Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 10.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

“ [496] in England. * * * He hath alsoe brought with him aboute fifty men uppon that adventure, besides some thirty other passengers. We have accordinge to their desire seated them at Newport's News, and we do conceive,” &c.

Now observe just here particularly that this letter takes it for granted that the Company in London were already perfectly aware that there was then a place in Virginia called Newport's News, and the Company must have known also its precise locality. But if the place had first received its name on 22d November, 1621 (only fifty-nine days before that January letter was written), the writers of it would, for obvious reasons, most assuredly have said in it: “We have, at their desire, seated them at the east point of the mouth of James river, which point has, within the last two months, been named Newport's News.”

Without some such explanatory remark, the Company in London would not have known whether Gookin's expedition had been seated above Jamestown, near Henrico, or below Jamestown, and above the mouth of the river, or on the southern shore of Hampton Roads, or on York river.

Besides this, it would be illogical and unbusiness-like to suppose that a man of Gookin's well-known intelligence, enterprise and energy, would not first visit and explore some considerable portions of the land, and doubtless select the locality where, or near where, he intended to plant his Company, before taking out from Ireland a Company of fifty emigrants, “well furnished with all sortes of pvisione, [provision,] as well as with cattle,” as is stated in that January-letter.

To do this properly, and then to go back to Ireland and get up an expedition of that kind, could not have been well performed in less time, at the very least, than one year.

He probably arrived in the Colony on his visit of exploration in the Summer of 1620, if not earlier, and as, when late in November, 1621, he arrived with his fifty settlers, and then desired, as the Colonial Authorities state, to be seated at Newport's News, where he had, without doubt, decided to settle in 1620, I think we may, with the utmost safety, assume that the Point was, in the Summer of that year, universally known by the name Newport's News.

Quite possibly it may be asked if the Point was known by that name