Henry Timberlake
Henry Timberlake (1730 or 1735 – September 30, 1765) was a colonial Anglo-American officer, journalist, and cartographer. He was born in Virginia and died in England. He is best known for his work as an emissary from the British colonies to the Overhill Cherokee during the 1761–1762 Timberlake Expedition.
Timberlake's account of his journeys to the Cherokee, published as his memoirs in 1765, became a primary source for later studies of their eighteenth-century culture. His detailed descriptions of Cherokee villages, townhouses, weapons, and tools have helped historians and anthropologists identify Cherokee structures and cultural objects uncovered at modern archaeological excavation sites throughout the southern Appalachian region. During the Tellico Archaeological Project, which included a series of salvage excavations conducted in the Little Tennessee River basin in the 1970s, archaeologists used Timberlake's Draught of the Cherokee Country to help locate important Overhill village sites.
Henry Timberlake (merchant adventurer)
Henry Timberlake (1570 – 1625) was a prosperous London ship captain and merchant adventurer who travelled to the Mediterranean in his ship the Trojan early in 1601. After calling at Algiers (where he took on board Muslim passengers bound for Mecca) and Tunis, he reached Alexandria. Here he and his assistant Waldred took his Levant Company stock and went overland and then up the Nile to Cairo. Finding it impossible to sell his goods in Cairo, he went with another Englishman, John Burrell, to visit Jerusalem. This was a very hazardous journey to make, given the perils of any travel by land in an area rife with highway robbery. After his return, he wrote a letter about his adventures to friends in London that was published in 1603 as A True and Strange Discourse on the travailes of two English Pilgrims. It was a popular account and went through numerous editions.
The popularity of the account was due to the vivid narration and the surprising friendship it presented between an English Protestant (Timberlake) and an unnamed Muslim from Fes, Morocco. This man had been one of the passengers Timberlake had taken on board in Algiers. Encountering Timberlake at Mamre, near Hebron, as part of a large Syrian caravan, the Moor promised to help the captain in a strange land. Timberlake - unwisely declaring himself a Protestant and an Englishman at Jaffa Gate - was arrested and accused of being a spy, the guards not knowing the country of England or Queen Elizabeth. He was released from prison only through the intercession of the Moor, who pleaded with the Ottoman Pasha for Timberlake's freedom. This Moor saved Timberlake's life on a second occasion when the two men hired racing camels at Gaza to return to Cairo, and were set upon by Bedouin, who wanted to take Timberlake to sell as a slave.
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