Jamestown Becomes the First Permanent English Colony
A hundred colonists on a swampy island in Virginia, backed by a joint-stock company
Quick facts
- Landing date
- May 13-14, 1607
- Sponsor
- The Virginia Company of London
- Colonists
- Roughly 100-104, on three ships
- Significance
- First permanent English settlement in North America
What happened
Roughly 100 colonists left England in late December 1606 on three ships, the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery, funded by a joint-stock venture called the Virginia Company. They reached Chesapeake Bay the following April and on May 13, 1607, landed on a narrow peninsula in the James River. The settlement they built there, named Jamestown after King James I, became the first permanent English settlement in North America. England had tried before and failed, most famously at the lost colony of Roanoke in 1587. The early Jamestown years were brutal: disease, starvation, and conflict with the Powhatan people killed most of the first arrivals, and the colony survived largely on the tobacco trade that took hold in the following decade.
Why it matters
Jamestown is where permanent English-speaking settlement of what became the United States begins. Its survival established the pattern of colonization by chartered companies chasing profit, tied the Chesapeake economy to tobacco, and set the stage for both large-scale land-taking from Native nations and, within twelve years, the arrival of the first enslaved Africans. Everything in the later national story runs downstream from this foothold on the James River.
How we know
Jamestown's founding is documented in the Virginia Company's own records and colonists' accounts, and the original 1607 fort site was rediscovered and excavated by archaeologists beginning in 1994, confirming the settlement's location and early structures.
Sources
- HISTORY. Jamestown Colony · Reputable sourcehistory.com · The domain "history.com" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- National Park Service, Historic Jamestowne. A Short History of Jamestown · Primary source (author-declared)nps.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Part of a timelineHistory of the United States32 events · A hundred English colonists on a swampy island, a constitution argued out over one Philadelphia summer, a country that doubled its size for four cents an acre and fought a civil war over who counted as free, and the superpower that came out the other sideView all →