Items Left At Jamestown By Early Metalworkers
The brass weights, ingot of scrap brass, and silver spoon shown, which were unearthed at Jamestown, are reminders of a bygone day when metalworkers made beautiful things in Virginia's colonial capital over three centuries ago. Contemporary records indicate that many metalworkers emigrated to Virginia during the seventeenth century.
FISHING
When the first settlers planted their small colony at Jamestown the tidewater rivers and bays teemed with many kinds of fish and seafood. Varieties which soon appeared on the colonists' tables included sheepshead, shad, sturgeon, herring, sole, white salmon, bass, flounder, pike, bream, perch, rock, and drum; as well as oysters, crabs, and mussels.
The day after the colonists reached Virginia, April 27 1607, George Percy observed that the oysters were large and tasty:
We came to a place where they [the Indians] had made a great fire, and had beene newly a rosting oysters. When they perceived our comming, they fled away to the mountaines, and left many of the oysters in the fire. We eat some of the oysters, which were very large and delicate in taste.
The following day, April 28, Percy noted that some of the oysters had pearls: