Jamestown was the first successful British colony that gave rise to modern day America.The bodies were exhumed in November 2013 in the church where Pocahontas married Captain John Rolfe in 1614. It took two years of detective work and the latest scientific techniques to identify the badly-preserved bones. It’s now known the remains belong to important figures who lived in Jamestown between 1607 and 1610, when the colony almost collapsed. …
The fourth man, Reverend Robert Hunt, was the first Anglican minister in America and arrived with the founding expedition in 1607. Hunt nearly missed his chance to leave the shores of England. His acute seasickness was considered an ill omen by his companions who wanted to put him off the ship. Part of his mission was to Anglicise Native Americans by converting them to Christianity, but he died a year later aged about 39.
From Smithsonian Science
Eventually, the team identified the men as:
- Rev. Robert Hunt, the chaplain at Jamestown and the colony’s Anglican minister, who died at age 39 in 1608
- Capt. Gabriel Archer, who died at age 34 in 1609 or 1610 during the “starving time”
- Sir Ferdinando Wainman, who came to Jamestown with his first cousin, the governor of Virginia, and died at about age 34 in 1610
- Capt. William West, who died in 1610 during a skirmish with the Powhatan at age 24
From NPR – questions have arisen around a small silver box that seems to be of Roman Catholic origin:
the object itself is clearly a reliquary — a container for holy relics in the Roman Catholic Church. And that is puzzling. The colonists were Anglicans — members of the Church of England. Many Anglicans at the time considered Roman Catholics their spiritual enemies.
The mystery continues about what happened and what was going on.
Image from Smithsonian Science