14 DAY TRIAL // In 2013, researchers exploring the site of a historic church in Jamestown, the very same one where Pocahontas married John Rolfe, came across four skeletons each laid in its own grave.
Having closely studied the skeletons as well as historical records detailing the early days of this first English colony in America, researchers with the Smithsonian Institution and the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation have at long last figured out whom the bones belong to.
Not to prolong the suspense, it appears that the human remains archaeologists pulled from under Jamestown's historic 1608 church back in 2013 belong to four lost leaders of the settlement.
“These men witnessed the first 3 years of the establishment of the colony,” James Horn, the current president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation, commented on this find in an interview.
So, who are these men?
In a report released earlier today, the researchers who worked on identifying these early colonists in America say that the skeletons belonged to a minister, two military captains and an English knight, the first to die and be buried in North America.
Their names: Reverend Robert Hunt, Captain Gabriel Archer, Captain William West and Sir Ferdinando Wainman. Together with other early colonists who arrived in Jamestown in 1607, when the settlement was established, they pretty much shaped the history of the region.
“These people were high-status leaders who helped shape the future of America during the initial phase of the Jamestown colony,” researchers explain.
Reverend Robert Hunt, 1569-1608, was the first Anglican minister ever to arrive in Jamestown. Being a man of the church, he was buried wrapped in a simple shroud. His body was not put in a coffin, but instead simply lowered into the ground.
Captain Gabriel Archer, who was born in 1575 and passed away at the age of 34 during a famine that hit the colony of Jamestown, led many expeditions into the New World. Unlike Reverend Robert Hunt, he was buried in a coffin with a Catholic reliquary placed on his chest.
As for Captain William West, 1585-1610, and Sir Ferdinando Wainman, 1576-1610, they were too laid to rest in caskets. Interestingly, both men had high levels of lead in their bodies at the time of death. “Lead was present in pewter and glazed wares, items more accessible to the wealthy,” scientists explain.
A short history lesson
As mentioned, Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in the America. Other colonists had arrived in the area prior to 1607, but this settlement was the one that managed to pull through.
True, things went seriously downhill for a while between 1609 and 1610, when starvation killed about 80% of the colonists in Jamestown, but the settlement survived and even served as the capital of the colony of Virginia between 1616 and 1699.
