This year is the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown colony, the beginning of Colonial life in America. There’s a lot going on in Virginia related to the anniversary, starting with yesterday’s special session of the General Assembly:
JAMESTOWN, Va., Jan. 10 — Danny Schmidt stood in the big hole and talked fast, peeling away the centuries with words just as he and other archaeologists have been doing with shovels and wheelbarrows for the past few years.
Around the rim of the hole stood some of the most powerful people in Virginia, peering down at the curious scars gouged into the hard-packed earth some 400 years ago, uncharacteristically quiet for an assembly of legislators.
This was the place where it all began, the site of the first permanent English-speaking settlement in North America, the point of contact between African, European and Native American cultures.
Wednesday was the highest-profile event so far in a series that began last year to commemorate the settlement of Jamestown. To mark the 400th anniversary, Vice President Cheney addressed members of the General Assembly inside the cramped Memorial Church that was built in 1907, and legislators toured the grounds of the settlement where representative democracy would take hold. The festivities will culminate in a three-day celebration this May and a visit by Queen Elizabeth II.
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A major theme of yesterday’s event was that Virginia’s key role in the creation of American democracy has sometimes been overshadowed by New England’s. A whoop went up when Cheney noted that the Jamestown colonists had already convened a representative assembly by the time the Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower.
Virginia has a real change to show off this year, especially in May. Here’s hoping it’s a big success.
