An often repeated legend appears to suggest that a massive 1690 earthquake and tsunami destroyed the buildings of the original capital Jamestown on the west coast.

The ship was launched in 1609, and her uncompleted journey to Jamestown appears to have been her maiden voyage.

The same year, huge waves, or “ rollers ”, hit the island causing 13 ships anchored off Jamestown bay to be wrecked.

That means that anything left of Jamestown would now be underground.

* August 2 – Jamestown: Deputy Governor Sir Thomas Gates returns to Virginia with 280 people, provisions and cattle on 6 ships and assumes control, ruling that the fort must be strengthened.

** Jamestown: The president directs the fort to be strengthened and armed against the many attacks of the natives: " Hereupon the President was contented the Fort should be pallisadoed, the ordinance mounted, his men armed and exercised, for many were the assaults and Ambuscadoes of the Savages ..." Smith, Proceedings ( Barbour 1964 )

The Plymouth Colony was, along with Jamestown, Virginia, one of the earliest successful colonies to be founded by the English in North America and the first sizable permanent English settlement in the New England region.

A seawall was constructed, which preserved the site where the remains of the original " James Fort " were to be discovered by archaeologists of the Jamestown Rediscovery project beginning in 1994, a century later.

At the state-sponsored facility, which was named Jamestown Festival Park, later renamed Jamestown Settlement, full-sized replicas of the three ships that brought the colonists, the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and the Discovery were constructed at a shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia, and docked at Jamestown, where became a permanent attraction to be both toured, and seen by water from the nearby Jamestown Ferry system operated by VDOT, and relocated for the festival to nearby Glass House Point.

Twelve voters were required in what is now Jamestown before the towns could be separated.

While not an incorporated village, Frewsburg does have a population that is larger than many villages in the region and is a significant community in the area, dwarfed only by the City of Jamestown five miles to the northwest, to which Frewsburg could legitimately be described as a retrofitted suburb.

Fictional character Lucy Ricardo, the lead character in I Love Lucy, was said to be from West Jamestown.

More than 60 years later, Jamestown is proud to be managed by only its third town manager and its fifth mayor, a testament to the community's stability.

An ABC board was formed and a liquor store was constructed, which proved to be a wise investment, enabling the town to pay off debt incurred for water and sewer lines as well as fund the building of Town Hall in 1967 and the Jamestown Park and Golf Course in 1974.

Both Fentress County and the City of Jamestown are named for prominent local politician James Fentress ( 1763 – 1843 ), who made the appeal for the new county to be carved out of Overton and Morgan counties.

The survivors from Bermuda had brought few supplies and food with them, and it appeared to all that Jamestown must be abandoned and it would be necessary to return to England.

The settlement at Jamestown could finally be considered permanently established.

The Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities had gotten the ball rolling in 1900 by calling for a celebration to honor the establishment of the first permanent English colony in the New World at Jamestown, to be held on the 300th anniversary.

During the planning phase, virtually no one thought that the original site of Jamestown would be suitable, as it was isolated and long-abandoned.

Founded by a group of Separatists and Anglicans, who together later came to be known as the Pilgrims, Plymouth Colony was, along with Jamestown, Virginia, one of the earliest successful colonies to be founded by the English in North America and the first sizable permanent English settlement in the New England region.

* 1580 – ( baptised ) John Smith of Jamestown ( d. 1631 )

Captain John Smith of Jamestown | John Smith's 1624 map of the Somers Isles ( Bermuda ), showing St. George's, Bermuda | St. George's Town and related fortifications, including the Castle Islands Fortifications, Bermuda | Castle Islands Fortifications with their garrisons of militiamen

John Gadsby Chapman depicts Pocahontas, wearing white, being baptized Rebecca by Anglican minister Alexander Whiteaker in Jamestown, Virginia ; this event is believed to have taken place in 1613 or 1614.

St John ’ s church was built in upper Jamestown in 1857, one motivation being to counter the levels of vice and prostitution at that end of the town.

* 1608 – John Smith is elected council president of Jamestown, Virginia.

* September 10 – John Smith is elected council president of Jamestown, and begins expanding the fort.

* Jamestown: John Rolfe imports tobacco seeds from the island of Trinidad ( Nicotiana tabacum ); the native tobacco is Nicotiana rustica.

* June 10 – Jamestown: Captain John Smith is released from arrest and sworn in as a member of the colony Council.

* June 27 – Jamestown: The colony bears extreme toil in strengthening the fort John Smith, Proceedings ( Barbour 1964: 210 ).

* September 10 – Jamestown President Edward Maria Wingfield is deposed and John Ratcliffe elected.

* December ( early ) – Captain John Smith of the Jamestown Colony is captured by Opechancanough and then sent to Chief Powhatan for execution ; Pocahontas rescues him.

* May 23 – Jamestown, Virginia: Acting as temporary Governor, Thomas Gates, along with John Rolfe, Captain Ralph Hamor, Sir George Somers, and other survivors from the Sea Venture ( wrecked at Bermuda ) arrive at Jamestown ; they find that 60 have survived the " starving time " ( winter ), the fort palizadoes and gates have been torn down, and empty houses have been used for firewood, in fear of attacks by natives outside the fort area.

* Jamestown: John Rolfe exports first crop of improved tobacco ( seeds from Trinidad ).

* June – At Jamestown, John Rolfe makes the first shipment of West Indian tobacco grown in Virginia to England.

* April 5 – Pocahontas marries English colonist John Rolfe in Jamestown, Virginia.

* June 21 – John Smith of Jamestown, English soldier and colonist ( b. 1580 )

** John Smith of Jamestown, Virginia settler ( d. 1631 )

John Smith of Jamestown | John Smith wrote one of the first The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles | Histories of Bermuda ( in concert with Virginia and New England ).

Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, was abandoned in 1699 when Williamsburg became the new capital of the colony ; the Zwaanendael Colony became a ghost town in 1632, when every one of the colonists were massacred by Indians ; and in 1590, mapmaker John White arrived at the Roanoke Colony in North Carolina to find it deserted, its inhabitants having vanished without a trace.

It took strong leaders, like John Smith, to convince the colonists of Jamestown that searching for gold was not taking care of their immediate needs for food and shelter and that " he who shall not work shall not eat.

* John white drawings and Theodore DeBry engravings from Virtual Jamestown Retrieved March 2011

When Captain John Smith and the Jamestown colonists settled in Virginia in 1607, one of their assigned tasks was to locate the Roanoke colonists.