Your news story (Page 1, Oct. 8) regarding jimson weed mentioned the Puritans who settled the Jamestown Colony in Virginia. The story said that the Puritans tried the weed, with the implication that they were seduced by its addicting powers. This was, no doubt, intended to be an indictment of puritanical hypocrisy.
The only problem is that the statement is not true. Now, I am sure the residents of Jamestown did fool with jimson weed. Life was hard and they needed all the diversions they could find. But none of the residents of Jamestown were Puritans.
The charter for Jamestown was held by the London Company and the colony was established strictly for economic purposes. If there were any churches at Jamestown, they would have been Anglican churches, not Puritan. The Plymouth Company held the charter for establishing Puritan colonies in Massachusetts Bay, several-hundred miles up the Atlantic coast.
