dr. kelso mentioned the important date when lord delaware turned back the colonists who were evacuating the failed colony at jamestown. and he -- lord delaware had actually landed at fort algernon on point comfort which is today's fort monroe, which has just become a national monument. my question is to what extent dr. kelso feels that any investigation by the national park service where ft. algernon and later ft. george was, would maybe possibly reveal some of the great findings that he's had at jamestown. >> well, i don't want to say anyone that it couldn't be found, you know, the actual site, because it's there somewhere. i got to study that. and the area where the fort was first built, algernon, it was sort of on a sandy spit. all this has been built up over the years. and exactly where at ft. lenore you can find it and then, of course, the construction that is going on at ft. monroe has just been astounding. to build the fort and all the buildings and to bring landfill in and so on. it wou

dr. kelso, this is a question for you. the martins 100 site that was discovered by ivernol hume, how much overlap is there between your project and the project that iver did? and did he have any interest, i'm sure he did, in coming to your site and seeing what was going on as well? >> yes, in fact, he was on an advisory board for the first year here. and he kind of pointed to the first place to dig, as a matter of fact, in the beginning. first place to dig, as a matter of fact, in the beginning and had quite an impact on us. now, how did it relate to martin's hundred? it dates to 1690 i believe. i worked on that too in the survey years ago with him. and so that existed down river. it's probably six, eight miles away and was a particular -- we call it a particular plantation. a new way that the virginia company was settling virginia. and jamestown was the seat of the government. so that would have been representatives from that area in the first representative assembly. there was always some kind of connection. then it went

. >> caller: hi, dr. kelso, i would like you to comment, if you can, about the trend of american high schools starting american history off at 1870 instead of where we should be the discovery or, rather, the colonization of america. they seem to be blowing off early colonization, the founding, and everything, all the rich history leading up to the reconstruction. we've been told by our chancellor that we have to start at 1870 starting two years from now and i'd like you to comment on that. >> wow. >> i think you should fight your chancellor. >> yes. >> get that -- there's so much that begins at jamestown. i just have to say, the representative assembly. what is a more important topic today than politics? and to go back and see, you know, that it just didn't all suddenly happen, you know, in the last 20 years i think it gives everyone a much better perspective of what's going on and affecting them in the present. and the past is prologue, they say, and i think that's very true. and you need to -- people -- i thi

dr. william kelso, and that's called the in the trenches tour. that's a little extra. and he takes you under the ropes. so you get an up close and personal look from his perspective. >> how could something so precious in american history and virginia history have been sort of lost for hundreds of years? >> that's an interesting question. i think it wasn't lost for probably the first 100. but nobody mentioned -- you know, they didn't talk about it. at least any documents that survived. we don't know if it's in there. and then there were travelers that came in here. it was a tremendous erosion on the west end of the island. and they said i can see remains of the fort being washed into the river. i read that about a week before i started. i went, oh, no. so then it became just the story agreed upon. and i think then there was also a confederate earthwork here. a large earthen mound was all over most of what we found, the fort site. not right here but very close. and so there was no clue in the landscape that this was anything but this civil war fort. on a site like this t