Jamestown survived as the first permanent British settlement in America because of
A long-forgotten cemetery reveals a colony in crisis. Young adults — normally a society's healthiest members — were dying. The few women and infants at Jamestown were dying. Gravediggers were hurrying, digging graves in all directions. The living were abandoning their burial customs. Show
The Starving TimeThese graves mark the Starving Time, the desperate winter of 1609-1610. When a load of new colonists landed in mid-August 1609, the situation was dire. They brought few provisions: their supply ships had run aground in Bermuda. American Indians were besieging James Fort. The colony's leader, Captain John Smith, left for England in October for treatment of a gunpowder burn. Food supplies were exhausted. The settlers feared to leave the fort to fish or hunt. By the spring, more than half the colony had perished from disease and famine Their quotes on the situation are included in the attached video. Video: Quotes from the Jamestown SettlersThe winter of 1609-1610 in Jamestown is referred to as the "starving time." Disease, violence, drought, a meager harvest followed by a harsh winter, and poor drinking water left the majority of colonists dead that winter. Anthropologists continue to unravel the events leading to near-destruction of the Jamestown settlement. The words recorded by colonists themselves provide important clues. Video developed for the Written in Bone exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History. A Cemetery's Tale In the 1950s, archaeologists located an early unmarked cemetery. It lay under the ruins of a statehouse that was built at Jamestown in the 1660s. Now called the Statehouse Complex Burial Ground, it holds victims of the Starving Time, as well as later graves up to the 1630s. As yet, only part of the cemetery has been investigated. Eighty three individuals buried in 69 graves have been examined. Twelve graves contained two bodies and one grave contained three bodies. Patterns and trends emerge in looking at an entire cemetery. One burial informs us about an individual; many burials at a single site can cast light on social conditions and customs. In this image, within and outside the gray outlines of the Statehouse, red denotes more than one person in a grave, green represents burials with clothing, and blue marks burials with lead shot. The Statehouse Complex Burial Ground exposes the desperate times and social disruption in the settlement's early years. Extraordinary, Early DeathsA cemetery reflects a community. Normally, the dead are infants or small children, or middle-aged to older adults, with roughly equal numbers of males and females. The unusually high death rate of young adults in the Statehouse cemetery reflects both the crisis in the community and the makeup of the population of early Jamestown. The remains are mostly young adult and teen-aged males. The few females were girls and young women who had come to the colony as servants or brides. Read about "Jane." A Breakdown in Burial CustomsThe standard English practice in the early 1600s was to bury the dead without clothing, wrapped in a winding-sheet or shroud. Most were placed without a coffin in a carefully dug shaft large enough to fit a body extended on its back. The Statehouse cemetery holds a mix of traditional and haphazard burials. In some graves, the bodies were face down, on their sides, or bent to fit too small a grave shaft. At least three people were buried still clothed, as shown by buttons and personal items that might have been in a pocket. Foods of DesperationBones of another sort — the remains of meals the colonists once ate — are vital clues. The colonists were frantic for food. After they ran out of provisions, they consumed meats they would never have willingly swallowed otherwise. First they slaughtered their horses. Faced with starvation, they ate dogs, cats, and rats — animals that had come to Jamestown as passengers on English ships — and even snakes. In the fort's trash pits, many bones of once taboo foods show butchering marks. Careful study of "Jane's" skeleton reveals evidence of suvival cannibalism. One colonists wrote that some of the starving resorted to digging up corpses for food. DeliveranceBones can sometimes pinpoint and prove an event in history. Archaeologists also recovered remains of a particular bird species from the early trash pits at Jamestown. These birds could have come only from one place. The island of Bermuda is the only native habitat of the Bermuda petrel, or cahow. These small petrel bones mark a crucial turning point. In May 1610, more colonists and supply ships from Bermuda landed in Jamestown. In journals written four hundred years ago, the survivng colonists credited their coming with saving the settlement from starvation and abandonment. What caused Jamestown to survive?A continued influx of new English settlers is certainly one of the answers to how Jamestown survived, but new arrivals also created a strain on the already limited resources that kept the site alive. The winter of 1609/10 saw the number of colonists drop from 300 to 90, 60 of whom were at Jamestown.
How did Jamestown become a permanent settlement?On May 14, 1607, a group of roughly 100 members of a joint venture called the Virginia Company founded the first permanent English settlement in North America on the banks of the James River.
Why did the British choose Jamestown to settle in America?Jamestown was located as close to the Atlantic Ocean as the initial colonial leaders thought was safe, rather than as far inland as ships could go, in order to balance military security with the logistics of getting back and forth to England.
What enabled Jamestown settlement to survive and become permanent?They chose a place near a river, where the deep water allowed them to anchor their ships close by. The site was upriver from Chesapeake Bay, but far enough from the river that it would be difficult for Spanish ships to attack. Located on a peninsula, the town was easy to defend by land.
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