Celebrations Today – May 14
Holidays and observances
- Christian feast day:
- Earliest day on which the first day of Sanja Matsuri can fall, while May 20 is the latest; celebrated on the third weekend of May. (Sensō-ji, Tokyo)
- Flag Day (Paraguay)
- Hastings Banda’s Birthday (Malawi)
- National Unification Day (Liberia)
- The first day of Izumo-taisha Shrine Grand Festival. (Izumo-taisha)
Celebrations Today – USA: May 14
National Buttermilk Biscuit Day
National Dance Like a Chicken Day
National Underground America Day
Mother’s Day – Second Sunday in May
National The Stars and Stripes Forever Day
Today in US History: May 14
Jamestown
On May 14, 1607, English settlers arriving under the authority of the Virginia Company of London chartered by King James I established the first permanent British settlement in North America at a place they named Jamestown, Virginia.”We landed all our men,” George Percy wrote in his account of the event, “which were set to worke about [i.e., on] the fortification, and others some to watch and ward as it was convenient.” 1
Virginia Discovered and Discribed by Captayn John Smith, 1606, (detail showing Jamestown),
William Hole, engraver, London, 1624.
Discovery and Exploration
Map Collections
The Jamestown colonists struggled with leadership and survival from the beginning. Captain John Smith spent his first months in Virginia exploring in the Chesapeake region, undergoing capture by the regional Algonquian “great emperor,” Powhatan, with whom he subsequently developed a mutually wary and respectful relationship. In 1608 Smith was chosen to be president of Jamestown’s governing council and proved to be an able leader. Yet Smith returned to England in 1609, and only 60 of the 214 colonists survived the “Starving Time” of the ensuing harsh winter. The arrival of fresh supplies from England in the spring fortified the colony and enabled it to endure.
Virginia Discovered and Discribed by Captayn John Smith, 1606, (detail showing Powhatan chief),
William Hole, engraver, London, 1624.
Discovery and Exploration
Map Collections
On July 30, 1619, under the provisions of the Virginia Company Charter, the House of Burgesses met in Jamestown “to establish …one uniform government over all Virginia,” thereby becoming the first representative legislative assembly of European Americans in the Western Hemisphere. (Tradition dates the formation of the Iroquois Confederacy of five Indian tribes in upper New York state between 1570 and 1600.) Jamestown was also the site of the Americas’ first Anglican church. 2
Another event of momentous consequence took place in August 1619 when a Dutch ship exchanged a cargo of some twenty captive Africans for food. Although the Africans’ legal status in these early years was probably closer to indentured servitude than to the full-fledged slavery that hardened in Virginia by the end of the century, this event represented both the founding African presence and the foundation of slavery in British North America.
Despite the success represented by the colony’s survival and political organization, relations with the Algonquians were unstable and at times violent. In March 1622, more than three hundred colonists were killed by the Algonquians just outside Jamestown and more than twice that number died in an epidemic the next December. Following these events, King James revoked the Virginia Company’s charter in 1624, in 1625 his son King Charles I made Virginia a royal colony.
Learn more about Jamestown and related subjects in American Memory:
- See a timeline of early Virginia history in The Thomas Jefferson Papers at the Library of Congress.
- Explore the Virginia Records, 1606-1737 within The Thomas Jefferson Papers at the Library of Congress. The Virginia Records volumes were part of Jefferson’s personal library. These volumes were very fragile when Jefferson first collected them, can only be handled with the greatest care, and are generally not made available for researchers except in microfilm format. Their presentation online makes this unacknowledged treasure widely available to the public for the first time in an easily accessible format.
Old Church (detail), Jamestown, Virginia,
William Henry Jackson, photographer, copyright circa 1902.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920
This 1639 church tower was one of the few remnants of the Jamestown Settlement visible in the 1890s, when the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities began excavating the site. - Read John Smith’s Generall Historie of Virginia, Edward Maria Wingfield’s Discourse of Virginia, and Ralph Hamor’s True Discourse of the Present Estate of Virginia in The Capital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Region, ca. 1600-1925. Browse this collection’s subject, author, or title lists to find other works concerning early Virginia.
- See Early Settlement of Virginia and Virginiola… in African American Perspectives, 1818-1907 for an historical account from English sources and letters about Jamestown and the Virginia Company, including an alleged long-lost poem on Virginia by Shakespeare.
- The exhibition African-American Mosaic contains an historical map that makes reference to the introduction of slavery to the colonies in Jamestown.
- Search across the American Memory collections of photographs and prints on Anglican churches to see several buildings from the colonial era, including Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia, completed in 1773, Pohick Church in Fairfax County, completed in 1774, and St. John’s Church in Richmond, completed in 1741.
- See Today in History for December 4 to learn about another English settlement in Virginia near Jamestown; and Today in History for September 10 to learn more about John Smith’s leadership.
1. The words of George Percy are quoted in A Timeline of Events and References Leading up to and through the Founding of Jamestown, compiled by Nick Luccketti for the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. It should be noted that because of the then-ten-day difference between the “Old Style” (Julian) calendar used by Englishmen until 1752, and the “New Style” (Gregorian) calendar in use since 1752, the date when settlement began was actually May 24 in modern terms. (Return to text)
2. A Brief History of Jamestown, provided online by the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. (Return to text)
Today in History – May 14-External Links
Today’s Weather in History
Today in Earthquake History
This Day in Naval History
Today’s Document from the National Archives
Today’s Events, Births & Deaths –Wikipedia
Today in History by AP
On this Day -1950 to 2005 – Today’s Story–BBC
On This Day: The New York Times
This Day in History –History.com
Today in Canadian History – Canada Channel
History of Britain that took place On This Day
Russia in History –Russiapedia