News Flash

Join historian Martha W. McCartney as she shares her recent discoveries about the Africans brought to Point Comfort in August of 1619.

Through newly-examined documents preserved in the United Kingdom’s  National Archives, more details are now known about this pivotal event in American history. We now know how many Africans were aboard the Treasurer and how many of them were put ashore in Virginia. Previously some scholars  had argued that the Africans aboard the Treasurer did not come ashore in Virginia until February 1620. This interpretation had the ship sailing to Bermuda before anyone on board could disembark, then returning several months later with Africans (including Angelo) aboard. However, the documents themselves support the 1619 date.

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About the Speaker
Martha W. McCartney is a graduate of the College of William and Mary. She was employed in the Virginia Research Center for Archaeology for many years as a historian and program coordinator.  Since 1986, she has worked as an independent scholar, providing research support to Virginia’s archaeological community and state universities.  As a Colonial Williamsburg Foundation consultant, she was project historian for the National Park Service’s Jamestown Archaeological Assessment.  She is the author of fourteen books, plus more than 200 published articles and reports, and has received six historic preservation awards. Her book, Jamestown Island: An American Legacy was chosen by the NPS as “best in the field” in the book/cultural history category. Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers, 1607-1635: A Biographical Dictionary and Jamestown People to 1800 are two of her works. She is particularly interested in ethnohistory.