued by the U.S. Mint, will...

This photo released by National Geographic Society shows a tiny 400-year-old uncharred tobacco seed, shown magnified 350 times, that was unearthed by APVA Preservation Virginia archaeologists in a well used by colonists as early as 1610 in Jamestown Island, Va. (AP Photo/College of William & Mary Applied Research Center/APVA Preservation Virginia via National Geographic Society) Seeds and plant remains preserved in a well at America's first permanent English settlement suggest the Jamestown colonists were not just gentlemen with few wilderness survival skills, as they are often portrayed, but tried to live off the land by gathering berries and nuts....

American students often get the impression from history classes that the British got here first, settling Jamestown, Va., in 1607. They hear about how white Northerners freed the black slaves, how Asians came in the mid-1800s to build Western railroads. The lessons have left out a lot. Forty-two years before Jamestown, Spaniards and American Indians lived in St. Augustine, Fla. At least several thousand Latinos and nearly 200,000 black soldiers fought in the Civil War. And Asian-Americans had been living in California and Louisiana since the 1700s. Now, more of these and other lesser-known facts about American minorities are getting...

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have uncovered a rare but perfectly preserved early 17th-century Scottish pistol at the historic former British colony known as the birthplace of the United States, making the firearm one of the oldest artefacts of European origin ever discovered in North America. The weapon probably belonged to one of the first settlers to arrive at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, and was recovered from a well at the site with several other "hugely significant" artefacts. "It was like Christmas in July," said Bly Straube, the curator of the Jamestown Rediscovery museum where the snaphaunce pistol, probably made by a manufacturer in...

RICHMOND, Va. - Sometime around 1610, archaeologists figure, a thirsty colonist in Jamestown set his brass pistol on the side of a well as he pulled up some water and accidentally knocked the weapon in.

Results from other recent tests on bone samples confirmed that the Jamestown skeleton was an immigrant to America, showing that he ate a diet rich in wheat as opposed to an American corn diet, researchers said. The quest to identify a nearly intact skeleton found at Jamestown continues. Jamestown officials said this week that without DNA proof, researchers are doing other studies to test their theory that the skeleton discovered in 2002 belongs to Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold, a founder of the first permanent English settlement in North America, established almost 400 years ago. The announcement came after The Church of...

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | "The New World," a film slated for Christmas day release, tells the romantic story of Pocahontas and John Smith, but ads for the movie tell a more depressing story of political correctness. A glossy magazine layout says that what settlers "named the Jamestown Settlement was already home to a noble civilization." On my radio show, I mocked the idea that the pre-literate, stone-aged Powhatan Indians of Virginia constituted a "noble civilization," and in later version of ads for the movie, the word "noble" disappeared. In its place, however, New Line Cinema included an even more absurd declaration, claiming...

When you're called a genius and avoid the press like Howard Hughes and direct only one movie every decade or so, it's an event when you crank out a new one. This time around, Terrence Malick, the media-shy maestro behind Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The Thin Red Line, trains his jeweler's eye on the love story between Native American Pocahontas (15-year-old newcomer Q'Orianka Kilcher) and English explorer John Smith (Colin Farrell) in 17th-century Jamestown, Va. Malick originally wrote a draft of the screenplay in the late '70s, but much like his own Hollywood ambitions at the time, the project...

Virginia's Hispanic population was less than 1 percent of the total in 1970, according to U.S. Census data. The 2000 census pegged the Hispanic population at about 350,000, or 4.7 percent. It is not known whether those figures include illegal aliens. There are an estimated 200,000 to 250,000 illegal aliens in Virginia, according to a June 14 study by the Pew Hispanic Center. The recent Arlandria-Chirilagua Festival had an estimated 40,000 attendees visiting food booths and vendors from Honduras, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador and many other countries. "The goal behind it was to unite the Latino community," said Sue...

SHELLEY, England -- Archaeologists trying to exhume the remains of the sister of one of the founders of the first permanent English settlement in North America have found what they believe is her 400-year-old burial shaft and hope to find her body soon. They want to use DNA from the remains to find out whether a skeleton unearthed in Virginia is that of Capt. Bartholemew Gosnold, who oversaw an expedition that led to the founding of Jamestown in 1607. British and American researchers began digging Monday beneath the floor of the 12th-century Church of All Saints, where Gosnold's sister, Elizabeth...

Thirteen years before the Mayflower's voyage to the New World, Captain Bartholomew Gosnold oversaw an expedition that led to the founding of the first permanent English settlement in North America. Now, Virginia preservationists are travelling to England to determine whether the skeleton they found at the site of the Jamestown colony is his. Excavations were planned next week at two churches to retrieve DNA samples from the remains of Gosnold descendants - a sister and a niece. Radar surveys were conducted at the churches earlier this year, but the process to extract the genetic material still involves uncertainties. "In archaeology,...

Lotteries are an effective way to raise cash. They are occasionally outlawed because they have been crooked or too successful at getting money from the poor. Long before lotteries were hawked as voluntary taxation to fund education, they were used for colonization. Perhaps it is time to use them to fund colonization again to go to space.

The Church of England on Wednesday gave permission for archeologists to dig under a church floor and remove DNA from 400-year-old skeletal remains to determine if the Jamestown settlement's founder was buried just outside the 17th century fort. The Church of England said archaeologists can dig under the floor of a church in Suffolk, England, to reach the skeleton of Elizabeth Tilney. She was the sister of Bartholomew Gosnold, a leader of the English expedition that founded Jamestown in 1607. To tell if a skeleton recovered from the site of the original Jamestown fort is Gosnold's, scientists need DNA from...

Nearly 10 years after leading the pioneering dig that unearthed the lost remains of Jamestown, archaeologist William M. Kelso was named 2005 Virginian of the Year by the VPA. With the 400th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement just two years away, the former Williamsburg high school history teacher, who lives on the island, says the full impact of the celebrated excavation has yet to be felt. Q: You first came to Jamestown Island at 21, intent on standing on the exact spot where America began. You returned repeatedly over the next three decades. What's behind this lifelong interest?...

JAMESTOWN, Va. (AP) - The Church of England has agreed to allow researchers using radar to look beneath two churches for remains that could determine whether a skeleton found at Jamestown is that of one of the colony's founders, scientists said Monday. Scientists who excavated the site of a 400-year-old fort at Jamestown want to know whether a skeleton discovered there in 2003 is that of Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold, captain of one of the three ships that carried settlers from England. To do so, they need to find the graves of Gosnold's sister and niece, who were buried in two...

Rethinking Jamestown America's first permanent colonists have long been considered lazy and incompetent. But new evidence suggests that it was a prolonged drought—not indolence—that almost did them in To the English voyagers who waded ashore at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay on a balmy April day in 1607, the lush Virginia landscape must have seemed like a garden paradise after four and a half months at sea. One ebullient adventurer later wrote that he was "almost ravished" by the sight of the freshwater streams and "faire meddowes and goodly tall trees" they encountered when they first landed. Fifty miles...

Skull Fragment Suggests Evidence of Surgery From Colonial Days Associated Press Jun 17, 2004 JAMESTOWN, Va. (AP) - Archaeologists combing through a dig at historic Jamestown said they have unearthed a human skull fragment that shows markings that could bear evidence of the earliest known attempts at surgery in Colonial North America. Two marks from a saw run along the curved top edge of the 4-by-6 inch fragment, which appears to be from bone at the back and base of the skull. Three small circular markings also seem to suggest attempts were made to drill through the bone. "It's definitely...

America's Lost Colony: Can New Dig Solve Mystery? Willie Drye for National Geographic News March 2, 2004 More than four centuries ago, English colonists hoped to carve out a new life—and substantial profits—in the wild and strange land of North America. One group of colonists gave up and returned to England. A second colony, in what is now North Carolina, vanished in the 1580s and became immortalized in history as the "Lost Colony." Today the prosperous little town of Manteo, North Carolina, surrounds the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, a national park protecting the place where the English tried to...

From the beginning, planners of the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement wanted the participation of Virginia's eight Native American tribes. But things were shaky from the start -- the committee asked tribal leaders to join in preparations for the Jamestown 2007 "celebration." After the chiefs pointed out that Native Americans have no reason to celebrate the founding of the first permanent English settlement on their ancestral land, the year-long series of events was swiftly renamed a "commemoration." Now, the degree of tribal participation is again in question over an issue that the planners says they can do little about...

<p>The conventional Thanksgiving story is one of brave settlers celebrating their first harvest on the rocky shores of Massachusetts. With the aid of Indians who taught them how to plant corn and fertilize it with rotting fish, the Pilgrims had survived their first winter. They gave thanks to God for delivering them to a land of incomparable abundance.</p>

JAMES CITY -- Despite a staggering estimate of $11.4 million in damages, Colonial National Historical Park representatives insist that artifacts flooded in the Historic Jamestowne Visitor Center by Hurricane Isabel will be restored and ready when a new collections building opens by 2007. Let's hope so, because Congress is watching. “I'm going to be anxiously waiting to see what they find,” Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-1st) said this week, referring to a National Park Service investigation into the flooding. “I'm hoping we didn't do anything wrong, and we can learn from it if we were to have another disaster.” Elaine...

In American folk history, the Indian princess Pocahontas befriended English settlers and saved Captain John Smith from certain death at the hands of his Algonquin captors. It happened near the Jamestown colony in Virginia, within a year of its founding in 1607. Or it may be only a story. But Pocahontas really was a princess, daughter of the powerful Powhatan, whose chiefdom encompassed much of coastal Virginia. She got along so well with the English that she eventually married one of them, John Rolfe, and was received at the court of James I. Now Virginia archaeologists think they have found...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. JAMESTOWN, Va. (AP) — A decorative staff found with skeletal remains at the site of the first permanent English settlement in North America indicates the man was a high-ranking official of the colony, archaeologists said Wednesday. Officials at the Jamestown fort said the remains could belong to Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold, second-in-command at the founding of the Jamestown settlement. Experts said the discovery could be one of the most significant archaeological finds of early colonial history. ``This is absolutely the best preserved skeleton we've found from this time period and I'm totally...

Remains thought to be Jamestown leader, discoverer of Cape Cod By ADRIENNE SCHWISOW, Associated Press Writer February 11, 2003   8:56 am RICHMOND, Va. -- Archaeologists said they may have discovered the skeleton of the man considered the main force behind the first permanent English settlement in America and the discoverer of Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard.The grave's placement inside the 17th-century Jamestown fort, the estimated time frame of the grave and the ceremonial artifacts found with the skeleton suggest it belongs to Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold, said William Kelso, archaeology director of the Richmond-based Association for the Preservation of...

Fear, death rule 'Doomstown' Christie Blatchford National Post Leon Boswell is accused of second-degree murder in the June 15, 2001, murder of ... ...Wayne Reid. Reid was shot to death in Toronto's Jamestown neighbourhood, a.k.a. "Doomstown," where graffiti testifies to the ongoing battle between different segments of the Crips gang. CREDIT: Carlo Allegri, National Post Wayne Reid, 26, was shot to death in front of this Jamestown complex on June 15, 2001. Police allege the murder was the result of a bloody gang battle that has raged since 2000. CREDIT: Carlo Allegri, National Post Police say Jamestown is among North...