Jamestown is part of Colonial National Historical Park and was the first permanent English settlement in America.

The National Park Service and the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities have excavated and restored the area. The Jamestown Archaeological Laboratory exhibits relics unearthed in the excavations. Jamestown Festival Park, adjacent to the national park, has full-scale replicas of early ships and a reconstruction of James Fort.

2007 was the 400th anniversary of the first landing - celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic.

Great interest in American colonisation was awakened in England by a little book called "Western Planting," written by Richard Hakluyt. Several voyages were made before any settling started.

In 1606, two companies were formed, the newly formed London and the Plymouth Companies each obtaining a royal charter enabling the foundation of a colony, the right to coin money, raise revenue, and to make laws, but reserving other powers to the king. Each was allocated 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.

On the 19th of December, 1606, three small ships bearing 105 colonists and commanded by Christopher Newport, a famous sea captain, set out upon the wintry sea for the New World. The Susan Constant, largest of the vessels, was of one hundred tons burden and the smallest only 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.

The captain chose one of the great rivers flowing into the bay, named it after King James and followed it for about thirty miles founding a town which also they called after the name of the king. Looking at the colonists, it would be difficult to imagine a set of men less well equipped to build a colony and found a nation than were those who settled at Jamestown in 1607 and they were almost wiped out over the years.

Later arrivals were, however, better fitted to establishing a colony and in January, 1608, Captain Newport returned with food supplies and 120 more colonists. By 1609 this had expanded to 500 and the population continued to expand and the elements of administration under the Crown was established.

Many settlers died from famine and disease in the following winter.   The survivors were encouraged to stay in Jamestown by the arrival of new settlers and supplies the following June.   In 1612 tobacco growing was started.   The colony prospered and became the capital of Virginia.   In 1619 the first representative assembly in America was held here.   In the same year, at Jamestown, the first black slaves were introduced into the original 13 colonies.   The village was often attacked by Native Americans.   In 1622, 350 colonists were killed; 500 in 1644.

The longest rule of one man in colonial history was Sir William Berkeley, who became governor of Virginia in 1642 and continued to hold the office until 1677, with the exception of a few years under the commonwealth. Berkeley was a rough, outspoken man with much common sense, but with a hot temper and a narrow mind. He was a Cavalier of the extreme type, and during the first period of his governorship he spent much of his energy in persecuting the Puritans, many of whom found refuge in Maryland.

About the time Berkeley assumed the office, the English Civil War broke out in England between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads, or Puritans. The latter, led by Oliver Cromwell, one of the strongest personalities in British history, eventually triumphal over the Cavaliers and, in 1649, Charles I was beheaded. Berkeley, as most of the Virginians, was loyal to the Crown, and he invited the young son of the executed monarch to come to America and become King of Virginia. Parliament, however, would suffer no opposition from the colony, and it sent a commission with a fleet to reduce the colony to allegiance. The Virginians were only mildly royalist and they yielded without a struggle; but they lost nothing by yielding, for the Commonwealth granted them greater freedom in self-government than they had ever before enjoyed before.

At that time an anonymous pamphlet published in London gave a glowing account of life in Virginia, describing it as a land where "there is nothing wanting," a land of 15,000 English and 300 negro slaves, 20,000 cattle, many kinds of wild animals, "above thirty sorts" of fish, farm products, fruits, and vegetables in great quantities, and the like. If this was intended to induce home seekers to migrate to Virginia, it had the desired effect. The Cavaliers came in large numbers; and they were of a far better class than were those who had first settled the colony. Among them were the ancestors of George Washington, James Madison, James Monroe, John Marshall, and of many others of the far-famed "First Families of Virginia".

It is most probable that Charles Barham was amongst those lured to set up home in Virginia having come from a relatively wealthy family in England.   Now read on.....