Home of the First Settler

Thomas Savage, a lad of thirteen, arrived at Jamestown on 2 Jan. 1608 with Capt. Christopher Newport on the ship John and Francis. John Smith later wrote, "The next day Newport came a shore…. A boy named Thomas Savage (whom Newport called son) was then given unto Powhatan." Savage resided several years with the Indians, growing up in association with Pocahontas. He became proficient in the Indian languages and later served as an interpreter. Savage settled on the Eastern Shore by 1619. There Debedeavon, the "Laughing King," gave him a large tract of land, perhaps 9,000 acres for increasing trade with the Indians. Notes and corrections: Savage may not have been the first English settler on the Eastern Shore. The quotation came from Anas Todkill and Thomas Studley, though Smith reprinted their work. The portion of the quote after the ellipse should read "a boy named Thomas Savage was then given unto Powhatan who Newport called his son." Savage did not live on the Eastern Shore in 1619, and his association with the region likely began in 1621. Esmy Shichans gave Savage land and was known as the Laughing King. Histories conflated the local indigenous leader with Debedeavon for much of the 20th century.