Popham: the Forgotten Colony

[Music] the colony of roanoke is probably the most famous failed colony in north america owing to its mysterious disappearance in the long history of wild fanciful speculative theories about what happened to it but it was hardly the only european colony to fail in the americas in fact there were several colonies that were seeking to become the first successful colony on the eastern seaboard that failed relatively quickly due to a myriad of challenges one of those was formed very shortly after the much more famous colony at jamestown its history literally lost for hundreds of years the colony that was formed on the rocky irregular coast of maine that was called popham colony deserves to be remembered on april 10th 1606 king james the first of england established by charter the virginia company of london and simultaneously the plymouth company the actual 1606 charter did not mention the name of either company and only in a second charter where the two companies specify that they should divide themselves into two colonies that one consisting of diverse knights gentlemen merchants and others of our city of london called the first colony and the other of sundry night's gentlemen and others of the cities of bristol exeter the town of plymouth and other places called the second colony it was only later that these companies became known as the virginia company of london and the virginia company of plymouth respectfully at the time most of the eastern coastline of what would become the u.s was called virginia after the virgin queen elizabeth the first from present-day maine to the carolinas the goal of these companies was to establish trading settlements in north america that could enrich the mother country technically all of the land that the two companies were given in the charters was already claimed by spain however spain had no presence in the region officially the london company was allowed to establish a colony of 100 square miles between the latitudes of 31 degrees and 41 degrees north approximately between cape fear and modern north carolina and long island sound the plymouth company was allowed to establish settlements between 38 degrees and 45 degrees north a region that encompassed the upper reaches of the chesapeake bay to about the modern u.s canadian border the section between 38 degrees and 41 degrees north was granted to both companies with the condition that the two companies not established settlements within 100 miles of each other the plymouth company hoped to establish a colony on the shoulders of merchants who would finance a trip for settlers that would then work off the initial investment through trade the principal members of the company were sir john papa a prominent english politician who had been speaker of the house of commons attorney general of the kingdom and was at the time of the company's formation the lord chief justice of england and his nephew george popham sir fernando gorgeous serves john gilbert and his brother raleigh william parker and thomas hannah before the establishment of the company john popham had sent a ship to america to explore but the ship was captured by spaniards and confiscated thomas hannam made a more successful trip later in 1606 which identified the region as favorable for settlement it was hannah's journey that convinced the other adventurers to obtain the charter for the plymouth company on may 31 1607 about a month after the successful landing of settlers at jamestown 120 colonists set off from plymouth england in two ships there were two primary goals of the initial colony to trade with the natives and to prove that the local forest could be used for building ships several earlier trips had already reached new england at that point first was the 1602 voyage of bartholomew gosnold who had named cape cod and attempted to establish a settlement there but had instead returned to england more important was the journey of george weymouth who had sailed to maine in 1605. weymouth had apparently with the backing and pre-planning of his sponsors which included fernando gorges also an investor in the plymouth company kidnapped five natives and brought them back to england the natives later told the frenchman that they believed the english had killed those men the two ships that sailed were the gift of god kept in by george popham who had been named president of the colony and the mary and john kept him by second in command rolly gilbert they carried with them one of the kidnapped native americans who they intended to return in august they returned the kidnapped man to the shore and then settled into place near the sagadahoca river now known as the kennebec on august 13th actually the gift of god arrived first while the mary and john overshot the place and had to have a boat sent to help them in a few days later there they delivered a sermon and read out the patent and other laws afterwards they began work on setting up a colony by digging a well building a stone house a few huts made of logs and a stockade which they proudly dubbed fort st george located near the small modern town of phippsburg however they almost immediately ran into problems though weymouth initial journey had gone out with a goal of finding friendly natives kidnapping their people turned the natives against europeans and specifically against the english they refused to provide the colonists with any supply of maize or other food another problem arose between the two leaders of the colony fernando gorgeous described the colony president george popham as timorously fearful to a fan while second in command raleigh gilbert was desirous of supremacy and rule a loose life prompted sensuality little zeal in religion humorous headstrong and of small judgment and experience well in other ways valiant enough though gorgeous opinion smacked somewhat a bias one of the issues may have been age popham was in his 50s while gilbert was only 25. 180 years after the establishment of the colony a map was rediscovered that had been stolen in england by a spy and brought to the spanish as evidence of what the english were doing on land that the spanish already claimed the map was drawn on october 8 1607 and drawn by the colonist john hunt and it is a detailed and scaled map of the colony it was then planned during august and september the colonists have been hard at work turning fort st george into a proper star fort to be defended by nine cannons his drawing shows 18 buildings including gilbert's house a chapel a storehouse a coop bridge in a guard house however it's unclear how much of the plan was actually completed on october 6th the mary and john was sent back to england to report their success it seems that the gift of god too was expected to be sent away but was kept nearby when the colony got word that a french force would come and besiege them the french never appeared popham was optimistic about the colony having heard that there are nutmegs mace and cinnamon as well as more trade goods in the area from the local abenaki people popham also heard that there was some large body of water only a few days west this he thought was likely the pacific ocean and the route to china which unquestionably cannot be far from these parts there was no word of precious metals like gold or silver which the english had hoped to find the colonists had counted on receiving food from the locals and when they were refused they were forced to consider a new plan for survival they'd arrived too late to plant food and could sustain the colony and did not carry enough supplies to last all 120 of the colonists through the winter on december 5th the gift of god left the colony with most of the colonists leaving 45 behind with enough stores to last them until spring both popham and gilbert remained with the colony the winter was brutally cold and the kennebec froze over completely according to one colonist it proved so extremely unseasonable and frosty as no book could stir upon any business the gift of god left with enough stores to support a six-week journey but apparently the stores were small enough that they were given instructions to sell what trading goods they had mass made from local timber cable and furniture at azores if necessary took about 47 days at sea to reach england and the men aboard had apparently eaten their way through all of the provisions by the time they reached the azores at least three men seemed to have died on the journey before they reached england in march of 1608 back at the colony the men there were having their own troubles they had according to one colonists built 50 houses likely too large a number and completed the fort the most important work they accomplished was the completion of a ship uh pretty penance of about some 30 ton which they called virginia a penance also called a pinnacle is according to one expert perhaps the most confusing of all the early 17th century types of vessels they varied widely in size as they were named more for use than type it could be small enough to be carried aboard a ship or as large as 50 tons the virginia was about 56 feet long not middle size for repentance the advantage of the small ship was that it could be rigged in different ways for different jobs and could be used for coastal sailing and scouting as well as cross atlantic travels the virginia is thought to be the very first english-built ocean-going vessel ever built in the new world the first in a long tradition of shipbuilding in the region centered at nearby bath maine they began trade for fur with the native americans but some kind of misunderstanding at one event led to the discharge of a cannon in the burning of some buildings written records say that the storehouse was burned however archaeological investigation shows that it wasn't but that several other buildings were the winter continued to be harsh when colonists wrote that there was thunder lightning rain frost snow all in abundance the last continuing in january of 1608 meanwhile other events were deciding the fate of the colony in england john popham had died depriving the company of its greatest backer george popham died on february 5th at the colony in unknown circumstances making gilbert president it was under gilbert that the virginia was completed in may of 1608 a supply ship brought news of john popham's death in july raleigh gilbert's brother another backer died in london that mary and john returned to popham colony in september with the news raleigh was his brother's heir and was needed back in england to settle the estate the colony had in that time been somewhat successful all things in good forwardness and many kinds of furs obtained from the indians by way of trade the winter that would have been harsh had not actually killed many of the colonists popham is the only certain death although other reports suggested that native americans had killed 11 and the captain of the mary and john wrote that popham and some other were dead certainly the death toll was considerably less than that experience at jamestown further south losing gilbert was apparently the last straw for the colony however no other colonists did replace him without leadership and with the fear that all other winters would prove like the first the colonists decided to abandon the fort they re-rigged virginia and departed with one colonist writing that this was the end that northern colony upon the river the little pinnacle would however go on to have its own adventures after crossing the atlantic with the popham colonists it returned to the americas with the third supply mission to jamestown in 1609 the largest fleet england has ever amassed in the west according to the leader of the fleet christopher newport the fleet ran into a tempest in july now believed to be a hurricane and the largest ship the sea venture was wrecked in bermuda the virginia however survived apparently having missed the hurricane and reached jamestown in october what happened to the ship afterwards is unknown the popham colony seems to have been relatively unique among european colonies in north america in that it didn't suffer mass death earlier french settlement in saint croix lost nearly half of its population and nearly half the pilgrims that landed at plymouth colony in 1620 didn't make it through the first winter and unlike jamestown the popham colony seems to have been at least moderately successful acquiring trade goods that could be sold back in england although it only lasted for 14 months it definitely proved the value of new world forests there were lessons learned that were useful in future journeys and it was remarkable in the creation of the virginia beginning of america's shipbuilding traditions the plymouth company fell into disuse until it was reorganized and used to support new england settlements later like the plymouth colony remarkably though poplam colony was nearly entirely forgotten until documents were rediscovered in the latter 19th century that caused quite a stir among historians who by that point considered it well established that plymouth colony was the first in new england going to show us that no matter what we think about history there's always more history to discover that deserves to be remembered i hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guide short snippets of forgotten history and if you did enjoy feed the algorithm by making a comment or clicking that like button if you have suggestions for future episodes please send those to our suggestions email box check out our webpage at thehistoryguy.net and of course we're on facebook instagram and twitter you can book a special message from the history guy on cameo and check out our merchandise teespring.com and if you'd like more episodes of forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 142,313

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy, Maine, US History, Popham

Id: r2nMAiAIFnQ

Length: 12min 4sec (724 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 18 2021