Jamestown Settlement

On 14 May 1607, just over one hundred men settled in what is now Jamestown, Virginia, to become the first permanent English colony in the New World. In 1608 the first women arrived and in 1619 the first slaves and the colonists elected some of their number to the House of Burgesses, the first representative legislature in the America.

To mark the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown Settlement, in 1957 a large festival park opened with much ballyhoo: Queen Elizabeth II made an official appearance and loaned a copy of the Magna Carta for the exhibition. There is now a working reconstruction of the settlement -- and of the three ships that brought the colonists: the Goodspeed (or Godspeed), the Discovery, and the Susan Constant (or Sarah Constant) -- that is very popular with tourists, especially school groups. Recent archaeological work at the site is still expanding our knowledge of what happened at Jamestown in its earliest days.