Archaeologist Bill Kelso and his team were digging this summer in a previously unexplored section of the fort at Jamestown, Va., the country's oldest permanent English colony, when they uncovered a series of deep holes. They believe the holes once anchored heavy, timber columns supporting the fort's first church, known to have been built in 1608 and the place where Pocahontas got married in 1614.

The church's exact location had bedeviled Jamestown scholars for years. Records say it was built roughly a year after Britain's King James sent a crew of around 100 men, including Captain John Smith, to establish an outpost 40 miles upriver from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.

The men were supposed to be primarily seeking a profit, not Christian converts. The only previous evidence of a church consisted of remnants of a later church, built in 1617 near the eastern wall of the fort. But this summer's find proves Capt. Smith's men planted their first church in the center of the compound, the first and largest structure anyone would notice after passing through the fort's entrance....