Jamestown

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The Virginia Company, a group of London entrepreneurs landed on Jamestown Island on May 14, 1607. One hundred and eight settlers had sailed from England under a charter granted by King James I to establish a settlement in the Chesapeake region of North America. They established the Virginia English colony on the banks of the James River 60 miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.

Within a month they had built a fort of wooden palisaded walls which formed a triangle around a storehouse, a church, and a number of houses. Disease, famine and attacks by Algonquian Indians took a tremendous toll on the original population. The fort existed into the middle of the 1620s.

The first representative assembly in the New World convened in the Jamestown church on July 30, 1619. Jamestown remained the capital of Virginia until 1698 when the capital moved to Williamsburg.

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