On 14 May 1607, an intrepid band of 105 men and boys debarked after a long sea voyage from England and set up camp in a mosquito-infested marshland on the eastern shore of North America, founding the first permanent English settlement, Jamestown, in what was to become the United States less than two centuries later.

Though the settlers came in search of gold and silver and a river route to the Pacific, ironically but indisputably the eventual success of Jamestown, the colony of Virginia, and the early United States owed greatly to what slowly came to be recognized as the twin evils of slavery and tobacco.

To mark the forthcoming 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, The Granger Collection is proud to showcase part of its extensive and unsurpassed imagery of Jamestown, pre-Revolutionary Virginia, the Native Americans and natural history of the time and the area, and some of the people whose names are indelibly linked with the story: Queen Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen; King James I; and, of course, Pocahontas and her irascible friend, Captain John Smith.


 
 
If you do not find what you are seeking in these feature pages or after searching our entire site, by all means telephone us at 1-212-447-1789 or email us to discover those images we have on the early colonization of the United States that still remain unscanned.