Move over Plymouth Rock, the first, permanent English settlement in the nation is ready for a turn in the spotlight.
With the myriad 400th anniversary celebrations heralding Jamestown, Va., this year, local descendants of one of the four colony's founders are eager to set the record straight about a slice of history.
Nancy Wingfield Hayward of Peninsula Township is 15 generations removed from Edward-Maria Wingfield. She and her husband, Gordon, and two daughters, a son-in-law and a grandson, spent three days in Jamestown last month, a grand history immersion tour that has been a family tradition for decades. As each child or grandchild approaches 14 years old, they are given a first-hand tour of this crucial place in the country's founding.
"We take our children and grandchildren to Jamestown so they all know their history,” said Nancy Hayward. "I'm proud of Jamestown and it's place in American history and I'm proud of [Wingfield] — he did a lot. They called him an elderly warrior, he was 57 years old when he came over, not a young man.”
"What's really sad is that Jamestown is not recognized like Plymouth,” she added of the Massachusetts colony founded by Pilgrims in 1620.
This distant uncle was one of four investors who ponied up to incorporate the Virginia Charter of 1606. He not only put in the largest sum, Wingfield was the only one to sail with the three ships to the New World: Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery. He joined about 130 other men and boys on the initial mission, a former army Captain and a gentleman from a noble family based in Sexton, England.
Wingfield was instrumental in selecting the initial site of Jamestown, choosing a militarily strategic location later abandoned for more farmer-friendly land nearby. In a breakthrough that foreshadowed the democratic future of what became the United States, Wingfield was elected president of the colony. This was the first election that allowed all men to vote, not just landowners.
"This was the birthplace of our democratic process and our system of politics,” said Sheryl Hayward, Nancy's daughter who also went on the trip. "You didn't have to be titled and landed to get the vote.”
During the trip, the Hayward family also participated in a Wingfield Family Society reunion, which included 232 descendants from the United States, Great Britain, Italy and Australia. In addition to her immediate family, Hayward's three sisters, brother and two cousins attended the festivities. The Wingfield-related trip to Jamestown did not overlap with the festivities around the visit earlier this month by the Queen Elizabeth II in honor of the quadricentennial.
A pivotal figure in the new colony, Edward-Maria Wingfield clashed with John Smith, another army officer and leader in Jamestown. Smith established his legacy by writing a book detailing his adventures in the colony and with the Native Americans, including Pocahontas.
"John Smith wrote his own book, which became the expected story, but his history has been debunked,” said Sheryl Hayward. "My impression is that Wingfield is much better known in England than here; in England, John Smith's history is considered mythology.”
During his tenure as president, Wingfield angered the colonists by requiring that everyone work — even gentleman unused to it — and his strict rationing of food. His enemies accused him of being both a Spanish sympathizer, a country England was at war with, and an atheist because he had lost his bible before setting sail.
Another election deposed him and he returned to England, where he cleared his name. Although he never returned to Jamestown, Wingfield stayed active in the Virginia Company until he was 70; he died in 1631 at the age of 81.
Wingfield never had children and his descendants come from his nephew, Thomas, who settled in Yorktown in 1680.
"Wingfield is one of our Founding Fathers and he's not really studied about,” noted Sheryl Hayward of Edward-Maria Wingfield, her great-times-15 uncle.