Jamestown+Location



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In the year 1606, the English monarch King James I granted a charter to a private company known as the Virginia Company to build a settlement in the Chesapeake Bay area of North America.

On December 20, 1606, around 100 members of the Virginia Company sailed across the Atlantic. They reached the Chesapeake Bay in April 1607, and they established a settlement on an island up the James River on May 14, naming it "James Towne" after the current monarch, James I, as was the habit of English settlement.