RALEIGH – As many of us continue to work our way through a refrigerator full of turkey and other leftovers, it’s worthwhile to consider that while the tradition of Thanksgiving has its origins in 1620s Massachusetts, the English settlement of America didn’t begin there. It didn’t even begin at Jamestown, although that was the place where English-speaking peoples made their first permanent home.

There were earlier attempts at settlement. Most famously, Sir Walter Raleigh received a 1584 charter from Queen Elizabeth to send ships and colonists to Roanoke Island, off the coast of present-day North Carolina. But a relief expedition had arrived in 1590 and found nothing except “Croatoan” carved into a post. The legend of the Lost Colony was born.

Despite this initial failure, Elizabeth’s successor King James I had no intention of leaving the colonization of North America to the Spanish, Dutch, or other rivals. In 1606 he chartered two Virginia Companies to try again. One was called the Virginia Company of Plymouth. Its 1607 effort at colonization predated the Jamestown settlement by several months – and the site of their attempt was further north even than the place the Pilgrims would land in 1620.

Yep, you guessed it: this earlier 1607 expedition included an ancestor of mine, a 10th great-grandfather named Captain James Davis.

Born around 1580 in Gloucester, England, Davis was the son of Sir Thomas Davis, an original member of the Virginia Company of Plymouth. Already an experienced sailor by the age of 27, James Davis joined the Company’s 1607 expedition to New England to plant a colony.

On May 31, some 120 colonists and marines set sail on two ships from Plymouth, England en route to what is now the coast of Maine. The leader of the expedition, George Popham, sailed aboard the Gift of God. James Davis was reportedly navigator on the other ship, the Mary and John. Davis is also the probable author of a book, The Relation of a Voyage to Sagadahoc, that is the main source of historical information about the Popham colony.

The Englishmen planned to build their Maine colony around three main “f” industries: furs, fishing, and forest products. They also harbored dreams of finding gold or other precious metals. Their expedition arrived at the mouth of the Sagadahoc – now Maine’s Kennebec River – in mid-August 1607. They built a settlement, and James Davis briefly commanded the fort before returning to England in October aboard the Mary and John.

Almost from the start, things began to go wrong for the fledging Maine colony. The English arrived too late to grow crops for the winter, and relations with the local Indians went from tentatively amiable to tense, and eventually to hostile. Indian attack and disease claimed several lives, including that of leader George Popham.

Recognizing that the original conception of the colony was flawed, some settlers began to use local lumber to build a small sailing ship called a pinnace. They sought to demonstrate the value of a northern colony as a center for shipbuilding. The result was a 50-foot pinnace named Virginia, the first ship built in English-speaking America. The colonists were right to foresee a major shipbuilding industry in New England, but that development lay decades in the future.

By early 1608, it was obvious to all concerned that the Popham colony was a flop. James Davis had returned from England to Maine on a resupply mission and now took command of the newly built Virginia. In October 1608, the remaining colonists sailed back to England.

Taking the Virginia to Virginia

Captain Davis didn’t remain long in England. In June 1609 he and his ship Virginia joined the pivotal Third Supply mission, bound for Jamestown. Another 10th great-grandfather of mine, Samuel Jordan, also joined the Third Supply mission. It set sail in June 1609.

After several weeks at sea, the Third Supply fleet ran into a hurricane. Over three days of battling wind and sea, one ship sank and the flagship of the fleet, the Sea Venture, was badly damaged and separated from the other ships. It ran aground on what was later known as the island of Bermuda. Over the next nine months, the Sea Venture castaways (including Samuel Jordan) lived off their supplies and the bounty of the island, while using pieces of their ship and native lumber to build two new vessels. They didn’t arrive at Jamestown until the following year.

Captain James Davis’s Virginia had survived the hurricane intact, however, and landed at Jamestown on Oct. 3, 1609. He found the Jamestown colony in a sorry state. For one thing, relations with the local Powhatan Confederacy had deteriorated to such a point that the Indians had just captured Captain John Ratcliffe, commander of the Point Comfort fort, and tortured him to death (they flayed his skin with muscle shells and burned him alive). The acting governor of the Virginia colony, George Percy, gave James Davis command of the fort.

Would you have taken that job, knowing the gruesome fate of your predecessor?

Then came the “Starving Time,” the harsh winter and famine of 1609-10. Many of the Jamestown settlers died. By May 1610, when the survivors of the Sea Venture shipwreck on Bermuda finally arrived at Jamestown, there were only a few dozen Virginia settlers left alive. Captain James Davis was one of them. They all decided to leave the colony. Davis again captained the Virginia as the ragtag fleet began to sail down the river into Chesapeake Bay. But on the way out they learned of the arrival of a fourth supply mission and a new governor, Thomas West. The settlers returned to the colony to start over.

“Go To The Devil!”

One of the new governor’s priorities was to end the constant Indian raids. In August 1610 Gov. West ordered George Percy (who had been all too happy to give up leadership of the struggling colony) to lead some 70 soldiers up the James River on a punitive raid against the Indians. Captain James Davis was a key member of the expedition. In fact, Davis led an initial landing party that was immediately attacked by Indian bowmen.

Davis and his men chased the Indians away. The English soldiers then marched against the Indian villages – destroying their homes, burning their corn crop, killing their warriors, and capturing or executing their families. According to Percy’s account, Captain Davis himself appears to have dispatched the wife of one of the village chiefs with a sword, citing an order to that effect from the governor.

The following year, 1611, James Davis commanded not just the fort at Old Port Comfort but also at two other forts on the James River. By this time the government in Spain had resolved to do something about the growth of the Virginia colony, which they considered to be a threat to their interests in the Caribbean and North America. On June 27, 1611 a Spanish fleet arrived in Chesapeake Bay and approached the fort at Old Point Comfort. They demanded its surrender.

Captain Davis’s response was terse: “Go to the Devil!”

The Spanish commander, Diego Malina, decided to take the fort. Davis and his Virginia militiamen decided to set up an ambush. When Malina and his men landed on the shore, they walked right into the trap and were captured. Captain Davis apparently tried to trade Malina for a Spanish promise to withdraw, but at the first chance the Spanish got they fled to the open sea without their commander. There’s no record of Malina’s fate. I’m guessing it wasn’t a pleasant one.

Family and Plantation

The Jamestown settlers and the local Indians continued their warring until 1614, when the marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe sealed a treaty that lasted for several years. During that time, Captain James Davis appears to have continued his military service, at one point commanding the defense of the settlement at Henricus. As did so many other prominent members of the colony, Davis also founded a plantation sometime during the period and lived there with his wife Rachel Keyes and two sons.

In 1619, the first legislative body in America convened as the Virginia House of Burgesses. Its membership included Samuel Jordan as well as a man named Thomas Davis, who by some reports was James Davis’s brother.

What became of James Davis is a matter of controversy. According to some sources, he died in the Indian Massacre of 1622. According to other sources, however, Davis and his family survived the Indian fighting of 1622-23 and voyaged back to England for a time, returning to Virginia later in the decade. By this account, James Davis died around 1634 and his wife Rachel outlived him for many decades in their Virginia home.

As for Captain Davis’s famous ship, a nonprofit organization called Maine’s First Ship is currently building a replica of the Virginia, the pinnace built by the Popham colonists in 1607-08. A team of shipwrights, educators, students, and volunteers began the job by laying the keel of the ship in July 2011. You can find out more about the project here. There is also a blog chronicling the progress of the project.

And as for the Virginia Company of Plymouth that financed the failed 1607 Maine colony, it was reconstituted as the Plymouth Council of New England and later played a role in the Pilgrim colony of Massachusetts. If at first you don’t succeed…

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.