On December 19th, 1606, John Smith set out for the New World from Blackwell on the Thames (river) with 140 colonists. A flotilla of three ships, the Susan Constant under Christopher Newport, the Godspeed under Bartholomew Gosnold, and the Discovery under John Ratcliffe. These vessels arrived in the Chesapeake Bay on April 26, 1607.
Their purpose was to establish a colony of 140 colonists in Virginia, yet by June of that year only 105 were still alive.
Two years, during June of 1609 the Virginia Company sent nine ships containing a total of some 500 colonists under the command of Capt. Newport. One of the nine ships, the Seadventure, however, was wrecked in Bermuda, and the other ships arrived in Virginia on August 11, 1609.
By 1624 and 1625, a mere handful of the first immigrants had managed to survive. This fact, of course, is due to the great slaughter of white people by the Indian tribes.
The origin of the first settlers to Jamestown arose from a number of sources. The London prisons and penal institutions. The Bridewell, an institution established by Queen Elizabeth for the education of destitute children, the care of paupers, and the occupation of vagrants became a source of cheap labor from which apprentices were bound. Two hundred vagrant and miscreant children were sent from The Bridewell to Virginia in 1619 and 1620, followed by more in later years.
The 1624 and 1625 census records listed Henry Carman who came in the Duty in 1620 and Arthur Chandler who came in the Jonathan as both hailing from the Bridewell institution. Others appearing in the 1624 census (but not 1625) were: Thomas Helcott, Thomas Fernley, Thomas Garnett, William Bullock, James Brooks, Thomas Cornish and William Kenton.