Notable Events from 1610-1615

The following list of events occurred between May 1610 through 1615:  The individual name links  are connected to their pages at Wikitree for genealogical purposes and for more historical information. Once connected to Wikitree on this page, the individual's name will not bear a link again on this page.

Governor
Thomas Gates

May 1610: Thomas Gates and other Sea Venture survivors return to Jamestown from Bermuda, whereupon Gates is sworn in as the first governor of the new charter. George Percy immediately left for the relative safety of Point Comfort, and members of the Powhatan Nation murdered two of the Bermuda survivors within days of landing at Jamestown. None of the settlers wanted anything more than to return to England, and Gates agreed. They buried the fort's cannons, took what little they had, boarded a ship and were heading out to sea when they encountered another ship approaching.*

* "In order to make sure the Powhatan Indian problem wasn’t made any worse by the departure of the settlers, Sir Thomas had the fort’s cannon buried, and took all the small arms aboard the boats. On June 7, the last of the supplies were loaded, and the settlers, their hearts full, sailed off in their motley little fleet, down the James River, towards the Atlantic. They never got there. On the way downriver, they met a longboat scouting upriver from Lord De La Warre’s fleet, which had arrived bringing another 150 settlers and three shiploads of supplies to Jamestown." See: The Wreck of the Sea Venture: The Untold Story at The Bermudian.

John Rolfe was counted as one of the settlers to arrive in Jamestown from Bermuda after the Sea Venture shipwreck. He and his first wife, Sarah Hacker Rolfe, welcomed a baby girl after they survived the ship's foundering, but the baby died in Bermuda. Shortly after arriving at Jamestown, Rolfe's wife died. Within a few years, he would marry Pocahontas, his second of three wives.

The Virginia Company sent Reverend Richard Buck to Jamestown to be the colony's first chaplain. He also was aboard the Sea Venture and he supposedly performed the marriage between John Rolfe and Pocahontas.

Thomas West,
3rd Baron De La Warr

June 1610: Thomas West, 3rd Lord de La Warr (Delaware), arrived as the settlers were leaving, and the colonists could do nothing but turn around and face life again at Jamestown. The Virginia Company appointed West as the first Lord Governor and Captain General of Virginia for life. While he secured Virginia's future during his tenure, his ill health permitted him to serve only 11 months and much of that time was spent aboard a ship. He returned to England in 1611. In 1618 West again left England to deal with a political crisis in Virginia, but he died at sea on 7 June 1618. The State of Delaware and the Delaware River were named in his honor, as he explored the Delaware Bay and River area.

Gates served as lieutenant governor from 1611 to 1614, stiffened Jamestown's defenses, and--along with Dale--cleared much of the James River of Powhatan tribes. Advocating a strict, military-style regime, he instituted a set of rules that were expanded and, in 1612, published as For the Colony in Virginea Britannia. He participated in sometimes overtly brutal attacks on the Natives during the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1614), and, when in England, he worked as a relentless advocate for the Virginia Company.

November 1610: Governor Sir Thomas West sent an expedition west toward the falls of the James River. After an initial defeat at the hands of the Appamattuck's weroansqua (Queen), Opossunoquonuske, the colonists destroyed the Appamattuck village.

Jamestown Church

March 1611: Lord Delaware left Jamestown in March, 1611, and Percy was again placed at the head of the colony until the arrival of Sir Thomas Dale that May. Sir Thomas Dale created the first code of law ever to be produced for Englishmen in the Americas, now known as Dale's Code. Sir Thomas West collaborated.

September 1611: Thomas Dale led a group of colonists to establish Henricus (later Henrico), one of the first outlying settlements in Virginia. Additionally, one year after the arrival of the first minister, the second mininster, Reverend Alexander Whitaker, arrived to lead a church at the new Henricus settlement. It is said that he baptised Pocahontas, and there's a bit of a debate over whether or not he married John Rolfe and Powhatan's daughter. Whitaker didn't last long. He drowned as he was trying to cross the James River at about age 32 in 1617.

1612: The third charter of the Virginia Company reaffirmed independence from the Crown both in trade and in governance. A new council, drawn only from Company members (investors), made policy and wrote instructions for Jamestown. The demand for more frequent meetings of the "court" were made as well as a quarterly meeting of council members, interested officials, and members. The governor and his council in Jamestown were responsible solely to the Company. While the Crown declared distance from the Company, it issued several lotteries. Among them was one to raise funds for the Virginia Company.

The Virginia Company also formally established a formal colony on the island of Bermuda in 1612. The Company created St. George's, the first capital of Bermuda, and 60 English settlers arrived to colonize the island. This was the first year that Bermuda was included in the Virginia Company charters.

13 April 1613: Captain Samuel Argall and others captured Powhatan's daughter, Pocohontas, and brought her to Jamestown. Governor Sir Thomas Dale decided to keep her hostage until Powhatan released captured Englishmen.

Bermuda Hundred Map

December 1613: Sir Thomas Dale established Bermuda Hundred in December of this year, displacing Virginia natives who had occupied the area along the confluence of the James and Appomattox Rivers for 10,000 years. Appamattuck Indians maintained their principal town, name unknown, at the site, which was located within the earliest borders of Tsenacomoco, a political alliance ruled by Powhatan. Approximately 380 people lived there in 1607, when the English met Indian defenders at the site while exploring the newly named James River. The term, "hundred", comes from the English practice of locating ten towns or groups of ten families in a settlement. "Bermuda" was in honor of the trials some settlers faced when the Sea Venture foundered off the coast of Bermuda in 1609. Bermuda Hundred was located approximately five miles by land and fourteen miles by water from Henrico (Henricus), which Dale established in 1611.

Guard Duty Reimagined 2019

1614: By this year, four settlements branched into the interior including Jamestown, Kecoughtan (Elizabeth City after 1621, later Hampton), Henrico, and Charles City. Also, while English gentlemen were members of council and leaders, their subjects often were individuals with prices on their heads or who had nothing to lose by serving the rough life in the New World. Many of those individuals were indentured servants, and their servitude expired this year, allowing them to receive payment per their contracts. Some received freedom, others received land or other goods as well as their freedom. Some returned to England, others remained, and many became tenant farmers.

John Rolfe

John Rolfe became the first individual in to grow marketable tobacco in Jamestown after he obtained superior seed from South America (some say West Indies). How he obtained that seed is unknown, as the Spanish had outlawed the sale of tobacco seed to any other nations on penalty of death. He brought in the variety, Nicotiana Tabacum, which was much more desirable than the bitter North American Nicotiana Rustica.

Captain Samuel Argall negotiated a written treaty with the Chickahominy Indians this year as well as an ending note to the first Anglo-Powhatan War. This tribe was semi-independent of the Powhatan confederation. Jamestown was still largely dependent on Indian tribes for food supplies.

March 1614: John Rolfe and Robert Sparkes traveled up the Pamunkey River (tributary of the York River) with Pocahontas. The settlers had held her captive at Jamestown for almost a year. Powhatan, her father, negotiated a truce to help end the Anglo-Powhatan war.

Marriage of Pocahontas

April 1614: Pocahontas converted to Christianity and assumed the name, "Rebecca". Presumably, Reverend Richard Buck married John Rolfe and "Rebecca". Pocahontas and John Rolfe had one child, a son named Thomas Rolfe, born about 1615.

June 1614: John Rolfe sent his first shipment of tobacco to England. Samuel Argall and Ralph Hamor departed for England as well. Hamor had arrived via the Sea Venture and served as Secretary of State from 1611 to 1614. In that year he contributd to the treatise, A true discourse of the present estate of Virginia, and the successe of the affaires there till the 18 of Iune 1614. Together with a relation of the seuerall English townes and fortes, the assured hopes of that countrie and the peace concluded with the Indians. The christening of Powhatans daughter and her marriage with an English-man.* He did not return to Virginia until May 1617.

Colonists Choose Wives

* Hamor's contribution was added to a compilation of letters created by Thomas Dale, Reverend Alexander Whitaker, and John Rolfe. This compilation includes the following three letters: (1) "To the R. and my most esteemed friend Mr. D.M. at his house at F. Ch. in London," by Sir Thomas Dale, dated "From Iames towne in Virginia the 18 of Iune, 1614," p. 51-59. (2) "To my verie deere and louing cosen M[aster] G[ouge] minister of the B[lack] F[riars] in London," by Rev. Alexander Whitaker, dated "Virginia Iune 18. 1614," p. 59-61. (3) "The coppie of the gentle-mans letters to Sir Thomas Dale, that after maried Powhatans daughter, containing the reasons mouing him thereunto," by John Rolfe, p. 61-68.

1615: In 1609, the Virginia Company claimed Bermuda as part of its original charter but did nothing to establish a colony there. In 1612, some Virginia Company members purchased rights from their own Company to form the Somers Island Company, which is chartered as the Bermuda Company this year, separate from the Virginia Company. See more: Records of the Virginia Company, 1622-24, Volume II: Court Book Part B.

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Illustrations:

• Governor Thomas Gates by Pjolsenharbich - The New American Antiquarian 3 (Fall 2024): 65., CC BY-SA 4.0. Wikipedia.
• Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr by Unidentified painter - Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, Public Domain. Wikipedia.
• Jamestown Church. Detroit Publishing Co., Copyright Claimant, and Publisher Detroit Publishing Co, Jackson, William Henry, photographer. Old church, Jamestown, Va. Jamestown United States Virginia, None. [Between 1900 and 1906] Photograph. Library of Congress.
• Bermuda Hundred Map by Unknown cartographer for author Thomas J. Wertenbaker - Page 20 from Thomas J. Wertenbaker's Virginia Under the StuartsPrinceton: Princeton University Press, 1914. Public Domain. Wikipedia.
• Guard Duty Reimagined 2019. Highsmith, Carol M, photographer. Historic interpreters Chas Ritinski, left, and Julie Power reimagine guard duty at the Jamestown Settlement in Jamestown, Virginia. Jamestown United States Virginia, 2019. Library of Congress.
• John Rolfe cultivating tobacco by "Shaw" (illustrator or engraver), via Billings, E.R., Public Domain. Wikipedia.
• Marriage of Pocahontas by Henry Brueckner - Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend by William M. S. Rasmussen, Public Domain. Wikipedia. 
• Colonists Choose Wives: Unknown engraving (1615), Internet Archive Book Images, Wikipedia.