by Ivor Noël Hume We had been possessed with a vague idea that
we were going somewhere on a spree and until that moment had not
realized the fact that we were on a pious pilgrimage to the
birth-place of a mighty nation. —David H. Strother, May 12, 1857
"Compared with the ruins of ancient Egypt, the ruins of
Jamestown are humble," William and Mary professor and artist
Louis Hué Girardin wrote shortly before the 1807 centennial. The
approach of Jamestown's four-hundredth birthday in 2007 renews
in some an interest in the last centenary, the celebration of
1907, and all its failures and all its successes. It puts a mind
to wondering, too, how Virginians saw their past in the century
before—on the 150th anniversary, in 1857, and during the
bicentennial in 1807. How well remembered was John Smith or
Pocahontas then? To what extent were Jamestown and its ruined
church icons of Virginia's colonial history? Less and more than
you might suppose. In 1707, Virginia's first centenary, the
colony looked to a future in a n