JAMESON, ROBERT (1774-1854), Scottish naturalist and mineralogist, was born at Leith on the 11th of July 1774. He became assistant to a surgeon in his native town; but, having studied natural history under Dr John Walker in 1792 and 1793, he felt that his true province lay in that science. He went in 1800 to Freiberg to study for nearly two years under Werner, and spent two more in continental travel. In 1804 he succeeded Dr Walker as regius professor of natural history in Edinburgh university, and became perhaps the first eminent exponent in Great Britain of the Wernerian geological system; but when he found that theory untenable, he frankly announced his conversion to the views of Hutton. As a teacher, Jameson was remarkable for his power of imparting enthusiasm to his students, and from his class-room there radiated an influence which gave a marked impetus to the study of geology in Britain. His energy also, by means of government aid, private donation and personal outlay, amassed a great part of the splendid collection which now occupies the natural history department of the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh. In 1819 Jameson, with Sir David Brewster, started the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, which after the tenth volume remained under his sole conduct till his death, which took place in Edinburgh on the 19th of April 1854. His bust now stands in the hall of the Edinburgh University library.
Jameson was the author of Outline of the Mineralogy of the Shetland Islands and of the Island of Arran (1798), incorporated with Mineralogy of the Scottish Isles (1800); Mineralogical Description of Scotland, vol. i. pt. 1. (Dumfries, 1805); this was to have been the first of a series embracing all Scotland; System of Mineralogy (3 vols., 1804-1808; 3rd ed., 1820); Elements of Geognosy (1809); Mineralogical Travels through the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland Islands (2 vols., 1813); and Manual of Mineralogy (1821); besides a number of occasional papers, of which a list will be found in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal for July 1854, along with a portrait and biographical sketch of the author.
JAMESTOWN, a city and the county-seat of Stutsman county, North Dakota, U.S.A., on the James River, about 93 m. W. of Fargo. Pop. (1900), 2853, of whom 587 were foreign-born; (1905) 5093; (1910) 4358. Jamestown is served by the Northern Pacific railway, of which it is a division headquarters. At Jamestown is St John’s Academy, a school for girls, conducted by the Sisters of St Joseph. The state hospital for the insane is just beyond the city limits. The city is the commercial centre of a prosperous farming and stock-raising region in the James River valley, and has grain-elevators and flour-mills. Jamestown was first settled in 1873, near Fort Seward, a U.S. military post established in 1872 and abandoned in 1877, and was chartered as a city in 1883.
JAMESTOWN, a city of Chautauqua county, New York, U.S.A., at the S. outlet of Chautauqua Lake, 68 m. S. by W. of Buffalo. Pop. (1900), 22,892, of whom 7270 were foreign-born, mostly Swedish; (1910 census) 31,297. It is served by the Erie and the Jamestown, Chautauqua & Lake Erie railways, by electric lines extending along Lake Chautauqua to Lake Erie on the N. and to Warren, Pennsylvania, on the S., and by summer steamboat lines on Lake Chautauqua. Jamestown is situated among the hills of Chautauqua county, and is a popular summer resort. There is a free public library. A supply of natural gas (from Pennsylvania) and a fine water-power combine to render Jamestown a manufacturing centre of considerable importance. In 1905 the value of its factory products was $10,349,752, an increase of 33.9% since 1900. The city owns and operates its electric-lighting plant and its water-supply system, the water, of exceptional purity, being obtained from artesian wells 4 m. distant. Jamestown was settled in 1810, was incorporated in 1827, and was chartered as a city in 1886. The city was named in honour of James Prendergast, an early settler.
JAMESTOWN, a former village in what is now James City county, Virginia, U.S.A., on Jamestown Island, in the James River, about 40 m. above Norfolk. It was here that the first permanent English settlement in America was founded on the 13th of May 1607, that representative government was inaugurated on the American Continent in 1619, and that negro servitude was introduced into the original thirteen colonies, also in 1619. In Jamestown was the first Anglican church built in America. The settlement was in a low marshy district which proved to be unhealthy; it was accidentally burned in January 1608, was almost completely destroyed by Nathaniel Bacon in September 1676, the state house and other buildings were again burned in 1698, and after the removal of the seat of government of Virginia from Jamestown to the Middle Plantations (now Williamsburg) in 1699 the village fell rapidly into decay. Its population had never been large: it was about 490 in 1609, and 183 in 1623; the mortality was always very heavy. By the middle of the 19th century the peninsula on which Jamestown had been situated had become an island, and by 1900 the James River had worn away the shore but had hardly touched the territory of the “New Towne” (1619), immediately E. of the first settlement; almost the only visible remains, however, were the tower of the brick church and a few gravestones. In 1900 the association for the preservation of Virginia antiquities, to which the site was deeded in 1893, induced the United States government to build a wall to prevent the further encroachment of the river; the foundations of several of the old buildings have since been uncovered, many interesting relics have been found, and in 1907 there were erected a brick church (which is as far as possible a reproduction of the fourth one built in 1639-1647), a marble shaft marking the site of the first settlement, another shaft commemorating the first house of burgesses, a bronze monument to the memory of Captain John Smith, and another monument to the memory of Pocahontas. At the head of Jamestown peninsula Cornwallis, in July 1781, attempted to trick the Americans under Lafayette and General Anthony Wayne by displaying a few men on the peninsula and concealing the principal part of his army on the mainland; but when Wayne discovered the trap he made first a vigorous charge, and then a retreat to Lafayette’s line. Early in the Civil War the Confederates regarded the site (then an island) as of such strategic importance that (near the brick church tower and probably near the site of the first fortifications by the original settlers) they erected heavy earthworks upon it for defence. (For additional details concerning the early history of Jamestown, see [Virginia]: History.)
The founding at Jamestown of the first permanent English-speaking settlement in America was celebrated in 1907 by the Jamestown tercentennial exposition, held on grounds at Sewell’s Point on the shore of Hampton Roads. About twenty foreign nations, the federal government, and most of the states of the union took part in the exposition.