'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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