HEROES: First Child

Though only the first nine days of her life are known to history, Virginia Dare was last week given her 343rd birthday party. At Manteo*; (pop. 394) on Roanoke Island in the sound waters of North Carolina was dedicated a memorial gateway composed of two large pillars, one to Virginia Dare, the other to Manteo, friendly Indian. Miss Mabel Evans accepted the gateway from the U. S. in behalf of the Roanoke Colony Memorial Association. Archibald Henderson, head of the University of North Carolina’s mathematics department, spoke of “America’s debt of lasting gratitude to the great Raleigh, promulgator of the English colonization movement.” On May 8, 1587 Sir Walter Raleigh dispatched from England in three vessels 150 colonists, including 25 women and children, under the command of Capt. John White. With him Capt. White took his daughter Eleanor and her husband Ananias Dare. The ships made land at Cape Hatteras on July 22, cruised up what is now Pamlico Sound to the “iland called Roanoac” where the colonists were dumped ashore. Two vessels immediately spread sail for England. A fort was built, homes staked out. On Aug. 18 Eleanor Dare bore a daughter who was named Virginia after the Raleigh colony. She was the first English child born in America. Nine days later (Aug. 27) her grandfather, Capt. White, sailed back to England in the third ship to fetch more men and supplies. When he returned four years later he found the Roanoke fort in ruins, the colonists all gone. Carved on a tree was the word “Croatoan,” the name of a friendly Indian tribe living down the coast. But searchers were never able to find Virginia Dare and the other settlers. Twenty years later colonists at Jamestown heard stories that all but a few had been massacred by Powhatan, that the rest had been absorbed into an Indian tribe. To this day half-breed inhabitants (called Scuffletonians or Croatans) in Robeson County, N. C. claim, without historical evidence, to be descendants of Virginia Dare and the other “lost colonists” of Roanoke.

*Twelve miles south of historic Kitty Hawk, site of the Wright brothers’ first airplane flight (1903).