Free Republic

In 1587, John White and a group of approximately 115 English settlers landed on Roanoke Island off the coast of present-day North Carolina. The colony they sought to establish marked the second attempt to create a long-term presence in the New World under the direction of Sir Walter Raleigh, who instructed them to establish a city bearing his name in the vicinity of the Chesapeake Bay. However, much like the earlier failed effort under Governor Ralph Lane in 1585, White and his fellow colonists soon began to face challenges that included strained relations with the region’s Indigenous inhabitants. With hopes...

Virginia Dare was born on August 18, 1587 at Roanoke Island in colonial Virginia (present-day North Carolina). Virginia Dare was the first English-born child in the Americas. She was the daughter of Ananias Dare and Eleanor Dare and the granddaughter of Governor John White. Ananias Dare served on the twelve-member board of directors for the Roanoke Colony. Virginia’s mother Eleanor was the daughter of Governor John White. The name Virginia was chosen to signify that she was the first English child born in Virginia. She was baptized into the Church of England on August 24, 1587 and was the first...

Remote-sensing techniques have unearthed clues to the fate of settlers who mysteriously disappeared. It's a mystery that has intrigued Americans for centuries: What happened to the lost colonists of North Carolina's Roanoke Island? (See "America's Lost Colony.") The settlers, who arrived in 1587, disappeared in 1590, leaving behind only two clues: the words "Croatoan" carved into a fort's gatepost and "Cro" etched into a tree.Theories about the disappearance have ranged from an annihilating disease to a violent rampage by local Native American tribes. Previous digs have turned up some information and artifacts from the original colonists but very little about...

America's Lost Colony: Can New Dig Solve Mystery? Willie Drye for National Geographic News March 2, 2004 More than four centuries ago, English colonists hoped to carve out a new life—and substantial profits—in the wild and strange land of North America. One group of colonists gave up and returned to England. A second colony, in what is now North Carolina, vanished in the 1580s and became immortalized in history as the "Lost Colony." Today the prosperous little town of Manteo, North Carolina, surrounds the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, a national park protecting the place where the English tried to...