What was it like?

At the start of the seventeenth century the entire eastern portion of North America, which afterward became the thirteen original states, was known as Virginia. Interest in American colonization was awakened in England by a little book on "Western Planting," inspired by Raleigh and written by Richard Hakluyt. Several voyages were made before any permanent settlement was established.

These voyages, undertaken by individuals, were not successful financially or otherwise and others were deterred from risking their fortunes in similar enterprises. But the success of various commercial companies which had multiplied in the last half century for the purpose of trading with distant countries, such as the East India Company, chartered in 1600, suggested similar enterprises for the western world. And, the corporation as a form of local subordinate government had long been familiar to the English merchant, and readily lent itself to plans of colonial extension.

In 1606, two companies were formed, Virginia was divided into two parts and a part granted to each, the London Company and the Plymouth Company. A royal charter enabled each to found a colony, granting them the right to coin money, raise revenue, and to make laws, but still reserving much power to the king. Each was given a block of land a hundred miles square, and the settlements were to be at least one hundred miles apart. The London Company had permission to plant a colony anywhere on the coast between the thirty-fourth and forty-first degrees north latitude.

Great haste was now made by the London Company in preparing for colonization in America, and on the 19th of December, 1606, three small ships bearing one hundred and five colonists and commanded by Christopher Newport, a famous sea captain, set out upon the wintry sea for the New World. The largest of the vessels, the Susan Constant,was of one hundred tons burden and the smallest of but twenty tons. The voyage was long and dreary, and it consumed the remainder of the winter. On reaching the American shore the weary voyagers were greeted by the singing of birds and the fragrance of flowers. Entering Chesapeake Bay they named the two projecting points at its sides, Cape Henry and Cape Charles, after the two young sons of the king.

They chose one of the great rivers flowing into the bay, left upon it the name of King James and followed it for about thirty miles, and founded a town which also they called Jamestown, after the name of their king. Thus was founded the first of the permanent settlements which were to multiply and expand, and in three hundred years to grow into the greatest nation of the earth. It would be difficult to imagine a set of men less fitted to build a colony and found a nation than were those who settled at Jamestown in 1607. Among them were but twelve laborers, a few carpenters, a blacksmith, a mason, a barber, and a tailor, while more than fifty were "gentlemen," that is men without an occupation, idle, shiftless men who had joined the enterprise without realizing that years of labor were essential to success. But there were a few men of worth in the company. There was Wingfield, who became the first president of of the governing council, the hero of many strange adventures. They soon erected a few tents and small cabins; some, however, found a dwelling place by burrowing into the ground. For a church they nailed a board between two trees, stretched a canvas over it, and beneath this the Rev. Robert Hunt held services according to the rites of the Church of England.

Thus was the beginning.