The Man Who Found Jamestown

For nearly a century, the common wisdom was that the remains of what were the first permanent English town in America, Jamestown, had been washed away in the James River. But archaeologist Bill Kelso, with support from Jamestown Island's owner, the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, felt that this thesis was wrong. In the decade since work began, Kelso has not only unearthed thousands of artifacts and history from the time, but has found the home of the first American legislature, as well as other details of life in the 17th century town. In the process, the Jamestowne project has allowed for the reconstruction of the facts about a town that everyone thought had completely disappeared.

Kelso, who was archaelogist at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, has not only published the facts in a new book, but shares his information with visitors to the site.

"This fall, Kelso released a book about his discoveries: 'Jamestown, the Buried Truth.' The book's dust-cover bears a laudatory blurb from best-selling mystery novelist Patricia Cornwell offering perhaps her highest praise: Kelso's 'unearthing of Jamestown is truly the autopsy of America, an amazing dissection and reconstruction of 400-year-old artifacts and human remains that reveal how the first settlers spent their days, how they lived and died, and what they accomplished and suffered. Without chief archaeologist William Kelso's almost mystical vision that the original site still existed and his persistence against all odds to unearth it, we would have little to rely on but legend to tell us how modern America began.'"