“That is just one marriage that you have been so interested in, isn’t it?” The Commodore’s tone was one to provoke inquiry.

“Just one?” repeated Nautica, “Why, to be sure, unless it takes two weddings to marry two people.”

“Just one wedding,” persisted the Commodore.  “Now, I am interested in dozens and dozens of weddings that happened right here, and all in one day.”

There were several things the matter with James Towne from the outset.  Prominent among them was the absence of women and children.  After a while a few colonists with families arrived; but, to introduce the home element more generally into the colony, “young women to make wives ninety” came from England in 1619.  The scene upon their arrival must have been one of the most unique in the annals of matrimony.  The streets of James Towne were undoubtedly crowded.  The little capital had bachelors enough of her own, but now she held also those that came flocking in from the other settlements of the colony.  The maids were not to be compelled to marry against their choice; and they were so outnumbered by their suitors that they could do a good deal of picking and choosing.  With rusty finery and rusty wooing, the bachelor colonists strove for the fair hands that were all too few, and there was many a rejected swain that day.

We might have forgotten the other important events that had happened round about where we were sitting, in that first little town by the river, if a coloured man had not wandered our way.  He had driven some sightseers over from Williamsburg, and while waiting for them to visit the graveyard, he seemed to find relief in confiding to us some of his burden of colonial lore and that his name was Cornelius.  We had over again the story of Rolfe and Pocahontas, but it seemed not at all wearisome, for the new version was such a vast improvement upon the one that we got out of the books.  However, his next statement eclipsed the Pocahontas story.

“De firs’ time folks evah meek dey own laws for dey se’fs was right heah, suh, right in dat ole chu’ch.”

While again facts could not quite keep up with Cornelius, yet it was true that our little four-acre town had seen the beginnings of American self-government.  So early did the spirit of home rule assert itself, that it bore fruit in 1619, when a local lawmaking body was created, called the General Assembly and consisting in part of a House of Burgesses chosen by the people.  On July 30 of that year, the General Assembly met in the village church—­the first representative legislature in America.  The place of meeting was not, as is often stated, the church in which Rolfe and Pocahontas were married, but its successor—­the earliest of the churches whose ruined foundations are yet to be seen behind the old tower.

Perhaps our thoughts had wandered some from Cornelius, but he brought them back again.

“Dey set in de chu’ch an’ meek de laws wid dey hats on,” he asserted.