Man finds himself in pages of history

May 11, 2007

By Will Elliott/Frontiersman

WILL ELLIOTT/Frontiersman Tim Wark spends some time with his horse earlier this week. The Valley resident is descended from British colonists and Natives present at the Jamestown colony in Virginia 400 years ago.

WASILLA - In a valley known for its Colony days, a modern Alaska pioneer has traced his roots back to a far older colony, and the founding of America.

At his Church Road homestead, Tim Wark and wife Sue live on 60 acres with rabbits, poultry, horses and dogs. The Warks tend a garden, carry water from a pond, heat with firewood and light their home with kerosene lamps and solar power. Shops and sheds ring the house and yard, and dense forest edges the horse corrals, carrying back to the lower slopes of the Talkeetnas behind.

“When we came up in '76, I had $33 in my pocket,” Wark said. “We put in a lot of hard years to get where we are.”

Wark said he prefers the property to the city life he led before retirement. Soon after coming to Alaska, the couple moved into what Wark called a pretty city subdivision. But with the city growing up around them, when the chance came to start a new life in the woods off Church Road, they took it.

“I guess we are modern homesteaders,” Wark said.

These days, when Wark talks about settlers and pioneers, though, chances are he's looking father back in history. Four hundred years farther, to be exact, to the founding of the Jamestown colony in Virginia, and the noteworthy ancestors Wark discovered there.

Using Internet genealogies, public records and a lot of old-fashioned sleuthing, Wark has traced his ancestry back across the states to the first permanent English colony in the New World. That discovery was impressive in itself, Wark said, but he was even more surprised to learn that his forebears were not all settlers.

Wark's research revealed him to be a 14th generation descendent of Chief Eagle Plume, leader of one of the indigenous groups the Jamestown settlers encountered.

“Anybody can say they're related to some Indian chief,” Wark said. “If you sat down and started telling me out of the blue, I'd ask you how much you'd been drinking. But it's true.”

This week, the United States and Britain will celebrate the quadricentennial anniversary of the founding of Jamestown colony. Four hundred years ago Monday, English colonists inaugurated their conquest of America with the construction of a fort on Jamestown island, 13 years before the arrival of Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. In the years to follow, Jamestown would mark other firsts for what would become the United States, such as the first purchase of black slaves, the first Indian reservation, and the first democratic assembly.

Queen Elizabeth II of Britain visited the United States last week to celebrate the anniversary.

“Those early years in Jamestown, when three great civilizations came together for the first time - Western European, Native American and African - released a train of events which continues to have a profound social impact, not only in the United States but also in the United Kingdom and Europe,” she said in an address to Virginia's legislature, America's oldest representative body.

For Wark, though, the exciting thing about his Jamestown discoveries is not just that they reveal a personal connection to a turning point in Western history, but that they also mark an important event for Wark's family line.

For 35 years, Wark has researched his ancestry in his spare time. His interest in genealogy began early. As a boy, Wark lived in an Idaho town his great-grandfather had founded, and perceived early how family histories can parallel the greater histories of communities and civilizations.

“My grandfather was born in the first house in town,” he said. “I started looking into the family history and just kept with it.”

Wark has discovered attorneys general, war commanders, and descendants of George Washington in his family tree. Tracing his roots back to Jamestown and the genesis of America means that a major chapter in Wark's work is finished. It also means the next chapter is just beginning.

“I'm looking into England next,” Wark said.

Discovering himself descended from both the Jamestown settlers and Virginia's original inhabitants doesn't change how Wark feels about colonialism and the quadricentennial. Some Virginia Native groups have boycotted the anniversary celebration, pointing out that while British imperialism in North America led to the founding of the United States, it also led to the destruction of the continent's First Nations.

“I'm fortunate to come from both sides,” he said.

Wark wants to further research the histories of his Native ancestors. Unfortunately, old prejudices make it difficult to find accurate records. The Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924, part of an American eugenics program preventing intermarriage between ethnicities and providing for the forced sterilization of Indians, prisoners and the mentally retarded, reclassified all Virginia Indians as African American in public documents such as birth and marriage certificates. This makes it difficult for researchers to trace Native ancestry.

Without accurate genealogies, it also is difficult for tribes to gain federal recognition. Wark expressed frustration that even as the 400th anniversary of Jamestown approaches, the Virginia tribes on whose land the colonists settled are still not recognized by the federal government.

The Native woman Pocahontas is believed to have saved Jamestown governor John Smith from execution by her tribe and brokered peace between their peoples, and the ill-equipped Mayflower colonists at Plymouth Rock were saved from starvation by their friendly Native neighbors.

“That's one thing that bothers me,” Wark said. “The same tribes that helped the Pilgrims still aren't recognized by the government. If not for them, we wouldn't be here.”

On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of a bill to recognize five of the tribes that helped early colonists.

Ultimately, though, conflicts of the past have not diminished Wark's interest in Jamestown and its history.

“A lot of people don't have, or can't access, or just ignore their history,” Wark said, “And that's sad.”

Contact Will Elliott at

352-2250 or will.elliott@

frontiersman.com.