OLD CHURCH AT JAMESTOWN
A ruined tower of the earliest colonial days.
JAMESTOWN CHURCH
A reproduction of the church built 1639-1647. This building was put up for the Jamestown Exposition in 1907, using the old tower, which can be seen in the background, for its entrance.
Within a few years after the destruction of the Armada a great colonizing company was established in England for the purpose of sending out men to settle the New World. Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, and a number of associates asked King James the First of England to grant them a charter of incorporation. He consented, and on April 10, 1606, transferred to them the vast district called Virginia, which comprised practically all the territory later occupied by the thirteen American colonies. The charter which made the grant clearly declared “that all and every the Persons … which shall dwell and inhabit within every or any of the said colonies or Plantations, and every of their children, … shall have and enjoy all liberties, Franchises, and Immunities … as if they had been abiding and born within this our Realm of England.” This was a promise of self-government for all English colonies in America, and if England had carried it out in good faith there would not later have been the necessity of fighting the Revolutionary War; since all that the Americans demanded at the opening of that conflict was to be taxed only by their own representatives, a privilege which Englishmen in England had enjoyed for many generations.
JAMESTOWN MONUMENT
A shaft to commemorate the first permanent English settlement on American soil. Jamestown was founded May 13, 1607.