Yes, that's right.

There were other, earlier attempts at English settlement, the most
famous being the "Lost Colony" on Roanoke Island, N.C.

The others were, if memory serves, very small outposts by one or a few
individuals, none of which turned into anything permanent.  To find out
about them, look at the early pages of D.W. Meinig, The Shaping of
America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, volume 1:
Atlantic America, 1492-1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986).

--Jurretta Heckscher


On Nov 6, 2006, at 6:59 PM, gcg wrote:

> Jamestown is the first permanent English settlement in the future
> United
> States of America. I believe we can safely say that. Glenn
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Randy Cabell
> Sent: Monday, November 06, 2006 09:41
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Raining on our Jamestown Parade?
>
> 'Jamestown -- The oldest permanent English Settlement in America(?),
> in The
> New World(?)',  between latitudes ___ and ___(?)   uhhhhhhhhh?????????
>
> Here, I have invested my twilight years in celebrating The Trumpeter of
> Jamestowne, Jamestown 400, etc. only to pick up the paper this morning
> to
> find that somebody else settled up in Port Royal (Canada) half a decade
> earlier.  What gives?  The article was a bit unclear as to whether
> anybody
> continued to live there, but I do know from visiting Port Royal a few
> years
> ago that it was an English bastion at some point.
>
> In his tongue-in-cheek history of Virginia, James Branch Cabell poked
> some
> good natured fun as us Virginians for trumpeting THE OLDEST PERMANENT
> ENGLISH SETTLEMENT, which (1) ignored the fact the Spanish had
> settlements
> in Florida a generation earlier and (2) at the time JBC was writing
> back in
> the 1940's, almost nothing of Jamestowne had been found.
>
> Last Saturday, I heard just about the best talk on the meaning of
> Jamestown
> that I have ever heard - by John Quarstein.  In fact afterward, I
> suggested
> to the people at my table that we chip in and send him up to our New
> England
> Pilgrim Brethren to set the record straight on the heritage of
> Jamestown and
> our life in America today.
>
> Now, it looks like those upstart Canadians are trying to beat us out
> of the
> first permanent etc.......  What next?  Will the French say that a
> small
> party (un petite corps) settled Ft. Louisburg on the coast of Nova
> Scotia in
> 1606?  And how about the Dutch?  Will they claim that they really
> landed a
> large party (Den Grosse Kompanie)  at New Mastrecht in 1602?  Hey, and
> how
> about Henry Hudson?
>
> I guess I need a table (matrix?) of 'firsts' in the New World, so that
> I can
> safely make a statement about where Jamestowne fits in.
>
> Randy Cabell
> The Trumpeter of      uhhhh.......  Boyce

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