SMITH, JOHN

(baptized Jan. 6, 1580, Willoughby, Lincolnshire, Eng.d. June 1631, London), English explorer and principal founder of the first permanent English settlement in North America at Jamestown, Va. Smith played an equally important role as a cartographer and a prolific writer who vividly depicted the natural abundance of the New World, whetting the colonizing appetite of prospective English settlers. Smith grew up on his family's farm and was apprenticed in his teens to a wealthy merchant. At the age of 20 his adventuresome spirit found an outlet in the war against the Turks being fought in Hungary. Captured, he escaped to Russia and returned to England in 1604. He then attached himself to a group preparing to establish an English colony in North America. When a royal charter was granted to the Virginia Company of London, Smith and about 100 others set sail on Dec. 20, 1606. On April 26, 1607, the company arrived at Chesapeake Bay, and on May 14 it disembarked at what was to become Jamestown. Smith soon became the leader of the fledgling settlement, focusing particularly on the practical means of survival in the wilderness. He directed the building of houses, traded for corn (maize) with the Indians, and began a series of river voyages that enabled him to draw a remarkably accurate map of Virginia. While exploring the Chickahominy River in December 1607, he was ambushed by Indians of the Powhatan Confederacy and taken to their great chief, Wahunsonacock, who was known to the settlers as Powhatan. About to be put to death, he was saved (according to his own account) when the chief's 13-year-old daughter, Pocahontas, threw herself between him and his executioners. Smith became president of the Jamestown colony on Sept. 10, 1608. He expanded the fort to form a five-sided enclosure, conducted military training, and continued to secure corn from the Indians when others often failed. Under Smith's direction, small quantities of tar, pitch, and soap ash were made, a well was dug, 20 houses were built, fishing was done regularly, crops were planted, and outlying forts were built. When Smith was injured from a fire in his powder bag (September 1609), he was forced to return to England. Still eager to explore and settle in America, Smith made contact with the Virginia Company of Plymouth and sailed in 1614 to the area he named New England, carefully mapping the coast from Penobscot Bay to Cape Cod. On another exploratory voyage the following year, he was captured by pirates and returned penniless to England after escaping three months later. In 1617 he made one final colonizing attempt, but his vessels were windbound for three months, and he never set sail. Smith wrote and talked about New England for the rest of his life, but he never saw North America again. His writings include A Description of New England (1625), a counterpart to his Map of Virginia with a Description of the Country, . . . (1612); The generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624); and The True Travels, Adventures and Observations of Captaine John Smith in Europe, Asia, Africa and America (1630). born Aug. 9, 1965, Del City, Okla., U.S. American freestyle wrestler who won six consecutive world championships (198792) and won two Olympic gold medals in the featherweight class. Smith, whose three brothers were all accomplished wrestlers, competed at Oklahoma State University, winning the National Collegiate Athletic Association title in 1987 and 1988. He won five U.S. national titles (1986, 198891), as well as championships at the Goodwill Games (1986, 1990), the Pan-American Games (1987, 1991), and the World Cup (1991). At the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, Smithdespite a broken nose and abscessed eardefeated Soviet Stepan Sarkisyan to win the gold. At the 1992 Games in Barcelona, Smith overcame challenges in early matches to win a second gold, defeating the Iranian Asgari Mohammadian. Smith received the James E. Sullivan Memorial Award as the outstanding American amateur athlete of 1990. He later coached wrestling at Oklahoma State. Additional reading Although some of Smith's accounts have been received skeptically, his material was largely corroborated in Bradford Smith, Captain John Smith, His Life & Legend (1953), based on contemporary sources. A more recent biography is Everett H. Emerson, Captain John Smith (1971).