USA > Virginia > Tazewell County > Tazewell County > History of Tazewell county and southwest Virginia, 1748-1920 > Part 10
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and the salubrious climate. Amidas and Barlow explored the island, which is twelve miles long, to the northern end. There they found, as reported by them, an Indian "village of nine houses, built of Cedar, and fortified round about with sharpe trees to keep out their enemies, and the entrance to it made like a turne pike very artificially." This evidently was a village fortified with a stockade of similar character to those found by De Soto among the Choctaws and Chickasaws while he was exploring in their regions.
After the commanders of Raleigh's ships had explored Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds and Roanoke Island, and had gathered from the Indians such information as could be obtained about the interior country, the homeward voyage was begun. They took with them to England two of the Indian chiefs, Manteo and Wanchese. Upon their arrival in England, Amidas and Barlow gave such highly colored descriptions of the land they had seen that the people of the country again became greatly interested in America. Queen Elizabeth was so gratified with the success of the expedition and charmed by the reported beauties of the newly discovered land, she named the country Virginia, to commemorate her virgin life.
On account of his great service to the English Nation and Crown, Raleigh was knighted by Queen Elizabeth; and he was also honored by being elected to Parliament as the representative of the county of Devon. In the spring of 1585 the then Sir Walter Raleigh deter- mined to send out a colony for settlement in the territory of which he was lord proprietor. One hundred or more men were selected for the company of settlers; and these were placed in charge of Richard Lane, who had been selected for governor of the colony. The expedition sailed from Plymouth in April and was escorted by seven armed ships under the command of Raleigh's cousin, Sir Richard Grenville. The reason, no doubt, for this protective escort was, that trouble was then brewing between Spain and England, which culminated in a declaration of war between the two nations in July following. The colonists arrived safely at their selected destination, but a series of blunders and misfortunes made this first attempt to plant an English colony on the South Atlantic coast a deplorable failure. Lane and Grenville, accompanied by Thomas Cavendish, the distinguished navigator, and Hariot, historian of the expedition, went ashore and made an excursion of eight days among the Indians and along the coast. The excursionists were most hospitably treated by the natives; but while the party was visiting an Indian town a silver cup was stolen from them, and this
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trivial incident was treated so unwisely by Grenville that it was, possibly, the primal cause of the disasters that finally broke up the colony. The Indians were slow about restoring the cup to its owner, and Grenville, either from revenge or to intimidate the Indians, had the village of the natives burned and their growing corn destroyed. Shortly after this the colony was located on Roanoke Island, and Grenville sailed with his ships for England.
The climate agreed with the men and the health of the colony was excellent, but its first year was uneventful, though Lane explored the country a short distance to the south, and he sailed as far north as Elizabeth River where it connects with Hampton Roads. The colonists had been chiefly engaged in a mad hunt for gold when their first year spent at Roanoke Island had expired. They had grown weary while looking for supplies from England. About this time Sir Francis Drake, who was returning from one of his piratical excursions to the Spanish Main, entered Roanoke Inlet with his fleet of twenty-three ships. The colonists made piteous appeals to Drake to take them to England and he complied with their request. In a little over two weeks after the departure of the colonists, Sir Richard Grenville appeared on the coast with three ships and an abundance of supplies. He made a vain search for the colony, and, having no knowledge of its departure, left fifteen men on the Island of Roanoke to hold its possession, and sailed back to England. This practically ended the first effort to form a perma- nent English colony in America.
Sir Walter Raleigh was so much encouraged by the reports of Hariot, the historian of his first expedition, as to the fertility and beauty of his province, that he resolutely set to work to gather a new colony for starting and developing an agricultural community in Virginia. Therefore, in selecting emigrants he chose men who had wives and families. John White was appointed governor of the new colony, and Raleigh directed that the settlement should be made on Chesapeake Bay, where it was known ample harbors could be found. The company sailed from England in April, 1587, in a fleet prepared at the expense of Raleigh, and reached the coast of North Carolina in July. Search was made for the fifteen men Grenville had left there as a garrison. The houses were tenantless, the fort had been destroyed by the Indians, and human bones were lying around, indicating the fate of the fifteen men who composed the garrison. The order of Raleigh for locating the colony at a designated point on the Chesapeake Bay was brought to naught by
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the conduct of Fernando, the naval officer of the expedition. He refused to join White in exploring the coasts, and sailed for the West Indies, leaving only one vessel with the colony. Lane, the governor of the first colony, had built a fort, with a group of dwell- ing houses about it, at the northern end of Roanoke Island. White and his company availed themselves of these buildings, that had been occupied by the fifteen unfortunate men Grenville had left on the island as a guard.
The Roanoke Indians had become very suspicious and jealous of the white men. Manteo, one of the chiefs that had accompanied Lane to England, remained friendly; and as a matter of policy Raleigh had him invested with the title of an English baron, as the Lord of Roanoke. This, however, did not pacify the unfriendly natives, nor delay the disasters that followed; and repcated difficul- ties and bloody encounters occurred between the Indians and the colonists. Conditions became so alarming that White determined to go to England to procure succor in the way of men and mueh needed supplies. Before he started on this mission, his daughter, Eleanor Dare, wife of Ananias Dare, gave birth to a daughter, on the 18th of August, 1587. She was the first child born of English parents on the American Continent, and she was named Virginia. About ten days after this interesting event Governor White embarked on his journey to England, little thinking that he would never again see his daughter and grandchild, or any member of the colony he was leaving in Virginia. At the time of White's departure the colony was composed of eighty-nine men, seventeen women, and two children, all of whom disappeared during the governor's absence. When he arrived in England he found intense excitement prevailing, occasioned by a threatened invasion from Spain. King Philip was then building a large fleet, which he was pleased to eall the "Invine- ible Armada", to be used for crushing the English navy and trans- porting the Spanish army to England; and which was to destroy Protestantism and dethrone Queen Elizabeth. All the noted mili- tary and naval leaders, among them Sir Walter Raleigh, were busily occupied with preparation to repel the intended Spanish invasion. But Raleigh found time and occasion to provide White with two ships and supplies for relief of the Roanoke colony. A company of ยท men was gathered and were started out with the two ships on a relief voyage, but while en route became engaged with hostile ships in a bloody engagement. The ships were boarded by the enemy T.H .- 7
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and robbed of all their supplies. This forced the expedition to return to England. The unfortunate circumstance prevented the sending of any succor for the Roanoke colonists until after the destruction of the Invincible Armada was accomplished by Eng- land's great sea-kings, Drake, Hawkins, Winter, Frobisher and Howard.
It was in August, 1587, that White parted from the Roanoke colony and went to England to crave assistance. The prolonged Spanish-English War prevented him from returning to the colony until March, 1591, and he was forced to travel there as a passenger on a West Indian vessel. When he landed at Roanoke Island, it was nearly four years after the birth of his grandchild; but he did not find little Virginia Dare and her mother there, or any member of the colony, to give him welcome. On his departure for England he had directed that if anything occurred during his absence making it necessary for the colonists to move to some other spot, a record should be left by carving on a tree the name of the place to which they had removed; and if they were in distress, a cross was to be added to the inscription. The grief-stricken man found grass growing in the fort, and the houses grouped about it were tenantless. On the bark of a large tree standing near the fort he found the word "Croatan" carved, but no cross. Croatan was the name of a neigh- boring island where an Indian settlement, known to White, was located. In response to his entreaties, the captain of the ship consented to take him to Croatan Island, where White hoped to find the entire body of colonists. A violent storm was encountered, like those that frequently come about Cape Hatteras. The ship was tossed about on the sea for several days, and the captain, despite the pleadings of his unhappy passenger, turned the prow of his ship toward the east and sailed for England. This was the last opportunity White had to seek his missing loved ones. Ever since, the fate of Virginia Dare, of her mother, and the Roanoke colony has been a topic for much speculation. Sir Walter Raleigh made five attempts to ascertain the fate of the colony but failed to find even a trace of it. He had already spent forty thousand pounds, the bulk of his fortune, in vain efforts to establish colonies in Virginia. Discouraged by these failures, he transferred his patent to a company of merchants and capitalists, some of whom were afterwards identified with the settlement of Jamestown.
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CHAPTER III.
BIRTH OF AMERICAN NATION-ENGLISH SETTLEMENT AT JAMESTOWN.
There are few things in history so edifying and pleasing to the investigating human mind as the birth of a nation. That great Seinitic family known as the Hebrews, of which the Chaldean patriarch, Abraham, was the progenitor, for nearly four thousand years has been a fruitful source of pleasure and profit to students of mankind, though the Hebrews no longer exist as a nation. No matter when or where a Jew is met or seen by men of intelligence, he is quickly associated with the pledge given by the Great Jehovah to Abraham, then old and childless, that his seed should become a great nation, and as such inherit the Land of Canaan.
When Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of a Vestal Virgin, began to build a rude wall around their little town on the Tiber, 753 years before thic Christian cra, they never dreamed that they were laying the foundation of what would become known in history as the "Eternal City". Nor is it probable that they had the re- motest idea that from the small community of refugee murderers and slaves they gathered within the walls of their citadel, a mighty nation would be evolved and a splendid empire created, to stand for centuries as the sovereign master of the then known world.
No epoch in the written or traditional history of our Sphere has been morc potent in shaping the destiny of the human race than the birth of the marvelous American Nation. The small com- pany of Englishmen who, at the beginning of the seventeenth cen- tury, originated a crude plan for planting an English colony in Virginia, never imagined that from such a small business venture there would issue a great nation of one hundred million people. But within a period of three centuries following the settlement at James- town, the magic, giant nation was in existence, and is still here, growing and taking on new form and feature. It is a strangely composite nation, the offspring of mingled nationalities and races. The intermixing of Teutons, Celts, Latins, Greeks, Franks, Huns, Slavs, Bulgars, Turks, Armenians, Jews, and other races and nations, representing the continents of Asia, Africa and Europe, is producing that peculiar type of man, the American. Even the aboriginal race of the North American Continent seems destined to gradually disappear in this mixing process, not by extermination of
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the Indians as decreed by the pioneer settlers, but by benevolent absorption. In the coming eenturies the most astute ethnologists will find themselves hopelessly entangled and puzzled when they try to trace the origin of the Americans. It will be impossible to find a common paternity for this conglomerate race, except by turning back to the primal origin of man. This is truly a novel method for nation making; and one may well inquire, What will be the ultimate outcome or product? Will the American Nation be welded into a homogeneous race, in which the altruistic spirit will be so dominant as to bring to pass the Utopian hope for the perfec- tion of human laws and the complete establishing of the brotherhood of man? Shall this Nation be a city set upon a hill, a beacon to illumine the way for other peoples as they press forward to the goal of national excellence? Or shall there be a realization of the gloomy apprehensions expressed by certain learned men of Europe more than a hundred years ago, that the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the finding of a new ocean route to Asia by Vasco da Gama may prove a curse rather than a blessing to mankind?
At the beginning of the seventeenth century events that materially affeeied the colonization of America by the English people began to occur. The protracted war with Spain had come to a conclusion, with complete satisfaction to England, and with the Spanish power, both on land and sea, very greatly impaired, if not broken. Elizabeth Tudor. England's great queen, passed away in 1603. after a magnificent reign of nearly forty-five years. She was succeeded on the throne by King James of Scotland, who, as James I., became sovereign of England, Scotland and Ireland. Scarcely had King James mounted the English throne, when a foul conspiracy, lead by Robert Cecil and Henry Howard, was formed to excite the animosity of the king against Sir Walter Raleigh. The conspirators were successful in their malignant designs ; Raleigh was arrested for an old trumped-up offenee, was confined in the Tower, and after a season was beheaded by the order of the crafty and vain little Scotchman, the unworthy successor of the great Virgin Queen. No blacker crime tarnishes the reign of any of the cruel or dissolute monarchs of England than the vicious murder of Sir Walter Raleigh, who was undeniably the Father of Virginia. But other strong men were destined to take up the work which Raleigh had so heroieally begun of founding a mighty nation in the Western Hemisphere. The Earl of Southampton was released from the Tower of London
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about the same time Sir Walter Raleigh had entered its gloomy portals as a prisoner. Southampton had been connected with Essex's rebellion in 1600, and had narrowly escaped death, though the noble Essex was, on the 25th of February, 1601, beheaded for his foolhardy-effort to excite an insurrection against Queen Eliza- beth, whom he had for years served so faithfully and gallantly.
Southampton had become greatly interested in making a settle- ment in Virginia, and began to formulate plans for this undertaking. In 1602, though then confined in the Tower, he sent Bartholomew Gosnold, on a voyage of exploration to Virginia. Its territorial limits then extended north as far as the St. Lawrence River. Gosnold, with this, his first, expedition, merely visited that portion of the territory then known as North Virginia, now the present New England.
In 1603, a company of Bristol merchants dispatched Martin Pring on a trading expedition to North Virginia; and about the same time, Bartholomew Gilbert, son of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and the nephew of Sir Walter Raleigh, made a voyage to the Chesa- peake Bay. While coasting along its shores, young Gilbert and some of his companions were killed by the Indians. Another expedi- tion under command of Captain George Weymouth, and of which the Earl of Southampton and Sir Ferdinando Gorges were patrons, visited the present New England, then North Virginia, in 1605. He spent a month exploring and investigating that region, and then returned to England, taking with him five Indians, members of a tribe with whom a profitable trade had been opened. Upon his arrival at home, Weymouth made a report so favorable as to the commercial value of the country that renewed interest in America was aroused. This was the last voyage of exploration or prepara- tion made by Englishmen prior to the planting of the colony at Jamestown.
Bartholomew Gosnold, who had been very much pleased with the soil, climate and apparently valuable resources of that part of the North American Continent he had visited, went actively to work to procure aid from other prominent men of his country for estab- lishing a colony in Virginia. After a time, he succeeded in getting Edward Maria Wingfield, a merchant, Robert Hunt, a clergyman, and John Smith, a soldier of fortune, in sympathy with his views as to the proposed enterprise. He next secured the influence of Sir
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Ferdinando Gorges, who was a man of large wealth, and Sir John Popham, Chief Justice of England, to obtain from King James a patent, authorizing a company to settle a plantation in Virginia.
On the memorable 10th of April, 1606, King James I. issued patent letters to certain of his subjects empowering them to enter and possess all that region of North America lying between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth parallels of latitude, and extending inland from the Atlantic coast one hundred miles. The territory granted by the patent stretched northward from the mouth of Cape Fear River to the dividing line between the State of Vermont and Canada, and it was set apart for occupation by two rival companies. These companies were called, respectively, The London Company, and The Plymouth Company; and they were proprietary associa- tions, each member thereof being invested with a joint and several proprietary interest in the domain granted their respective com- panies. The names of but four men were mentioned in the charter of the London Company, as follows: Rev. Richard Hakluyt, Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, and Captain Edward Maria Wingfield. This company was assigned the southern zone of the territory for the establishing of its settlements. The Plymouth Company was authorized to locate its colony in the northern zone. Raleigh Gilbert, William Parker, Thomas Hanham, and George Popham were the four persons named in the charter of the Northern Company. The first colony was to confine its settlements to the territory between the thirty-fourth and the thirty-cighth degrees of latitude; and the second colony was to occupy the territory between the forty-first and the forty-fifth degrees, thus leaving a strip of three degrees width open to both colonies, upon certain conditions. There was a provision in the patent prohibiting either company from making a settlement within a hundred miles of any other settlement already established by a rival company. This plan virtually divided the granted territory into three zones, the middle one being made neutral.
As the subsequent doings of the Plymouth Company will have but little connection with the history of Tazewell County, which I am writing, I will confine myself to a brief recital of the perform- ances of the London Company.
The charter members of the London Company, and the associate shareholders of that proprietary body, fitted out three small vessels to be used for transporting a number of colonists to Virginia. Cap-
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tain Christopher Newport, one of England's most skillful sailors and esteemed naval officers, was selected for commander of the expedition.
Spain, though terribly weakened by her disastrous wars, still asserted ownership of all the region embraced in the then defined bounds of Virginia ; and resented the announced purpose of England to make encroachments upon that territory. Zuniga, the Spanish ambassador to England, having heard rumors of the plans that were being matured by prominent Englishmen, to establish colonies in Virginia, forwarded a dispatch to his sovereign, Philip III, warn- ing him of "an unpalitable scheme" of the English, "to send five or six hundred men, private individuals of this kingdom, to people Virginia in the Indies, close to Florida." Sir John Popham, Lord Chief Justice of England, was known to be one of the promoters of the movement for sending "people to Virginia ;" and it appears that the Spanish ambassador made complaint to Popham about the threatened encroachments upon the American dominion of his sovereign. Zuniga reported that, in reply to his protests, the Lord Chief Justice lightly declared, that the object of the undertaking to establish a Virginia colony was to relieve England of a lot of thieves and worthless fellows, and probably get them drowned in the sea.
These incidents occurred a short time previous to the issuance of the letters patent to the two companies. The seemingly jocular reply of Chief Justice Popham to the protest of the representative of Spain may have been intended to be taken seriously, as the majority of the men who came with the first band of colonists to Jamestown were so worthless that England could well afford to be rid of them. It is truly astonishing that the intelligent men who promoted the London Company undertook to establish a successful colony with such indifferent material; and it is no wonder that disasters which threatened the life of the enterprise were encoun- tered from the very beginning. No women and children accom- panied the colonists, and they brought with them no domestic animals or fowls. Evidently it was more of a treasure-hunting adventure than an agricultural and home-making enterprise. This conclusion is supported by the fact that while the charter gave the company authority to own and operate mines, it contained a provision which required payment to the king of one-fifth of all the gold and silver and one-fifteenth of all the copper that was found and mined. An impression then prevailed in England that the precious metals,
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though undeveloped, were as abundant in Virginia as the Spaniards had found them in Mexico and Peru. There was an absurd belief existing over there that nature furnished such abundant supplies of food over here, that men could live luxuriously without toiling. A poem written by Michael Drayton, afterwards poet laureate of England, addressed as a farewell message to the London Company's colonists, gave expression to the ridiculous fancy of these English- men. Thus spoke the poet in three of the stanzas:
"And cheerfully at sca Success you still entice, To get the pearl and gold. And ours to hold Virginia, Earth's only paradise!
"Where nature hath in store Fowl, venison, and fish ; And the fruitfull'st soil Without your toil, Three harvests more, All greater than your wish.
"And the ambitious vine Crowns with his purple mass The cedar reaching high To kiss the sky, The cypress, pine, And useful sassafras."
The charter which King James issued to cach of the American colonies was very ample in its provisions for their government. A Royal Council, consisting of thirteen members, and appointed by the king, was placed in general control of the two companies; and the local management of each colony was fixed with a local council also of thirteen members. The members of the local councils were appointed by the Royal Council, resident in London, and it also selected the presidents of the two local councils for the first year. After the first year had expired, the local councils were invested with power to select their own presidents each year, and remove them for misconduct or inefficiency. These local eouneils were authorized to supply vacancies in their own membership caused by
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death, removal, or resignation. A number of other important powers were given the local councils. Fiske, in his "Old Virginia and Her Neighbors," says:
"Power was given the colonial council to coin money for trade between the colonies and with the natives, to invite and carry over settlers, to drive out intruders, to punish malefactors, and to levy and collect duties upon divers imported goods. All lands within the two colonies were to be held in free and common socage, like the demesnes of the Manor of East Greenwich in the county of Kent ; and the settlers and their children forever were to enjoy all the liberties, franchises and immunities enjoyed by Englishmen in Eng- land, a clause which was practically nullified by the failure to pro- vide for popular elections or any expression whatever of public opinion. The authority of the colonial council was supreme within the colonies, but their acts were liable to veto from the Crown."
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