Scholars to explore Old Point Comfort

Scholars to explore Old Point Comfort's early colonial significance

By Mark St. John Erickson 247-4783

October 11, 2009

HAMPTON - No place has a longer history of military service to America than Old Point Comfort.

Yet few people know that the pedigree of historic Fort Monroe — which became the nation's largest stone fort after construction began in 1819 — stretches back 400 years to Capt. John Smith and the early colonial era.

Erected in 1609, little-known Fort Algernourne — sometimes also spelled Algernoune — ranks as the first coastal fortification in English America, said Dorothy Rouse Bottom, coordinator of an upcoming conference that will explore the history and significance of the outpost.

It also played crucial roles as the colony's first center of maritime law and global trade — not to mention its international military and political prominence as England's most visible declaration of its claim to the land it called Virginia.

"It really was the start of so much that we are today. But it hasn't gotten the attention that it deserves," Bottom said. "So we are using this conference to try to get the academic world to focus on its importance as the beginning of Virginia's connections to the Atlantic rim."

Organized by the Port Hampton History Foundation, the Fort Monroe Federal Area Development Authority and numerous other sponsors, the conference begins Friday afternoon with a citizen naturalization ceremony to be held on Fort Monroe's parade grounds near the historic Algernourne Oak.

Also scheduled are a keynote address by internationally renowned Jamestown archaeologist William Kelso and a reception marking the opening of a new exhibit on Fort Algernourne at the Casemate Museum.

"We want this to be both celebratory and educational," said FADA deputy director Conover Hunt, noting Old Point Comfort's historic role as the colonial-era entry point for such immigrants as English America's first known Africans.

"Jamestown was inland. But Fort Algernourne looked out. This was where you came when you crossed the Atlantic and finally reached civilization."

Saturday's program will feature talks by two local archaeologists — Ivor Noël Hume and Nick Luccketti — whose work at Carter's Grove, Jamestown, Hampton and other early 17th-century sites has made them internationally recognized authorities on Virginia's founding.

Also scheduled is Colonial Williamsburg vice-president James Horn, author of "A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America," who will explore the social background of Fort Algernourne's builders, soldiers and civilian residents.

Three other nationally known colonial-period historians will speak, including New York University scholar Karen Ordahl Kupperman, a pioneering student of early America's seminal connections to the Atlantic rim and author of a 2007 book called "The Jamestown Project."

"We want to increase scholarly interest in doing research on Old Point Comfort. It's part of our mission," Hunt says. "And any time you can bring in seven of the top scholars in the field, that's going to jump start your work."