In this excerpt from “A Breife Declaration of the Plantation of Virginia duringe the firft Twelve Yeares, when Sir Thomas Smith was Governor of the Companie, & downe to this prefent tyme” (1624), a group of so-called Ancient Planters describe life at Jamestown from the Starving Time, during the winter of 1609–1610, to the colony’s near-abandonment by Governor Sir Thomas Gates, to its rescue by the arrival of a new governor, Thomas West, baron De La Warr. The Ancient Planters were settlers who came to Virginia before Sir Thomas Dale‘s departure in 1616, remained for a period of three years, and received the first land grants. Commissioned by the General Assembly in 1624, their report came amidst a Crown investigation of the Virginia Company of London and its treasurer, Sir Edwin Sandys. Some spelling has been modernized.
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