16081776 Club
Jamestown's council names John Smith president
The colony had already lost more than half its settlers; Smith returns from mapping the Chesapeake to take charge.
By September 1608, Jamestown had buried more than sixty of its first hundred settlers and survived a village fire, a starving winter, and a frozen river. In September 1608, the colony's council elected John Smith president, putting the explorer in charge just as he returned from a summer spent mapping the Chesapeake Bay. Smith had left his friend Matthew Scrivener as governor during that absence, only to find discipline had collapsed. He moved quickly to impose order, since the colony still could not feed itself…
