James City County
, VA
Many of the County Links on the left will keep you specifically in or near James City County in the Coast Area region of Virginia. For thousands of years before the arrival of the English settlers, migratory hunters lived along the Chesapeake Bay, first in base camps and then in permanent villages along the Bay's many estuaries. They were the ancestors of the Virginia Algonquins and the Powhatans. By the 1600's the several hundred Native Americans of the lower tidewater farmed and hunted near here, and communicated and traded with tribes on both sides of the Chesapeake. Into this sparsely settled land came 104 hardy, determined English Colonists on May 13, 1607. |
They built a fort and small settlement, and farmed and traded with the Powhatans, who were friendly at the start. Soon the English established other settlements on the peninsula, with James Towne as the administrative center or capitol. On July 30, 1619, in Jamestown's Church, burgesses elected from each settlement in the colony formed the New World's first representative assembly. In August, a Dutch ship brought the first blacks to the colony. Modern American history had begun... come see where it started.
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