PHIPPSBURG – Local historian Jane Stevens, an expert on the establishment of the failed Popham Colony 400 years ago, is dead at the age of 87.

Stevens, who died March 22 in a Brunswick hospital, had been living for 25 years in Phippsburg in a home that lies within the boundary of the colony’s Fort St. George.

It was at her kitchen table overlooking Atkins Bay that Stevens and a handful of other volunteers founded a nonprofit group that has been raising money for a replica of the 30-ton pinnace Virginia, the first English ship built in North America. The colonists began work on the vessel soon after they arrived at Popham in 1607 and used it when they abandoned the colony and returned to England.

Stevens’ home was also the focal point for a 10-year archaeological dig that turned up artifacts from the Popham Colony.