Jamestown, as we’re all taught in school, was the first permanent English settlement in North America. Settlers who arrived by boat in 1607 established the colony a couple miles from what we know today as Williamsburg, Virginia. Those earliest settlers struggled to survive; about two-thirds of them died before reinforcements arrived.
Far fewer of us were taught that in that same year, a second group of settlers made a go of it about 10 miles upriver from what we know today as Bath, Maine. Theirs was called the Popham Colony, and it lasted for about 14 months. It’s believed to have been a settlement of men and boys whose goal was to build a ship and explore the coast. Historians believe they gave up and
