It is no contest: William Claiborne was the greatest 17th-century Virginian, because he represented, more than any other colonist, the American dream of a self-made man who enjoyed a long and successful life from the Company era (he arrived at Jamestown in 1621) to the end of Bacon's Rebellion (he died in 1677). He survived both the 1622 and 1644 massacres; held every top office in the colony; raided hostile Pamunkey Indians as general of militia (making alot of New Kent County his own as a reward), but ALSO pioneered the English fur trade in the Northern Chesapeake with hospitable Susquehannock Indians; founded his own colony on Kent Island and, if he had had his way, would have extended the borders of "Greater Virginia" at least to the Pennsylvania border (eliminating Maryland, sorry). He played a prominent role in unseating two royal governors--Harvey and Berkeley--and he was preeminent in obtaining the support of leading London merchants in even more grandiose plans to control the beaver trade from the Chesapeake to Nova Scotia to Quebec. He was bold and decisive, leading a Parliamentary force in the 1650s that occupied and changed the governments of both the Virginia and Maryland colonies--an effort at unified governance that could have prevented some of the most perplexing problems of the later 17th century Tobacco Coast. Claiborne was nothing if not a perceptive, far-sighted, global thinker, and his sponsorship of intercultural interest group alliances from the boardrooms of London to the beaverdams of America was the most original idea of any 17th-century Virginian--having the potential to produce colonial profits without dispossessing (or killing off) indigenous populations. He was also the first gentleman planter to demonstrate the iimportance of being a trained and savvy surveyor! Claiborne fits my criteria to a tee: a commoner, not a royal governor; an intelligent innovator well ahead of his time, who used his wits and talents to transform his era; someone who left descendants across many generations and many frontiers down to the Louisiana Purchase era; and someone who found wealth IN America, by UNDERSTANDING America, which had eluded him in Kent, England. Whether as a raider, trader, farmer, fur merchant, royal office holder, and rebel against royal governors, Claiborne, above all, EMBRACED CHANGE, a real American trait, and oversaw critical transitions and transfor- mations in the history of ALL the Chesapeake. NOTE: A real "Virginian" almost by definition should post-date 1622, when the term first became popular and some colonists made the commit- ment to STAY permanently, despite (or because of ) the Massacre (unlike the temporary sojourners and hired Company hands (like Capt John Smith), who returned to and died in England. Fred Fausz St. Louis To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html