50 Fun Facts About Roanoke Colony

Which single word did searchers find carved into a post at the abandoned Roanoke settlement in 1590?

Croatoan was the name of a nearby island and its friendly people, so the governor took the carving to mean the settlers had moved there.

Who, born on Roanoke Island in 1587, was the first child of English parents born in the New World?

Virginia Dare was nine days old when the supply ships sailed back to England, and no English visitor is known to have seen her again.

Which English courtier sponsored the Roanoke voyages yet never set foot in North America himself?

Sir Walter Raleigh was forbidden to leave the royal court, so he ran the venture from England and sent trusted associates across the Atlantic.

Which threat kept English ships in port in 1588, cutting Roanoke's settlers off from supplies?

The Spanish Armada was gathering to attack, so every able ship was held for the coming battle and no relief reached the island until 1590.

Which monarch granted the 1584 charter that let a favorite courtier launch the Roanoke voyages?

Elizabeth I attached a deadline to the charter: plant a colony within a few years or lose the right to colonise.

Roanoke Island, site of England's first attempt at an American colony, is part of which U.S. state?

North Carolina holds the island today; it is about 8 miles long and 2 miles wide, tucked between the mainland and the barrier islands.

Which settlement became England's first lasting American colony, two decades after Roanoke?

Jamestown was planted in 1607 and nearly went the same way: only 60 of its settlers lived through the Starving Time winter of 1609–10.

Which anthology TV series subtitled its sixth season Roanoke and filled it with ghostly colonists?

American Horror Story cast the governor's wife as the Butcher, leader of the undead colonists, though no record places her at the settlement.

Which famous sea captain carried the first Roanoke colonists home to England after a 1586 hurricane?

Sir Francis Drake was sailing home from raids on Santo Domingo, Cartagena and St. Augustine when he found the hungry colony and offered the men passage.

When Roanoke's governor returned in 1590, what had become of the houses the settlers had lived in?

Taken apart and removed, the houses left no bodies and no signs of a fight behind, which suggested the settlers had packed up and gone by choice.

Which artist governed the 1587 Roanoke colony, sailed home for supplies and never saw his settlers again?

John White agreed to go only reluctantly and expected a quick return, but war kept him away for three years.

Which symbol had Roanoke's settlers agreed to carve if they left the island in distress?

A cross was the agreed distress signal, and finding none in 1590 convinced the governor that the settlers had moved away peacefully.

Roanoke's sponsor lost his charter in 1603 when the new king had him arrested for which crime?

Treason charges tied him to the Main Plot against James I, and the arrest ended his legal claim to the land his settlers had vanished in.

Roanoke's sponsor said a 1595 voyage sought his settlers; which legendary city was the real goal?

El Dorado drew him to South America, and on the way home he sailed straight past the settlers' coast, later blaming the weather.

Which future sitcom star acted for several summers in The Lost Colony on Roanoke Island?

Andy Griffith performed there from 1947 to 1953 and liked the island's main town so much that he made it his permanent home.

Which novelist wrote a 1999 TV miniseries that borrows the word carved at abandoned Roanoke?

Stephen King's Storm of the Century gives the carved word a supernatural meaning, as did a 1975 Harlan Ellison short story named after it.

Which captain, famously linked with Pocahontas, sent search parties to look for Roanoke's settlers?

John Smith had heard of men in European clothes living inland, but neither of his search parties found any sign of them.

A 1998 study found that Roanoke's 1587 settlers landed during the region's worst what in 800 years?

Drought showed in the growth rings of ancient bald cypress trees, which marked 1587 as the worst growing season in the whole 800-year record.

A 1588 report from Roanoke praised which local plant, smoked through clay pipes, as a health cure?

Tobacco, known locally as uppowoc, was said to purge the body and open its pores; the author's own fatal cancer was later suspected to stem from smoking it.

Most of Roanoke's 1587 settlers were middle-class people from which English city?

London supplied most of the settlers, who may have hoped to become landed gentry; this time the party included women and children.

In a legend retold in a 1901 poem, Roanoke's first English baby is turned into which animal?

A white doe is the form she takes in Sallie Southall Cotten's book in verse, under a spell cast after she rejects a suitor.

Which Native leader sailed to England twice, was baptized at Roanoke in 1587 and was named its lord?

Manteo was the first Native American baptized into the Church of England, and the island's county seat now carries his name.

Roanoke's 1587 settlers were supposed to build their new city on which large bay farther north?

Chesapeake Bay was the planned site, but the fleet's pilot ordered the settlers put ashore at the island instead.

Which Roanoke expedition scientist learned the local language and later drew the Moon by telescope?

Thomas Harriot sketched the Moon through a telescope in 1609, about four months before Galileo did.

Which commander left fifteen men to hold Roanoke Island in 1586, a garrison never seen again?

Sir Richard Grenville reached the island with a relief fleet two weeks after it had been evacuated, so he left a token force to keep England's claim alive.

Which tribe, centered on Robeson County, was long said to descend from Roanoke's lost settlers?

The Lumbee won state recognition in 1885 after a legislator argued that their surnames and speech echoed those of the vanished settlers.

Roanoke's governor of 1587 recorded the region's people and wildlife as an artist in which medium?

Watercolor was an unusual choice when most painters favored oils; his surviving originals are now kept in the British Museum.

In regional Algonquian speech, the word roanoke named which objects, used as ornaments and money?

Shell beads, more literally things rubbed smooth by hand, stirred as much strife among local peoples as gold and silver did among Christians, John Smith wrote.

What did the British Museum find drawn under a paper patch on the Roanoke governor's hand-drawn map?

A fort symbol lay under the patch at the head of Albemarle Sound; digs at the spot, nicknamed Site X, later turned up Tudor pottery.

After Roanoke failed, its governor spent his last known years on estates in which country?

Ireland is where his last surviving letter was written in 1593; he had settled on land owned by the colony's sponsor.

What did the 1587 settlers find growing over the empty houses when they reached Roanoke Island?

Melons had overrun the houses left by the earlier colonists, whose defences had been pulled down; the only trace of the men posted there was a set of human bones.

A 1602 voyage sent to seek Roanoke's settlers spent its time gathering which valuable plant instead?

Sassafras had soared in price in England, and the ship's own itinerary shows the harvest came first; bad weather then ruled out any search.

English soldiers burned a village in 1585, just before settling Roanoke, over which missing item?

A silver cup went missing after a visit to Aquascogoc, and when the villagers could not produce it the English torched the town and its crops.

The island named in the message carved at Roanoke is known today by which name?

Hatteras took shape in 1672, when the inlet separating two older islands closed and the merged land got a new name.

Which trait did John Lawson note among islanders near Roanoke in 1701 as a sign of English ancestry?

Gray eyes ran in families who told him that several of their ancestors had been Europeans, which led him to suspect the settlers had joined them.

Which U.S. president went to Roanoke Island to watch The Lost Colony in the play's first summer?

Franklin Roosevelt attended on August 18, 1937, the 350th anniversary of the first English birth on the island; his New Deal agencies had helped fund the show.

Roanoke's governor finally stepped back onto the island in 1590 on which family occasion?

His granddaughter's birthday, her third, fell on August 18, 1590, the morning he came ashore to find fresh tracks in the sand but nobody there.

What kind of settlement was the first Roanoke colony of 1585, made up of about a hundred men?

A military outpost suited its sponsor's hope for a base against treasure fleets; no women or children were sent until two years later.

The phrase Lost Colony was first applied to Roanoke in 1837 in which kind of publication?

A historical romance by Eliza Lanesford Cushing, printed in a magazine in December 1837, carries the first known use of the label in its title.

A 1998 find was hailed as a gold ring from the Roanoke voyages until tests showed which metal?

Brass, not gold, was the verdict of X-ray tests in 2017, which also cast doubt on the ring's supposed link to a family on the early voyages.

Which Portuguese-born pilot refused to carry the 1587 settlers any farther than Roanoke Island?

Simon Fernandes was a former pirate once saved from the gallows, and later writers have suspected him of stranding the settlers on purpose.

Who served as governor of the first Roanoke colony, founded in 1585 and abandoned a year later?

Ralph Lane ended his governorship with a surprise attack that killed the Secotan chief Wingina, shortly before the colonists gave up and went home.

Anthropologist Lee Miller argued that which royal spymaster plotted to maroon Roanoke's settlers?

Sir Francis Walsingham, in her theory, wanted the colony's sponsor ruined; critics answer that he had put his own money into the voyages.

Which mishap aboard the 1590 search ship ended plans to follow the clue carved at Roanoke?

A lost anchor left the ship with a single cable in rough seas, so the crew would not risk the short sail to the island named in the message.

Which explorer passed Roanoke's coast in 1524 and mistook the sound behind it for the Pacific Ocean?

Giovanni da Verrazzano took the barrier islands for a thin isthmus and pitched the supposed shortcut to China to two kings, who both passed.

Which coin, issued for Roanoke's 350th anniversary, shows the colony's famous baby in her mother's arms?

Half dollar commemoratives were sold in 1937 to raise money for the island's anniversary celebrations and its new outdoor play.

Most carved stones claiming to tell Roanoke's fate were traced to a stonecutter in which state?

Georgia stonecutter Bill Eberhardt was tied to 47 of the 48 stones, and by 1941 scholars and the press had written them all off as hoaxes.

During the Civil War, the Union Army founded which kind of community on Roanoke Island in 1863?

A freedmen's colony gave people who had escaped slavery plots of land, paid work and schooling; by 1864 it had more than 2,200 residents.

Which Pulitzer-winning playwright wrote The Lost Colony, staged on Roanoke Island since the 1930s?

Paul Green called the show a symphonic drama, blending music, dance and dialogue; more than four million people have seen it.

Which federal agency has looked after the site of the Roanoke settlement since 1941?

National Park Service care began in 1941, and in 1950 the small earthwork there was rebuilt to restore its original size and shape.