Founded on May 24, 1607, Jamestown barely survived its first few years. The 100 Englishmen who first landed at Jamestown were not farmers, but gentlemen adventurers who didn’t bother to plant crops because they expected to find gold and silver in the marshes. By autumn, however, they had run out of food and survived only by trading with nearby Native Americans. Even then, most of the settlers did not survive their first three years in the Americas, a period referred to as the “starving time.”
But even as they starved together, the Jamestown colonists retained their class boundaries. The four recently discovered skeletons were buried inside the chancel, or altar area, of the James Fort church, indicating their high status in the fledgling colony. (The church, built in 1608, was the site of the now-legendary wedding of Native American princess Pocahontas and Englishman John Rolfe.)
One of the newly discovered graves held the remains of Reverend Robert Hunt, one of the original 100 settlers and the first Anglican minister in the country. According to records reviewed by Ancestry.com for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, Rev. Hunt may have left England because he suspected his wife was having an affair. If so, his broken heart may have led to a broken body: he died in Jamestown in 1608.
The second grave contained Sir Ferdinando Wainman, “an honest and valiant gentleman,” according to a friend. He died in 1610.
The third grave held Capt. William West, a soldier killed fighting Native Americans in 1610 near present-day Richmond. He was found with his silver-fringed military sash mouldering near his bones.
But the fourth grave was the one that most fascinated archaeologists. Holding the remains of Captain Gabriel Archer, a lawyer and one of the colony’s early leaders, his grave also contained a hexagonal box, the size of a salt shaker, and etched with the letter “M.” The archaeologist who dug it up in 2013 quickly realized the box—which cannot be opened without damaging it—was hollow and rattled with still-unseen contents. Later scans of the box showed it contained seven bone fragments and a small lead vial.
Scientists suspect the box was probably a reliquary, a traditional Catholic object of veneration that often contained the body fragments of holy men or women. Why settlers added it to a grave in post-Reformation, Protestant Jamestown, however, remains an open question.
The object takes added significance in light of Archer’s parentage. In England, his parents had been “recusants,” Catholics who refused to attend the Protestant Anglican Church, as required by law after the Reformation. The discovery of the reliquary in Archer’s grave raises suspicions that Archer, too, was a recusant. He may even have been a member of a Jamestown Catholic conspiracy. In 1607, George Kendall, a member of Jamestown’s governing council, was actually executed as a Catholic spy.
In light of what Jamestown’s settlers endured, however, the box may have been a necessary source of comfort for Archer. The “starving time” reached its worst in the six months before two resupply ships arrived with new colonists in the spring of 1610. During that winter, when Archer probably died, the colony fell from 300 residents to 60. Starvation forced residents to eat rats, pets, snakes—and even each other. Settlers alluded to cannibalism during the time, and in 2012, Jamestown archaeologists confirmed those reports with the discovery of a girl’s skull bearing knife marks.
In addition to sources documenting the melancholy family life of Rev. Hunt, Ancestry contains abundant resources for anyone fascinated with America’s first permanent English colony. As part of its site redesign earlier this year, Ancestry began offering “Historical Insight” pages that can be added to members’ family trees. These pages help explain a seminal moment in history. Members who have traced their ancestry to Jamestown may have seen that Historical Insight; others can check it out here.
Ancestry also contains immigrant and ship passenger records going back to the 1500s, as well as church records of the sort that described Archer’s parents’ recusancy.
And like Archer’s mysterious box, Ancestry lets members keep important finds and important genealogical documents and photographs close at hand with its Media Gallery.
Join Ancestry.com today with a free 14-day trial and discover what mysteries lie in your past!
—Sandie Angulo Chen