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.
Amazing knowledge of colonial settlement. You’re a regular David Hackett Fischer. Do you just do this for fun or is it your vocation as well?