Jamestown+MM

ne of 1606, King James I granted a charter to a group of London entrepreneurs, the [|Virginia Company], to establish a satellite English settlement in the Chesapeake region of North America. By December, [|104 settlers sailed from London] instructed to settle Virginia, find gold, and seek a water route to the Orient. Some traditional scholars of early Jamestown history believe that those pioneers could not have been more ill-suited for the task. Because Captain John Smith identified about half of the group as "gentlemen," it was logical, indeed, for historians to assume that these gentry knew nothing of or thought it beneath their station to tame a wilderness. Recent historical and [|archaeological research] at the site of Jamestown suggest that at least some of the gentlemen, and certainly many of the artisans, craftsmen, and laborers who accompanied them, all made every effort to make the colony succeed.