Several #stampoftheday offerings for the May 3, most notably a series of 3 stamps marking the 300th anniversary of the Jamestown colony, the first permanent English settlement in America, which was founded on May 13, 1607.

The 2-cent stamp is an image of the group coming ashore. The 1-cent stamp honors John Smith who led the group. While on an expedition in Virginia, he and his men were attacked by Indians. Smith was tried and sentenced to die, but was supposedly saved by Pocahontas, the daughter of the Indian Chief Powhatan. Pocahontas, is shown on the 5-cent stamp but it’s worth noting that plans for the series changed a few times, from a set of 10 stamps commemorating several key people in the founding of Jamestown to only two stamps, which would not have included Pocahontas. Historical societies petitioned for her inclusion in the Jamestown stamp set, and she was ultimately pictured on the 5-cent stamp (which, at the time, was the the international letter rate). While many of the events in Smith’s life, including the Pocahontas been debated, he is credited with making an accurate map of the northeastern coast from Penobscot, Maine, to Cape Cod. And it was Smith who called the area “New England.”

Bonus stamps of the day are two stamps issued as part of 1940s’ Famous Americans series (which I discussed in an earlier post): One is the 1-cent stamp honoring Stephen Collins Foster, who composed “Oh! Susanna!,” “The Camptown Races,” “Beautiful Dreamer,” and “My Old Kentucky Home,” now the state song of Kentucky). The other is 2-cent stamp honoring John Philip Sousa the director of the U.S. Marine Corps Band and the composer of several well-known marches including “Semper Fidelis” (or the “Marine’s Hymn”), “Stars and Stripes Forever,” and “The Washington Post March.”