St. Thomas Historical Trust officials have another addition to the list of celebrities who have visited the U.S. Virgin Islands: along with Christopher Columbus landing on St. Croix during his second voyage to the New World, it seems that colonists from England touched down on St. Thomas before moving on to settle in what would become America.
St. Thomas Historical Trust officials held a small ceremony in Emancipation Garden Friday, where a plaque commemorating the event was unveiled. The plaque was first given to the Virgin Islands in 1957 by the state of Virginia on the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown settlement, the first permanent English colony in the U.S.
While old newspaper articles show that the plaque was on display at one point in time, it was eventually misplaced and was only found again last year in the storage department of the V.I. State Historic Preservation Office.
"So we decided to see if we could get it fixed up," said Historical Trust President Ronnie Lockhart. Lockhart said Charles Consolvo, a member of the Trust’s board of directors, led the charged to getting the plaque, which had lost its seal, back to Virginia where it was refurbished and sent back, and is now once again on display in Emancipation Garden.
Language on the plaque says that the Jamestown settlers, a "company of 144 Englishmen," landed in the Virgin Islands in April 1607 and stayed for three days before going on to Virginia and founding the settlement there.
"No one understands that the Virgin Islands was really a midway point for everything," Lockhart said as he explained the significance of the landing. "This is why we have all these warehouses downtown. Things that came from North America, South America and Europe all came through here and went in different directions. So we’re a transshipment point, and that’s basically what we’re doing today with the tourists coming in and going everywhere; we’re the easiest place to stop."
Historical Trust board member Felipe Ayala said the settlers might not have been sure where they were going.
"So they came down and came back; the trade winds blow everything to the Virgin Islands," he said. Ayala pointed out that the settlers were here even before the Danish, who ended up colonizing the Virgin Islands.
The trust’s new executive director, Pamela Reid, said as a New Englander, she was surprised to receive a new history lesson.
"I found it quite surprising that the Jamestown settlers stopped here — and how exciting it is to find out that they had," she said. "This is the sort of thing we file under the header, ‘we don’t make this stuff up, they really did come here.’"
