Dr. Johannes Fleischer, Jr., from Breslau, Germany, was the only non-British in the first group of settlers, who landed in May 1607. As the first physician and the first university-educated botanist, he was one of the most educated persons at Jamestown during the 100 or so years it was the capital of Virginia.
Two unnamed Hessian glassmakers, who arrived in October 1608, produced trials of glass in James Fort. In the spring of 1609, they built a glasshouse 1 mile from James Fort.
The wainscot sawyers Samuel, Adam and Franz, who also arrived in October 1608, helped build a European-type house for Paramount Chief Powhatan and lived in the same village as Pocahontas.
An unknown number of German metallurgists performed experiments in James Fort.
We enter the National Park Service Visitors Center. Here a small exhibit tells visitors about the German glassmakers.
From the Visitors Center we pass over the Pitch and Tar Swamp. Three Poles were brought to Jamestown in October 1608, to make pitch and tar, soap ashes and pot ashes. The pitch and tar was used to keep British ships afloat.
In the obelisk of 1907 are engraved the words JAMESTOWN, VIRGINIA, THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. This was dedicated by President Theodore Roosevelt at the 300th anniversary.
The church tower is considered the only structure remaining above ground from the period 1607 to c. 1700 when Jamestown was the capital of Virginia. (However, the ruins of the German-built Glasshouse of 1609 on Glasshouse Point are also above ground.) The current church building was erected on the foundations of an earlier church; in this the first General Assembly was held and American democracy inaugurated.
To the original Virginians, copper was as precious as gold to us. It saved the lives of the colonists during the first, crucial years, because the Indians accepted it in exchange for food. Paramount Chief Powhatan probably refrained from wiping out the English in this vulnerable period, because they could supply him with this highly desirable metal. Copper worn as ornaments indicated social rank; in the grave it conferred eternal life. Powhatan could assure the loyalty of his lesser chiefs with gifts of copper.
Most of the copper at Jamestown was German made. It came in the form of copper waste and also copper-alloy counters. About 70 percent of this copper waste was from the Society of the Mines Royal; this was a German run, staffed and partially financed copper operation headquartered at Keswick in England’s Lake District (Cumberland).4 This was the sole copper-producing firm in England at this time.5
Before entering James Fort at its eastern bulwark, we look to our right at the site of a building archaeologists call the factory. It sat just outside the original triangular palisades. Besides glass trade beads, many scraps and trimmings from copper sheets were found in this house. The settlers had fashioned some of them into squares that native chiefs wore on their chests as signs of rank. Other copper was rolled to form tubular beads. Being outside the original palisades, this building may also have served as a post for trading with Indians without them entering the fort proper.
About 1 percent of the more than 700,000 objects catalogued by archaeologists at Jamestown so far bear words. More than 90 percent of these words are in German. These words appear on Rechenpfennige made in Nürnberg. Scores of these reckoning pennies or counters were discovered in the FACTORY. They were made for doing arithmetic on lined boards like an abacus. On one side is the name of the maker, such as HANS SCHULTES ZU NURNBERG, on the other, a saying in German, such as GOTTES SEGEN MACHT REICH.6 At Jamestown, some of these copper-alloy discs were used in trade with the indigenous people. With a hole punched in the jetons, they could be worn suspended from the neck. (About 300 were found throughout James Fort and also in Indian graves.)
German-made copper was also used in metallurgical experiments. Most of the copper waste was sent to Jamestown so that metallurgical experts could use it in tests. Some of these men were from the Society of the Mines Royal. Their task was to discover if this metal could be turned into good brass by the addition of local zinc ores.7
According to the Jamestown Landmark Organizing Committee, “a host of metals and minerals were processed, refined, and tested at Jamestown during the colony's earliest years. Among Jamestown's metalworking remains, archaeologists found evidence for copper-based metallurgy. Numerous triangular and beaker-shaped crucibles have been excavated and several samples contain copper residue.” 8
“The presence of German knowledge and skills is a signal feature of the English establishment of metallurgy in Virginia….” In the working of metals, “German technology and expertise” was employed. Metallurgical and related chemical experimentation was carried on from the beginning “under the direction of both English and German experts.”
Such trials may have been performed in the cellar of the northern third of the factory. Here a large fire place contained fire hot enough to partially melt the brick surfaces; it could have served to heat copper and zinc. The cellar may have been an open pit before a house was built on top. Here was also found a fragment of a glass alembic (a domed vessel used in distilling). This was part of a still to test for gold and other precious metals.
Visitors to Jamestown before 1994 were told that the Fort had been washed away by the James River. Dr. William Kelso, however, thought that traces of the Fort might still be found on solid ground. One thing that made him think so were two Hessian glass-melting pots that had been found during the digging of a utility line c. 1935. One had been placed on top of the other to contain the heat; however, the bubbling glass had fused the two. The glassmakers broke the sides to extract the glass. Dr. Kelso began to dig near this site. Here he discovered a bulwark ditch and parallel to it a palisade trench. This was evidence of the eastern bulwark.
We stop before this bulwark moat. Hot slag left over from glass-melting operation had been poured into this ditch. Here Kelso also found glass-making debris such as cullet, fine river sand and broken Hessian glass-smelting pots, some with adhering glass. The bottom of one pot was stamped twice with the initials of Peter Töpfer Groβalmerode, a glass and ceramic center east of Kassel. These finds suggest that the German glass-smelting operation was just inside the gate.
As we step through the gate, just inside on our left is a building archaeologists call the barracks. Over 7,000 fragments of English crown glass plus three bulls’ eyes were found in the cellar pit of this building (Pit 1); this cullet was added to the sand to speed up the glass-smelting process. Numerous Hessen crucible fragments, several with molten glass or slag were also found in this pit. This may have been the site of the glass-making trials conducted by the two Hessian glassmakers between c. October 1 and December 1, 1608. Since no signs of furnaces have been found, it is likely that the glassmakers used bellows to reach the 2000 degree Centigrade needed to melt sand. Pit 1 also contained Nürnberg counters, copper scrap, brown stoneware from Frechen, stoneware from Raeren / Westerwald and the upper half of a stoneware jug known as a Bartmann from Cologne or Frechen.
We walk toward the center of James Fort and look toward the bank of the James River. An arm of land, now submerged, extended into the river from a point a short distance west of the Fort. Here Dr. Johannes Fleischer, Jr., stepped on land on May 14, 1607, with the very first English colonists. He was the premier university-trained physician and botanist in English America. He arrived in the middle of a wilderness. The settlers lived in tents or pits. They were immediately attacked by neighboring Indians whose hunting grounds they had invaded. Two settlers were killed and 11 wounded. The natives almost over whelmed the colonists, when one of the ships fired a rotating bar, which sent tree branches down on the Indians. Then they fled. The settlers spent the next three weeks erecting these palisades—Herculean work. They built a three-sided fort, because this was quicker to complete.
We wonder how much time Dr. Fleischer found for his botanical search? We cannot imagine that he stood idly by while the men were building their refuge, the Fort. Outside, he had to fear Indian arrows. Fleischer lived here for 15 months, and here is where he died. This may seem like a brief time; however, he outlived most of his companions. Fewer than 40 of the original 105 settlers survived to January 1608. When he died in mid-summer of 1608, he was a veteran. The three main causes of deaths were typhoid, dysentery and salt poisoning from drinking James River water.
We gaze out upon the river and imagine Capt. Christopher Newport’s ship Mary and Margaret tied to trees on the arm of land that extended into the James. Adam, Franz and Samuel, who arrived around Oct. 1, 1608, on this ship, were makers of wainscoting or oak paneling. The three Germans, along with many English, cut down trees and turned them into planks or boards to fill the hold of this ship. This wood was taken back to England by Newport when he left around Dec. 1, 1608. At this time, the three woodworkers were sent to Great Chief Powhatan by Capt. John Smith; they were to help build a European-style house at his headquarters village of Werowocomoco on the York. Here they lived in the company of Powhatan’s daughter Pocahontas. The chief was fascinated by his new house. However, he then decided to remove himself from the vicinity of Smith to a remote, swampy area on the Chickahominy River. During the winter of 1609-10, Powhatan began a concerted attack on Jamestown. Around March 1610, Samuel saw an opportunity to get away from Powhatan by leaving in the company of the chief of the Potomac tribe. However, Powhatan sent his warriors in pursuit, one of whom smashed in Samuel’s skull. Adam and Franz suffered the same fate when they tried to get away from the Indians and return to Jamestown in June 1610.
We walk to the west wall of James Fort to view a series of crosses. This is a burial ground from the earliest days of James Fort when the colonists tried to hide their death rate from the Indians. Dr. Fleischer, who died in mid-summer of 1608, may have been buried here.
We walk through an opening in the west wall to a well that dates from the James Fort period. (It is next to a storage shaft from the Civil War fort.) In the well were found, among other objects, a molded blue-and-gray stoneware baluster jug from Raeren and most of a Bartmann jug.
A little farther we come to the Rev. Robert Hunt Memorial; he is depicted under a canvass conducting the first Communion service in 1607. Since Master Hunt and Dr. Fleischer were the only ones with a higher education, we may assume that they developed close ties. They may have conversed in Latin.
Continuing west, we come to a large wooden cross. It marks an extensive burial ground on the ridge beyond. Some of the burials may date from the Starving Time, the winter of 1609-10, when three fourth of the settlers died. The two Hessian glassmakers died during this time and may have been buried here.
On this ridge is also the APVA Archaearium, the archaeological museum of the Jamestown Rediscovery project built in 2006. Here many of the objects found at James Fort may be seen. These include Hessian glass-melting pots used in glass making, Hessian crucibles used in metallurgical experiments, examples of Rechenpfennige or counters from Nürnberg, brass thimbles from Nürnberg, shards of German ceramics, including Bartmann jugs and Westerwald drinking vessels and glass ware that may have been made in the Rhineland. On some of the walls are enlargements of scenes engraved and printed in Frankfurt-am-Main by Theodor de Bry, a Bürger of Frankfurt.
We leave Jamestown Island by vehicle and make a left at the sign “The Glasshouse of 1608.” In the spring of 1609, the two Hessian glassmakers built three furnaces plus a kiln on the mainland 1 mile from James Fort.10 It was made of river cobbles collected along the James River. The ruins of the four ovens may be seen within an enclosure built by the National Park Service. In a nearby exhibition glasshouse, modern glassblowers may be observed using similar techniques as the Germans.
If we proceeded left on the Colonial Parkway, we would after about 20 miles reach the southern bank of the York River. Here an historical marker points to Werowocomoco on the opposite side of the River. Werowocomoc (veroance=chief and comoco=settlement) was the political headquarters of the Powhatan Confederacy, which encompassed about 30 tribes. Located at Purtan Bay, Werowocomoco was about 12 miles in a direct line from Jamestown. Here the German wainscot sawyers Adam, Franz and Samuel helped build a European-style house for Powhatan. This village site is now being investigated by archaeologists. —Gary Carl Grassl
Chief source: William M. Kelso, Jamestown: The Buried Truth. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006. I am grateful for the assistance of Beverly (Bly) Straube, senior curator of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA).
Beverly (Bly) Straube, discovered a letter written by Fleischer from Jamestown in 1607. He calls it Jacobopolis and writes in Latin. This letter proves that Fleischer arrived in 1607 instead of 1608 as previously assumed.
“Carter C. Hudgins, the APVA Preservation Virginia archaeologist who conducted the chemical analysis [of copper found at an Indian village], explained that, ‘Some scholars have argued that the Powhatans’ reverence for copper was so strong that the English supply of it is what staved off the colonists’ early annihilation by the indigenous people, and it enabled the settlers to buy corn at a stable price established by John Smith–one bushel of the grain for a one-inch square piece of copper. During the early years of the Jamestown settlement, the exchange rate was stable and enabled the colony to survive severe droughts that plagued early agricultural efforts.’” (“Copper found at Kiskiak: Copper linked to Jamestown discovered at U.S. Navy's Weapons Station in Yorktown,” William & Mary News, June 29, 2004.
Powhatan didn’t make a concerted effort to wipe out Jamestown until the winter of 1609-10 when copper had lost much of its value because of oversupply.
4. The Society of the Mines Royal was formally established by Queen Elizabeth I in 1568 as the first industrial stock company in England. The Augsburg firm of Haug, Langnauer und Mitverwandte owned 45% of the stocks but provided more than half of the contributions. The Mines Royal was organized and managed by the Höchstetters of Augsburg. The personnel consisted chiefly of miners from the Austrian Tyrol and Kärnten (Carinthia), and South German copper smiths. By 1607, Daniel Höchstetter, Jr., of Augsburg was co-manager of the Society. He had been a member of an advance party sent by this company to North Carolina in 1585-86 to determine the feasibility of establishing a branch operation. The early account books of the Society are located in the Stadtarchiv Augsburg (Gary Carl Grassl, The Search for the First English Settlement in America: America’s First Science Center. AuthorHouse: Bloomington, IN, and Milton Keynes, UK, 2006, pp. 209-220).
5. Same.
6. Less than 1% of the more than 700,000 items catalogued by Jamestown archaeologists bear words. More than 90% of these are in German.
7. “Another scheme for exploiting minerals [at Jamestown] was the making of brass, which required copper and zinc. Certain [Virginia] Company shareholders were connected with the English copper industry, and over 8,000 strips and shavings of English copper were found on site, most in 1607-10 contexts. There is no doubt that some of the copper was there to trade with the Indians for corn, venison, fish and fowl…. However, much of this hoard of copper scraps was likely sent to Jamestown to be processed with Virginia zinc into brass for export. Crucibles with copper residue and a plug of copper from a crucible show that these scraps were used in experiments in the colony” (William M. Kelso, Jamestown: The Buried Truth. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006, p. 181).
8. The article continues, “About a quarter of the people who entered Jamestown during its first year had an association with the working of metal. German involvement with English merchant voyages dates to a half century before Jamestown, when German investors agreed to finance English mining. At all three sites [of the first English settlement attempts—Baffin Island, Roanoke and Jamestown], Germans were present, and German technology and expertise employed. In particular, Jamestown’s artifacts tell a story of industrial research and development aimed at fusing English and Virginia natural resources into products for European consumption. We see a pattern of intense chemical experimentation for the metallurgist especially, with chemical apparatus both imported and manufactured on site, under direction of both English and German experts” (“Jamestown” by Carter C. Hudgins and Robert D. Hicks, the American Chemical Society and the Jamestown Landmark Organizing Committee. Hudgins was a staff archaeologist of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities).
9. Same.
German metallurgists were highly valued in England for the reason that “both the theory and practice of metallurgy are mainly due to the Germans” (William Stanley Jevons, The Coal Question, Chapter VI, Of British Inventions. London: Macmillan & Co., 1865).
10. The Jamestown glassmakers seem to have been from Grossalmerode in Hessen, the meeting place of the guild of Hessian and Frankish glassmakers. Around 1600, most of the glass houses in the Grossalmerode area east of Kassel were shut down by the local count to halt the destruction of forests. Many of the glassmakers then journeyed to distant places in search of work.
