Our Jamestown Heritage

Our genealogical link to original Jamestown settlers is found below.  

Christopher Milner and Susan Baracklough

John Milner Sr & Rachel Wilkinson

John Noyce Rolfe Milner & Elizabeth Pierce Rolph (of Jamestown)

Abraham Childers & Ann Milner Pew

Henry B. Childers & Lucretia Jones

Henry Philemon Childers & Mary D Farmer 

Thomas Childers & Charlotte Brewer

James Childers & Nancy Jones 

Ebenezer Tyler & Martha Childers

Lewis Jackson Mann & Martha Tyler

Dorsey Virgil Mann & Mary Jane Moyer

John Allen Mann & Nellie Lourie Herron 

John Mann Jr. & Rosalyn Johnston

Timothy A. Mann

Being a Jamestown citizen means you might have had some terrifying stories.... 

One  of the first Indian attacks on the Virginia colonists occurred in  1609.  The results were gruesome.  Many of you that are familiar with  Virginia history recall that the “Starving Time at Jamestown” occurred  during the winter of 1609-1610.

At Jamestown, John Smith had recently returned to England for medical  treatment to heal from a gunpowder injury.  Smith had maintained a very  good report with the Powhatan tribe.  

In his absence, John Ratcliffe, president of the colony, and around 50  colonists went to meet with a tribe of of Powhatan Indians to bargain  for food. The Powhatan did not want to trade unless they could bargain  with Smith and distrusted the group.  As a result, the colonists were  ambushed and only 16 of the 50 survived.

During  this ambush, Ratcliffe was captured by the Powhatan and was taken to  their village to suffer a particularly gruesome fate. He was tied to a stake in front of a fire and flayed by women of the tribe with mussel  shells, with pieces of his skin tossed into the flames as he watched.  The account of his death was relayed by the surviving Captain William  Phettiplace, and recorded by George Percy, a colonial official.

Trade  with the Indians had been essential for the colony’s survival.  The  lack of trade resulted in desperate measures.  There are accounts of  cannibalism.  Percy also recorded that during the food crisis, “that the  living dug up and ate corpses, and that a husband killed his wife and  then butchered her, preserved her with salt, and ate parts of her before  he was caught.”  The husband was subsequently executed.

William Kelso, the definitive Jamestown expert on this era, notes that dead settlers and one Indian who had died in a fight, were eaten.

Another account of cannibalism was confirmed in 2013.  Kelso tells of a teenage girl of about fourteen years had recently immigrated from southern England.  The girl’s remains were forensically analyzed and shown to have telltale marks consistent with butchering meat. The excavators found the girl’s skull and leg bones, together with bones of “butchered  horses and dogs” in a “trash deposit” in an underground room that had  been used as a kitchen at that time.  

According  to the forensic evidence, cuts made to the skull and bones clearly  indicate that brain and edible tissue had been separated from the bones  in the same way as with butchered animals, providing “clear evidence of  cannibalism.”

In  1610, relief from the survivors of the vessel “Sea Venture” arrived at  Jamestown after being shipwrecked at in Bermuda.  Sir Thomas Gates and  Sir George Somers, the group’s leaders, assumed they would find a  thriving colony in Virginia. 

Instead, they found the colony in ruins and practically abandoned. Of the 500 colonists living in Jamestown in autumn, they found just 60 survivors.   To complicate matters, many of the supplies intended for Jamestown had been lost in the shipwreck at Bermuda.  Because they expected to find a  thriving colony, Gates and Somers had only brought a small food supply  with them.

Historian Ginny Gotlieb tells us that Gates made the decision to abandon the colony.  The Jamestown survivors boarded his ship and on June 7, 1610, headed down the James River.  

By chance or providence, the following afternoon they were met by Lord De La Warr’s expedition and ordered to  return to Jamestown.  

As John Smith later wrote, “God… would not have it [the colony] so abandoned.”

I have had the good fortune to see an archeological dig at Jamestown, to  visit the ground where the fort stood, and visit the remains of the 17th  century church tower.  

While these sites are marvelous historic  treasures, the Jamestown 

colonists horrific survival story is not easily forgotten.