Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 30, 1993                   TAG: 9305300099
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

JAMESTOWN MAY NOT BE WHERE 1ST AFRICANS LANDED

They probably first stepped ashore in Hampton, but it would be difficult to prove either place as the spot where ships carrying the first Africans landed, historians say.

"What probably happened is the slaves or indentured servants were off-loaded and brought later up to Jamestown," said Tom Davidson, senior curator of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. "Nobody will ever prove it one way or the other."

The idea that the Africans landed in Jamestown in 1619 has been accepted as historical fact for centuries. The 375th anniversary of their arrival is at the center of Wilder's proposal last week for a slavery museum.

But John Rolfe, the husband of Pocahontas, wrote in 1619 that a Dutch ship with "20 and odd Negroes" landed at Point Comfort, now the site of Fort Monroe in Hampton. "Point Comfort was the official point-of-entry to Virginia," Davidson said. "Ships were supposed to stop there and identify themselves."

There is no evidence the Dutch ship received permission from the governor to sail up the James River to Jamestown, Davidson said. It left three days after it arrived at Point Comfort, he said.

Jamestown may have become listed as the landing site in historical records because a 1625 census of the colony showed many of the slaves living there, historian Wesley Frank Craven wrote in his 1971 book, "Red, White and Black: the Seventeenth-Century Virginian."

The slaves were likely ferried by ship to the fort at Jamestown, but even that landing site is unknown, said Diane Stallings, historian for the National Park Service. The service operates Jamestown Island. "We're still looking for the site of the original fort. That's our Holy Grail," she said. "We know they got to Jamestown eventually."

The fort is likely underwater south of the current island, and it may be discovered by a new five-year archaeological survey of the island being conducted by the park service, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and the College of William and Mary.

But Colonial Williamsburg archaeologist Marley Brown III said it would be a shock to discover where the Africans stepped into Jamestown. "You're not going to find tangible evidence of slaves being off-loaded from a ship," he said. "Jamestown is symbolically important, but whether someone could pick a physical rationale for it being there, I don't know. You certainly don't need to, of course, because Jamestown is an important site in that story."

Jamestown-Yorktown Trustee Joyce Hobson has fought for more than a year to get the foundation to organize a celebration of the arrival because she believed the slaves landed at Jamestown.

But Hobson said she would follow wherever the documents point - once the story is researched by black historians.

"White historians have not told our story . . . so I'm not going to continue to trust you to tell me any more," she said. "If it's really at Point Comfort, put the museum there. Wherever the research shows, you go. But get the missing pieces of history in there."