Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Pocahontas 1607-1907 Jamestown Exposition

Pocahontas

1607 - Jamestown Exposition  - 1907
Official Souvenir

No. 12 Pocahontas.
An idealized portrait made at the time she was in England.  Virginia cannot too much honor the memory of this lovely young woman, since to her more than once Virginia owed its existence.  And so long as history records deeds dared and hardships endured by the first settlers of Jamestown, so long will Pocahontas be remembered as the guardian angel of the colony.  Pocahontas, favorite daughter of the King, Powhatan, was born in 1587, christianized and baptized in 1612, and married in 1613.  She died in 1616, and was buried in Gravesend, England, in the chancel of St. George's Church, leaving one child, Thomas Rolfe, from whom many of the most distinguished families of Virginia have descended.  She was variously styled "the little snow feather of Powhata," the "Nonparella of Virginia," the "king's dearest daughter,", etc. etc., and bore three names, "Pocahontas" meaning bright stream between two hills "Amonate," and "Matoax," meaning "snow feather."  The last, her real name, was rarely uttered on account of the Indian superstition that knowledge of the real name gave their enemies power to cast spells upon them.

This postcard is unused.

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The Jamestown Exposition was one of the many world's fairs and expositions that were popular in the United States in the early part of the 20th century. Commemorating the 300th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown in the Virginia Colony, it was held from April 26 to December 1, 1907, at Sewell's Point on Hampton Roads, in Norfolk, Virginia. It celebrated the first permanent English settlement in the present United States. 

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