Roanoke Island

Roanoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina, south of the town of Kitty Hawk, was first settled in 1584, when Raleigh dispatched Sir Richard Grenville to plant a colony there. In 1585 Drake visited the colony, found it in bad straits, and took all the settlers back to England. A few days after his departure, Grenville arrived with a relief ship, and, finding the settlement deserted, left a party of 15 men for recolonization. Among them was Thomas Hariot. In 1587 Raleigh sent another colony of 117 people under John White, who found that the previous 15 colonists had disappeared. White returned (1591) to the colonists he had left, but found that they too had vanished without any trace, except the single word “Croatan,” mysteriously carved on a tree. Among those who had disappeared was White's granddaughter, Virginia Dare (1587–?), the first white child of English parents born in America. Some evidence has been advanced for the traditional belief that the colonists lived and intermarried among the Croatan Indians on a nearby island, leaving half‐breed descendants who moved to the southern part of the state. Among the literature concerned with Roanoke is Paul Green's The Lost Colony (1937), a historical pageant produced annually on the island. The most famous event of its later history is the Battle of Roanoke Island (Feb. 8, 1862), in which Union troops and vessels under the command of Burnside captured this strategic Confederate position.