Mysterious Jamestown Tablet an American Rosetta Stone ?

I visited both Ft Caroline and the Mantzas site in 2008.

Ft Caroline was made into a national park in the 70’s I think but did not get fully developed for some time. It is a sop to the French who were left out of the Park Service efforts. The property was given to the government by two brothers.

Growing up, my favorite book, read and reread several times, was the Flamingo Feather by Kirk Munroe. It is the story of Ft Caroline and was written in 1854. I read the book again as a 50 something adult and tried my best to associate the rivers and lands described with places on the map. I was trying to associate the colony with the St Mary’s river and Okefenokee Swamp just a little north at the Georgia line.I have Visited St Mary’s and the Cumberland Island National Sea Shore many times and knew that the places in the book were dead on to the St Mary’s area. Turns out, I was one river too far north.

While visiting Florida and headed to St Agustine on A1A I saw Ft Caroline on the map. Hey!!! I know that area well. There is no such National Park. To my wonder and absolute amazement it is not only there but has wonderful exhibits and reconstructions.

It turns out that the Book of The Three Voyages by René Goulaine de Laudonnière was the basis for the Flamingo Feather. Laudonniere wrote his book in 1586 and out in Kansas Kirk Munroe in 1854 used it to construct a wonderful fictional account of the fort, the protagonist Rene who was adopted as an Indian Prince, and the royal symbol of a Flamingo Feather headdress.

If you are interested in the period history, I definitely recommed the book Three Voyages. It details all the intrigue and political infighting that was associated with the founding and destruction of Fort Caroline and the Spanish settlements to the south. It details the absolute stupidity and arrogance of the French nobles who couldn’t make things work. Most importantly, It is a very readable first hand account of those important historical events.

As You can tell by the length of this post, it is high on my list of neat places.

St Augustine is number one on my list of favorite motorcycle rides.

We stay at a wonderful timeshare right on the beach with a biker bar on the corner.

It’s five hours away from where I live so it is a healthy ride to and from.

Every restaurant has LIVE music and it’s all OLD SCHOOL CLASSIC ROCK.

And the HISTORY in that area is phenomenal, and most places are either free or under $10.00.

Just the thing for this Bass Playing Biker History loving Irish Indian!

Living in Virginia gives me access to a lot of this stuff, and I've been living right here for a very long time.

I've read just about every book or record found as a standard item in "The Virginia Room" (a special deal in Virginia ~ every county has at least one such "Room").

Plus, had an ancestor who was the Segravier to Jeanne de Laval, the second wife of Rene of Anjou. Rene was Father in Law of Henry VII and grandfather of Henry VIII, and great grandfather of Mary, Elizabeth, AND, lo and behold, James, so finding "fambly" right here in Virginia a few years BEFORE the founding of Jamestown wasn't all that surprising.

Rene was also multiply related to Ferdinand of Spain, and his wife Isabella. Christopher Columbus sailed for him, and his brother did cartography for him. He fought a war with Padua to bring Leonardo da Vinci back to France to teach in a University the King of France built for him.

This is the fellow who, when young, became patron to Jeanne d'Arc.

That's the focal point for my understanding of the settlement of America by the Eur/African peoples.

It goes on from there in vast detail, but knowing the lineages, the relationships any of them had to the ancestor who administered the "Foret de Beaufort" itself, enables me to every now and then find a link that would be otherwise unexpected.

Such an event happened not too long ago when I finally understood that three young men in a rowboat off Nova Scotia in 1613 included a Bourbon family member whose Grandfather was known as Count Jacob Pontusson De la Gardie, the fellow who rearmed Sweden and initiated the Swedish Empire under the Vassa King.

By 1638 Jacob's son Pontus founded New Sweden (and designed Fort Christian) in Delaware!

There is a strong link between the Late Middle Ages and the American Frontier!

“There is a strong link between the Late Middle Ages and the American Frontier!”

And if there isn’t already a book describing this then you owe us one.. I really enjoyed your description of the Saami people in New Sweden on another thread. That long forgotten colonial tribe certainly appears to explain the Christmas iconography of the United States.

I grew up in Virginia but that was a long time ago. If there was a Virginia Room in Arlington I didn’t learn of it. I have a few ancestors leading back to Jamestown’s environs, including some Huguenots and one fellow named Robert Lee, but I don’t know much about them other than their names.

Possibly two books.

You probably realize most books about the discovery of America and its subsequent settlement focus mostly on "The AGE OF DISCOVERY" and describe events in terms of nation states.

I believe I just outlined the existence of a "family" ~ kind of extended but still a "family" that did the discovery, opened up the frontier, and continued development of the Americas as the progenitor of "the cutting edge" ~ the guys who reclaimed the land ~ they're still there working away in Brazil for example.

The Sa'ami play several parts in this as well ~

(1) I got a lot of relatives (one example),

(2) They developed a hull shape and hull construction design for a boat that could travel well in Northern Scandinavian rivers AND in the Arctic Ocean. This became the basis of the design scaled up and used by the Vikings to begin their long distance raids and the discovery of the North Atlantic (Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, America).

(3)Spreading of Sa'ami culture to Europe, then to other parts. This includes skis ~ no small thing. Canada wouldn't really exit without them.

(4) The Sa'ami and the Southern Ocean whale trade ~ recall the existence of that X-Factor in the Iriquois, Cherokee and other Algonkian Indians? Remember "Moby Dick"? Tashtego, and maybe two of the other harpooners fit the description of the North American Branch. Melville couldn't know at that time, but he does note the man's tribe is a remnant and very adept at the chore of harpooning.

I was always entranced with the brief discussions of the elaborate tattoos ~ which you see sometimes if you encounter a Chippewa or Ojibway on a hot day in the Western Plains and he's on his motorcycle ~ although many Sioux follow the same custom. Christianity has been suppressing this sort of thing though.

A final note on this ~ one day I found a Church of the First Born that'd been established in Rhode Island ~ which was my first clue that I'd found out something about whalers possibly no one else had noticed. Shortly after I found another Church of the First Born in Brownsville, TX ~ which dates from the beginning of Spanish settlement of what is now South Texas. Again, a whale station ~ and finally references to such a place somewhere in Argentina or maybe Chile, in the earliest times. A title rises up out of the murk somewhere "The Sa'ami of the Spanish Main" ~ which probably has too few factoids to do as a serious work of history, but may be sufficient for someone else some day to do as a novel. Maybe the writer could explain to us something of the origin of white whales

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