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Jamestown was the first English settlement in Virginia in 1607. Within a few years, though, the colony began to stretch its boundaries both in population and territory.

One of the most famous love stories in history is that of Pocahontas and John Smith. There’s only one little problem with that romantic tale: It never happened.

In late April 1607 after 6,000 miles and over four months at sea, a little flotilla bearing 104 settlers and the hopes of anxious investors, rounded Cape Henry beginning the grand adventure that became Virginia.

For nearly two decades the Virginia Company of London tried to exploit its monopoly in the New World. Despite its efforts and innovations, its money and influence, the company could not make the colony pay.

Tobacco cultivation in early Virginia could be lucrative if one had land and labor. Land was there for the taking, labor was another matter.

Although outnumbered, sometimes six to one, women played an important role in the survival and prosperity of Jamestown and Virginia.

The prospects for Virginia seemed bleak in 1618. The death rate was high, there were few if any profits or capital resources, and the course of the colony was uncertain. That year the colony acquired a new leader and a new direction.

Angela, an African from what is now the modern nation of Angola, was captured by Portuguese slave traders for shipment to the Spanish colony of Mexico. In 1619, when her ship was captured by privateers in the Caribbean, she became one of the first Africans in Virginia.

In a burst of entrepreneurial creativity, the Virginia Company, founder of the Jamestown colony, tried again and again to make the colony a commercial success.

Councilor, geographer, diplomat, soldier, taskmaster.  In great measure the Jamestown settlement survived by the hand of Captain John Smith.

In 1607 Indians of Virginia’s Tidewater discovered they had new neighbors on the James River. Their leaders, Powhatan and Opechancanough, countered the English threat in different ways.

Over its seventeen year life span, the Virginia Company struggled to plant a colony far from the edge of European civilization and to make it yield a profit. To some extent they were making it up as they went along.

The Virginia Company’s huge investment finally paid off. Although it came too late to save the company, the profits from tobacco made Jamestown a significant player in the world economy.

In 1607, when Christopher Newport’s little fleet anchored in what would be called the James River, it made rival claim to a domain inhabited by the highly organized and sophisticated Powhatan paramount chiefdom.

The great tobacco fortunes of early Virginia would not have been possible but for the steady supply of African slaves toward the end of the 17th century. They were transported from Africa along an extensive and sophisticated pipeline.

When the early colonists departed England bound for Virginia, they left behind a society divided by class, rank, wealth and religion, but also one uniquely unified in its view of the world.