Henry Spelman of Jamestown

Henry Spelman (1595–1623) was an English adventurer, soldier, and author, the son of Erasmus Spelman and nephew to Sir Henry Spelman of Congham (1562–1641). The younger Henry Spelman was born in 1595, and left his home in Norfolk, England at age 14 to sail to Virginia Colony aboard the ship "Unity", as a part of the Third Supply to the Jamestown Colony in 1609. He is remembered for writing the Relation of Virginia, documenting the first permanent English settlement in North America at Jamestown, Virginia, and particularly the lifestyles of the Native Americans of the Powhatan Confederacy led by Chief Powhatan.

Despite being a son of the high sheriff of his county, Spelman, owing to the traditional English practice of primogeniture, was left to indenture himself as a laborer to pay his passage to the New World. The Third Supply flotilla of 9 ships set sail from Plymouth, England on 2 June 1609. In July 1609, the ships ran into a massive 3 day storm and the fleet was broken up, with the flagship Sea Venture wrecking upon the islands of Bermuda. After the storm passed, the remaining ships reassembled off of Cape Henry and sailed up the coast, arriving at Jamestown 4 or 5 days later in October 1609.

Only two weeks after his arrival at the Jamestown Settlement, Henry went with Captain John Smith on an expedition up the James River to the Indian town called Powhatan. (located in the East End portion of the modern-day city of Richmond, Virginia.) Smith knew that Jamestown would be unable to support the arrival of several hundred new colonists through the coming winter, and he traded young Henry's bonded servitude in exchange for the village, which was ruled by weroance Parahunt, son of Wahunsunacock (also known as Chief Powhatan.) The agreement was also for the boy to apprentice the native Powhatan language, and thus become an interpreter and serve as a messenger between the two cultures. Young Henry Spelman was not the first boy to be traded to the Powhatans; Thomas Savage had previously been given to Powhatan by Captain Christopher Newport in 1608, and Henry named in his writings of "Dutchman Samuel" (actually "Samuel Collier" who was John Smith's page) as another European child that lived with the Natives.

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