Roanoke Colony
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50 free Roanoke Colony trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
In 1587 more than a hundred English men, women and children settled on Roanoke Island. Three years later a relief party found the houses gone, a single word cut into a post, and nobody to explain it. No one has proved what happened to them, which is why the story still sells books, fills an outdoor theater every summer and turns up in horror television. This quiz covers the whole story: the first landing of 1585, the second colony and its governor, the Native leaders who helped and fought the English, the war that delayed the rescue, and the searches that followed. It also covers what came later, from early digs and hoaxes to modern clues found in tree rings and on an old map. It suits history classes, where it prints as a worksheet, homeschool units on early America, and anyone who likes an unsolved mystery. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play it cold and learn the story as you go.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which single word did searchers find carved into a post at the abandoned Roanoke settlement in 1590?
Croatoan
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.
Q 02Who, born on Roanoke Island in 1587, was the first child of English parents born in the New World?
Virginia Dare
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.
Q 03Which English courtier sponsored the Roanoke voyages yet never set foot in North America himself?
Sir Walter Raleigh
Sir Walter Raleigh was forbidden to leave the royal court, so he ran the venture from England and sent trusted associates across the Atlantic.
Q 04Which threat kept English ships in port in 1588, cutting Roanoke's settlers off from supplies?
The Spanish Armada
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.
Q 05Which monarch granted the 1584 charter that let a favorite courtier launch the Roanoke voyages?
Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I attached a deadline to the charter: plant a colony within a few years or lose the right to colonise.
Q 06Roanoke Island, site of England's first attempt at an American colony, is part of which U.S. state?
North Carolina
North Carolina holds the island today; it is about 8 miles long and 2 miles wide, tucked between the mainland and the barrier islands.
Q 07Which settlement became England's first lasting American colony, two decades after Roanoke?
Jamestown
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.
Q 08Which anthology TV series subtitled its sixth season Roanoke and filled it with ghostly colonists?
American Horror Story
American Horror Story cast the governor's wife as the Butcher, leader of the undead colonists, though no record places her at the settlement.
Q 09Which famous sea captain carried the first Roanoke colonists home to England after a 1586 hurricane?
Sir Francis Drake
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.
Q 10When Roanoke's governor returned in 1590, what had become of the houses the settlers had lived in?
Taken apart and removed
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.
Q 11Which artist governed the 1587 Roanoke colony, sailed home for supplies and never saw his settlers again?
John White
John White agreed to go only reluctantly and expected a quick return, but war kept him away for three years.
Q 12Which symbol had Roanoke's settlers agreed to carve if they left the island in distress?
A cross
A cross was the agreed distress signal, and finding none in 1590 convinced the governor that the settlers had moved away peacefully.
Q 13Roanoke's sponsor lost his charter in 1603 when the new king had him arrested for which crime?
Treason
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.
Q 21In a legend retold in a 1901 poem, Roanoke's first English baby is turned into which animal?
A white doe
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.
Q 22Which Native leader sailed to England twice, was baptized at Roanoke in 1587 and was named its lord?
Manteo
Manteo was the first Native American baptized into the Church of England, and the island's county seat now carries his name.
Q 23Roanoke's 1587 settlers were supposed to build their new city on which large bay farther north?
Chesapeake Bay
Chesapeake Bay was the planned site, but the fleet's pilot ordered the settlers put ashore at the island instead.
Q 14Roanoke's sponsor said a 1595 voyage sought his settlers; which legendary city was the real goal?
El Dorado
El Dorado drew him to South America, and on the way home he sailed straight past the settlers' coast, later blaming the weather.
Q 15Which future sitcom star acted for several summers in The Lost Colony on Roanoke Island?
Andy Griffith
Andy Griffith performed there from 1947 to 1953 and liked the island's main town so much that he made it his permanent home.
Q 16Which novelist wrote a 1999 TV miniseries that borrows the word carved at abandoned Roanoke?
Stephen King
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.
Q 17Which captain, famously linked with Pocahontas, sent search parties to look for Roanoke's settlers?
John Smith
John Smith had heard of men in European clothes living inland, but neither of his search parties found any sign of them.
Q 18A 1998 study found that Roanoke's 1587 settlers landed during the region's worst what in 800 years?
Drought
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.
Q 19A 1588 report from Roanoke praised which local plant, smoked through clay pipes, as a health cure?
Tobacco
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.
Q 20Most of Roanoke's 1587 settlers were middle-class people from which English city?
London
London supplied most of the settlers, who may have hoped to become landed gentry; this time the party included women and children.
Q 24Which Roanoke expedition scientist learned the local language and later drew the Moon by telescope?
Thomas Harriot
Thomas Harriot sketched the Moon through a telescope in 1609, about four months before Galileo did.
Q 25Which commander left fifteen men to hold Roanoke Island in 1586, a garrison never seen again?
Sir Richard Grenville
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.
Q 26Which tribe, centered on Robeson County, was long said to descend from Roanoke's lost settlers?
The Lumbee
The Lumbee won state recognition in 1885 after a legislator argued that their surnames and speech echoed those of the vanished settlers.
Q 27Roanoke's governor of 1587 recorded the region's people and wildlife as an artist in which medium?
Watercolor
Watercolor was an unusual choice when most painters favored oils; his surviving originals are now kept in the British Museum.
Q 28In regional Algonquian speech, the word roanoke named which objects, used as ornaments and money?
Shell beads
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.
Q 29What did the British Museum find drawn under a paper patch on the Roanoke governor's hand-drawn map?
A fort
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.
Q 30After Roanoke failed, its governor spent his last known years on estates in which country?
Ireland
Ireland is where his last surviving letter was written in 1593; he had settled on land owned by the colony's sponsor.