More About River Erosion & Sinking Coastlines: Jamestown Colony Site

In a post on my blogsite, Mother Nature’s Tests, I wrote about the Drought During the Establishment of Early American Colonies. Well, those sites have a new problem caused by Mother Nature. They are in danger of erosion by the James River and flooding by the shift in sea level.

Many people would have us believe that climate change is causing ice caps to melt and sea level to rise. That may be partly true but what is really happening on the east coast region of the United States, and elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere in regions next to where the Pleistocene ice cap existed, is that the land is sinking, making it appear as if the sea is rising.

During the last ice age, thick accumulations of ice depressed the Earth’s crust causing it to sink into the mantle on which it is “floating” to maintain static equilibrium (isostasy). That resulted in the viscous mantle being forced away from the ice sheet resulting in lands along the perimeter of the glaciers to rise. When the ice sheets melted, the reverse processes occurred with the mantle material adjusting to its pre-glacial state: the lands under the glaciers rose (isostatic or post-glacial rebound) and the lands adjacent started to sink. This is shown on the diagram below.

The coastal region from Newfoundland in the north to North Carolina in the south and then west to the Pacific Ocean is currently still sinking as the mantle flows back toward Canada. The rate of downward vertical movement is up to mm per year.

One can see the results of rebound in the Canadian Artic region. It is clearly indicated in areas where beaches such as those along Bathurst Inlet (below) march toward the ocean, each getting younger.

Along the eastern seaboard of the United States the shoreline is advancing landward as the relative sea level rises. The sedimentary strata, for those interested in the geological conditions, shows a vertical sequence of marine sediments overlying shoreline deposits which in turn overlie nonmarine deposits. This is called a transgressive sequence.

A significant effect of the landward migration of the shoreline is observed in the destruction of infrastructure when major storms attack the coastal areas. Houses that were at one time well inland now find themselves nearer to the ocean and are destroyed by hurricanes that make landfall nearby. The aerial photo below shows the damage inflicted on a row of homes (outlined in red) at Nags Head, North Carolina, by a 2009 storm. The position of the shoreline back to 1849 are indicated. The shore will continue to move inland as the land continues to sink.

When the Jamestown colony was established in 1607, the region was in the middle of the worst drought in over 700 years. The conditions resulted in poor to non-existent crops over the next few years. By 1610 it had been abandoned.

Today the sea is relentlessly advancing on the area where the colony was located. The water of the Chesapeake Bay region has risen about 1 ½ feet over the past 100 years. Jamestown Island in less than three feet above the waters of the James River. Eventually, the site on Jamestown Island will be taken over by the river and the rising groundwater.

Seeing the Present, Reliving the Past

There is a tenet of geology called uniformitarianism, also known as the doctrine of uniformity: that the Earth’s geologic processes have acted in the same manner and with essentially the same intensity in the past as they do in the present and that such uniformity is sufficient to account for all geologic change.

To turn it to genealogy, I think that every generation has reacted in the same way as we do today. The love and pride and awe that we feel toward our children and grandchildren must have been the same feelings our ancestors had in their children and grandchildren. The guidance and help that they gave to their families was no different than we strive to give to our families.

As our grandchildren are reaching their adulthood, we are now seeing how their interests, talents and abilities are now showing in their academic achievements and their choices of careers. I think we are gaining quite different ideas of them as people. They are no longer the cuddly infants we were so happy to see take their first breath or the happy faces they had at birthday parties. We are realizing that they have dreams and aspirations as we did and are entering that time of life when they can take charge of their own lives.

We went past the times when our children moved into the world on their own with a sense of pride but also of worry. You never stop being concerned about the welfare of your children. Being one more step removed is a happier place as it is your children that can keep the fearfulness and let you just enjoy the pleasurable moments.

Our family photo albums are filled with pictures of us with our children, occasionally also including grandparents. Rarely, though do we have photos depicting more than three generations.

I know that my grandparents were proud of their children and their grandchildren. I heard those sentiments directly. I can’t help but think my 8^th great-grandfather, Nicholas Shepheard – he is as far back as I can get at present – might have had the same feelings about his children. Unfortunately, he did not live to see any of his grandchildren. In fact, neither did any of my 7^th or 6^th great-grandfathers (or their wives) in my Shepheard line live to see grandchildren.

The first of my Shepheard ancestors to know his grandchildren was Richard Shepheard (1726-1803), a 5^th great-grandfather. He and his wife, Mary Collins, had seven children in Cornwood, Devon, England. All of them married, six of them also in Cornwood, and had children. There were 53 grandchildren spread across the seven families, all but seven of them also born in Cornwood. Of those 28 were born before the death of Richard and he would have known them all.

The number of people in a family and, thus, the number of grandchildren or great-grandchildren one might have today is much smaller. People also marry a bit later in life than they did several hundred years ago. Still, we have a few families where several generations co-exist.

My Aunt Ethel, who is still with us, had four children, 11 grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren, three step-great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild. Her family may not be through yet giving her descendants while she is alive, either.

Aunt Ethel’s family in 1997 (along with my wife and daughter); not all of Ethel’s family could be there that day.

My oldest sister had four children, all of them married although only three had children of their own. She had nine grandchildren and three step-grandchildren, all of whom were born before she died. And she had three great-grandchildren while she was still with us.

Lynn’s family in 2003 – three generations present

My next oldest sister, Sharon, has two daughters, five grandchildren and now two great-granddaughters. We are not beating the Shepheard record books but four generations alive at the same time is still impressive.

Sharon with one of her daughters, two of her granddaughters and her two great-granddaughters in 2021

My youngest sister, Janice, understandably has a younger family. She is just getting to know who her grandchildren might become but is a long way away from the next generation.

Janice’s family in 2019 with all but one of her grandchildren

It’s a pattern that repeated itself in future generation as most of the Shepheard families stayed in the area until my 2^nd great-grandfather. Because of their connection of all the families to the parish, we might surmise that they had a closeness between them as well.

That might not have always been the case with every individual. If you look at your own families you may well find that people grow apart as well as move apart. But there is no reason to think that relationships within individual families or between cousins who lived in the same area were any different that similarly related families today. They may even have been closer than we are, as many probably attended schools together, married in the same church, and worked in similar or related occupations.

We cannot know for sure how our ancestors got along or whether they fully supported each other, but I would suggest that they had at least the same loving relationships as we see in families today. Not that there would not have been disagreements or the odd falling out. They were just as human as we are in that regard.

In most respects I think we can see what the past was like by looking at our families today. Call it the genealogical theory of uniformitarianism.

In our family we are still only at the grandchildren level. But as I started off saying here, we are seeing them rapidly reaching their adulthood and looking to take charge of their own lives. It’s fun to see that and rewarding as well to realize that we must have done something right for our children to succeed and for their children to be on the cusp on doing as well with their endeavors.

Wayne and Linda with their children (except for one who could not be there) and grandchildren

Old Musical Instruments

Did your ancestors play music? What kinds of instruments did they learn? Have you carried on these traditions?

I am a horn player, in particular a brass horn. I wrote about that in a blog post in April 2017 titled Music is in Our Blood. I took lessons from the age of about eight. For years in high school and after university graduation I play a valve trombone. I acquired it from my old music teacher and is a prized possession. Maybe one day I will get back to playing it.

But I have always been interested in antique instruments and how and when music was first played.

My daughter-in-law sent this link to me about a Glass Harmonica or Armonica (thank you Alice). I had not seen or heard one before. This YouTube video shows expert Dennis James demonstrating the instrument. Glass Armonica (spinning glass bowls... that break) - YouTube

They are amazing instruments that I learned go back hundreds of years. It was apparently invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761. Musical tones are produced by friction from fingers sliding along the edges of glass bowls of different sizes and they spin. The instrument type is called a friction idiophone.

You can get the same effect using glass goblets partially filled with water to tune them.

Special music was written for these instruments, including by the world’s great composers like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (in 1791) and Ludvig van Beethoven (in 1814).

Glass armonicas were produced for public use through the 19^th and 20^th centuries, although not in great quantities. They still are produced commercially by G. Finkbeiner Inc. of Waltham, MA, a maker of glass lab ware. GFI Scientific glass blowing products and services (finkenbeiner.com)

Here is a video of Dennis James in concert: Adagio for Glass Harmonica, K 356, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) - YouTube

Musical instruments, of course, go back thousands of years. Every society and culture have had their own traditional types and styles.

·         Trumpets were found in Tutankhamun’s crypt (about 3,340 years old).

·         Flutes, made from bones may have been the earliest instruments used by humans specifically used to make musical sounds. Some found in China may be 9,000 years old. Other found in Europe go back 35,000 years. One found in Germany probably dates to 40,000 years and another in Slovenia is estimated at over 43,000 years.

·         Lithophones are made of rocks of varying sizes that produce sound when struck. Some found in India and Vietnam are estimated at between 4,000 and 10,000 years old.

·         Bullroarers are made of thin slats of wood attached to a stout cord and may go back to Palaeolithic times (18,000 years). When swung in a large circle they emit a roaring sound (thus the name). They have been found on every continent.

·         Blowing through holes drilled into conchs (seashells) have been known to produce sounds for about 18,000 years.

·         Stringed instruments may also go back several thousand years although they are only really known from about the 9^th century.

Violins and their cousins date from the 16^th century. The most famous is probably the Stradivarius, made by Antonia Stradivari (1644-1737). Their pure and unique tone is thought to be due, largely, to the dense and very fine-grained wood they were made from. During the colder years of the Little Ice Age, trees grew much slower, resulting in narrow annual bands. These materials (spruce, willow and maple) were thus more uniform in structure and more dense.

The Archangel Gabriel, of course, had a horn. That story would take us back several thousand years. If you would like to see an interesting sculpture of him, check out this video. Chocolate Angel - Bing video