Lord De La Warr

In fourth grade I can remember going to the auditorium to watch a movie. This movie was about Jamestown and the settling of the East Coast colonies. As I sat and watched (as much as any fourth grader paid attention) I saw this man. This name is Thomas West. As soon as I saw him, I knew that we were related. I don't know if it was inspiration or childish vanity. I just knew that his last name was the same as my mother's maiden name and I felt like we were related.

I went home that day and told my mother about it. This man's formal name was Lord De La Warr. I remember my mother calling and talking to my Grandma West, although it could have had nothing to do with this movie or ancestor, but I imagined that she was calling to let Grandma West know that I had learned something for her about family history. The humorous thing about this particular time in my life was when we were living in Wilmington, Delaware.

I clipped a little for the caption of his pictures from Wikipedia below. After the Powhatans killed the colony's governor, Lord Ratcliffe, and attacked the colony in the first First Anglo-Powhatan War, Lord De La Warr headed the contingent of 150 men who landed in Jamestown, Virginia on June 10, 1610, just in time to persuade the original settlers not to give up and go home to England. As a veteran of English campaigns against the Irish, De La Warr employed "Irish tactics" against the Indians: troops raided villages, burned houses, torched cornfields, and stole provisions; these tactics, identical to those practiced by the Powhatan themselves, proved effective. He had been appointed governor-for-life (and captain-general) of Virginia, and he outfitted their three ships and recruited and equipped those men at his own expense. Leaving his deputy Sir Samuel Argall (circa 1580 – circa 1626) in charge, Lord De La Warr returned to England and published a book about Virginia, The Relation of the Right Honourable the Lord De-La-Warre, of the Colonie, Planted in Virginia, in 1611. He remained the nominal governor, and he had received complaints from the Virginia settlers about Argall's tyranny in governing them for him, so Lord De La Warr set sail for Virginia again in 1618, to investigate those charges. He died at sea,en route to Virginia, and it was thought for many years that he had been buried in the Azores or at sea.

Thomas West, 3rd and 12th Baron De La Warr (9 July 1577 – 7 June 1618) was the Englishman after whom the bay, the river, and, consequently, an American Indian people and U.S. state, all later called "Delaware", were named.