A conservator digitally isolated inscriptions (right) on the 17th-century Jamestown tablet (left).
Detail of inscriptions
Posted on 01/17/2010 6:07:31 PM PST by JoeProBono
A conservator digitally isolated inscriptions (right) on the 17th-century Jamestown tablet (left).
Detail of inscriptions
interesting
They also are very respectful to any human remains that they find.
I was very impressed with Jamestown, especially since they keep all the reenacting and replications a half mile away down the road from the actual site.
Thank you for sharing this new find!
I have ancestors who may have written on this tablet, or read the inscriptions. At the very least, they knew someone who wrote or read these inscriptions. I’m very interested in what comes of this.
Thanks!
The importance of Jamestown was that it was a LARGE PERMANENT settlement. It wasn't just the first.
Maryland (the other side of the Potomac) as it came to be known had about 20,000 settlers of unknown provence but they showed up in an early population estimate/census of the territory. There's a slightly older Huguenot settlement across from St. Mary's but it was abandoned so early no one knows if it had anything to do with Jamestown. BTW, Jamestown itself was abandoned, and then Williamsburg, the successor town, was abandoned. Europeans took about a century to figure out that it was much better to live UPHILL INLAND due to hurricanes hitting the region.
A much more sensitive archaeological site in the Chesapeake Bay region may be found in Fairfax County on/near Fort Belvoir. The researchers like to keep it secret (more or less) so it can be difficult to get someone to take you there. This one is the site of an enormous Indian village/town that had 15 to 20,000 population in the early 1600s period. We know when Eur/African settlement had been made because the Indians at this site changed the way they made pottery and went into the business of manufacturing and selling their cheap Indian knockoffs up and down the East Coast. There are probably some old crocs from that site in European collections.
For anyone interested in early Black settlement in Virginia, Beacon HIll, just East of Fort Belvoir, is the site of the oldest permanent black village. Today it's a shopping center so little remains of what might have been there originally. Still, we know what they did for a living ~ they brewed stuff. Being quite a ways uphill from the Indian village they were fairly safe from attack by their customers.
Bill Clinton, America's first black President, had his first campaign headquarters in an unfinished office building right at the Western slope of Beacon Hill.
Thanks for that info.
When we visited St Augustine this summer, there were also some newer sites that “discouraged” visitors (LOL).
Ft. Matanzas also has an interesting history.
There are at least 3 words from the Algonquian Indian language which were adopted as loan words in English--mocassin, tomahawk, and opossum.
These guys all had deep water ports and were part of world commerce the day they tried to drop anchor!
Recently I became aware that I could track our surname BACK to Great Brittain from France (where it arrived circa 8th century as people fled the Saxon "invasions").
The Saxon's had been authorized (by presumably King Arthur according to the Annals) to take over some previously farmed countryside but they continued to call the territory by the name of the Celtic family/clan who'd lived there earlier ~ except they wrote it down in their RUNIC ALPHABET. The name later floated on into modern English with the Rune letters untouched.
Makes a lot of difference Fur Shur.
I hope those who discovered this document can improve our understanding of the early settlement period in America.
The “Colonial Triangle” is a great area, both for Motorcycling and exploring. I go as often as I can.
School? Teaching their own, and teaching the Powhatan to read and write?
Relations with the Powhatan were rocky, up and down, but not entirely unfriendly. One of my lines that go back to James Cittie legendarily descends from Chief Powhatan’s half brother Opechancanough, who was purportedly half Spanish. He spent a great deal of time at the Spanish fort up the river, and was even sent to Spain, had an audience with the royal court there, where he was known as Don Luis. He was educated by Jesuits.
Of course, Opechancanough more or less singlehandedly ignited the second Anglo-Powhatan War in 1622, too. As I said, it was rocky, up and down.
Going back that far with genealogy, through occasionally frequent intermarriage with the native population, can be a huge challenge, but there are copious records online, for those who wish to try:
http://www.nps.gov/jame/historyculture/genealogical-research-for-a-jamestown-ancestor.htm
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Thanks GeronL. |
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Fascinating!
It is a very interesting story
His name means “He whose soul is white.”
St Augustine was preceded by Fort Caroline a French settlement just north at Mayport, Jacksonville Beach..... the River of May. The history is detailed by René Goulaine de Laudonnière who wrote his book in 1586 describing his three voyages. It is perhaps the best account of early settlements existent
The Catholic Spanish landed near St Augustine, then raided and massacred the French protestants at Ft Caroline. The returned and founded the settlement.
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