Archaeologist shares Popham Colony discovery insights

For most of the 300 years following the brief 1607 English settlement on the Kennebec River, there was no firm evidence of the Popham Colony's whereabouts.

Documentation related to the English explorers sent to colonize the New World offered a paper trail ensuring the Popham Colony's existence — notably, the other half of King James I's two-part empirical gesture in 1607 was the more widely remembered founders of the Jamestown Colony.

But right up until 1997, only theories remained about the often overlooked local sister settlement to Jamestown, Va.