This year marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of the English settlement at Jamestown, so we’ll all be hearing a lot, no doubt, about Captain John Smith, a colony founder and the purported crush of the winsome Pocahontas.

    Smith was a man of many talents and adventures, with a knack for self promotion. Four centuries after his death, he remains one of history’s great “characters.”  One of Smith’s many accomplishments - little known outside of colonial history circles - was naming the region we live in “New England”. He did so following a 1614 voyage of exploration to the area, in a campaign to raise venture capital for a northern colonizing expedition.  “New England” was the linchpin in a multi-faceted effort by Smith to overturn the prevailing image of the region as cold, barren, and inhospitable - a reputation achieved in the wake of the failed and frozen colonial settlement attempted at Sagadahoc in 1607, the same year that Jamestown was settled..