JAMESTOWN, Va., in James City County, the first permanent English. settlement in the New World, and capital of Virginia 1607-98, on what was a peninsula of the James River some 32 miles from its mouth, nearly opposite the present Williamsburg, with a neck over flowed at high tide, and since then washed away, leaving the place an island; the front also has been eaten away by the river, so that the site of the original huts is submerged. It was ill chosen and malarious, and the place never prospered; but no towns did in early Virginia. It was founded 13 May 1607 by the company of Gosnold, Wingfield, John Smith, etc., with Captain Newport; and was first a triangular wooden blockhouse called Fort James, after the king, around which some huts sprang up. These were entirely destroyed by fire in 1608, but soon rebuilt. In 1609 there were 50 or 60 wooden houses of one and two stories, with a chapel and a storehouse, sur rounded by a log palisade 15 feet high and with a fort at the neck. During the Starving Time of 1609-10 it was nearly depopulated,• and on 7 June 1610 the remnant deserted it and started for England; but meeting Lord Delaware with provision ships at the mouth of the river, all turned back and reoccupied it. Delaware found the chapel and unfrequented") In 1616 John Rolfe says there were 50 inhabitants. By 1619 a church of hewn timber 50 by 20 had been :built; in July 1619 the first legislative assembly in America was held there. A timely warning enabled its inhabitants to escape the great Indian massacre of 1622, and it was a place of refuge for those outside it. The first brick edifice in
Jamestown was erected in 1640; a brick church some time after; between 1676 and 1684 was built the brick church whose ivy-mantled tower still stands, and which is incorrectly supposed by many tourists to be the one in which Rolfe married Pocahontas. About the same time a more ambitious fort was begun,. with a maga zine still traceable; but so injudiciously located for guarding the river-channel that it was above instead of below the place to be defended. Jamestown has little history separate from the colony thence till Baton's 'Rebellion (q.v.) ; as Berkeley's capital, it was burnt to the ground by Bacon, that it might no longer °harbor the rogues?) Again rebuilt, in the •last decade of the century it was once more destroyed by fire, and never rose from its ashes. It had long been dwindling, and removal of the capital had been mooted, and in 1698 Williamsburg was made the capital. TM very recent years the ruins of Jamestown were left to sink gradu ally into the encroaching river; but some years ago the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities bought it, and with the help of the national government have built a sea-wall and saved the relics from further de struction. Besides the church tower a few tombstones and remains of two or three houses still exist. Consult Tyler, 'Cradle of the Re public) (1900).