Columbus Day & The New World

By prevailing over all obstacles and distractions, one may unfailingly arrive at his chosen goal or destination. - Christopher Columbus

My latest commuting book on CD is called, The Intellectual Devotional, American History. There are 365 “lessons” each about 5 minutes long. It’s a bit like having someone read a history text book aloud. Though not exciting, it overlapped nicely with a graphic novel I reread last night, Marvel’s 1602, and got me thinking about the colonization of America. Despite this being Columbus Day, I'll skip the early years and look at actual attempts to settle the New World.

The first successful English settlement of America was St. John's, Newfoundland. Tradition declares that the site earned its name when explorer John Cabot became the first European to sail into the harbour, on June 24, 1497 - the feast day of Saint John the Baptist. The location became a popular harbor with many nations for fishing the Grand Banks. It appears as São João on a Portuguese map in 1519. When the English mariner John Rut visited St. John's in 1527 he found Norman, Breton and Portuguese ships in the harbour. On August 5, 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed the area as England's first overseas colony under Royal Charter of Queen Elizabeth I. When he arrived, he found 16 English fishing ships and 20 French and Portuguese vessels already there with a small (seasonal?) settlement on the north side of the harbour. The resident population grew slowly in the 17th century.

Another early attempt at English settlement was the Virginia Colony. It began with an expedition sent by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1585 to Roanoke Island, NC. But the settlement ran out of supplies and the entire population returned to England when Sir Francis Drake dropped by after attacking the Spanish at St. Augustine. In 1587 the English tried to resettle Roanoke with families. At Roanoke, Virginia Dare became the first English child born in the New World. The colony ship was sent back for supplies but became impounded in an English war with Spain. When the supply ship was allowed to return in 1590, it found that every resident had vanished and Roanoke become know as the "Lost Colony".

Bottom Line

Tomorrow I’ll continue the story of the Virginia Colony.

I should also note that other nations (particularly Spain) were also trying to colonize the New World.
1498 Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
1510 Nombre de Dios & 1519 Panama City, Panama
1511-1515 Baracoa, Santiago, and Havana in Cuba
1519 Veracruz, 1526 Acámbaro, 1531 Culiacán, 1532 Oaxaca, & others, Mexico
1521 San Juan, Puerto Rico
1524 Granada, Nicaragua
1536 San Pedro, Honduras
1541 St. John's, Canada
1558 Mérida, Venezuela
1563 Cartago, Costa Rica
1565 Saint Augustine, Florida (the oldest continuously occupied European city in the United States)

Personal Note

Columbus Day has a special, though unintended meaning for me. I'm a big fan of the number 12 and so to make the Anniversary Day easier to remember, we chose October 12 to be married. Neither my wife nor I realized that we had picked Columbus Day until:
1. My sister gave us a large book on Columbus as a wedding gift
2. Our honeymoon inn wanted to charge us more more when we arrived because it was a holiday weekend.