Part of an ongoing series on North Carolina’s observance of America’s 250th.

As the United States recognizes the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776, Dare County is celebrating its unique role in American history Saturday with “Liberty, Legacy, and Lift Off in the Land of Beginnings.”

The Dare A250 Faire is a two-event celebration, with the first scheduled for 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday in downtown Manteo. The Star Spangled Spectacular is scheduled for that afternoon from 3:30-7 p.m. at Roanoke Island Festival Park.

“Rooted in a place known as the ‘Land of Beginnings,’ this milestone event honors Dare County’s unique role in America’s story — from the earliest English settlement attempts to the birthplace of powered flight. With a spirit of innovation, discovery and freedom woven throughout, the Dare A250 Faire promises a vibrant and meaningful tribute to 250 years of American history,” according to the county.

Both celebrations are no charge for the public, though the evening program requires those who wish to attend to reserve a spot through the online portal. As of publication, the tickets were all claimed. Those who wish to attend can continue to check the online portal to see if a seat has come available due to a cancelation.

Dare County is the “Land of Beginnings” because it is the location of England’s first attempt to establish a colony in 1587, now known as the “Lost Colony” because more than 100 settlers vanished from the site between arriving and 1590, and the birthplace of Virginia Dare. Dare was the first English child born in the Americas in 1587. The county is also the site of the Wright Brothers’ flight in 1903, the first controlled and powered heavier-than-air flight.

Dorothy Hester, co-chair of the Dare County A250 Committee, explained to Coastal Review that visitors can expect a full day of family-friendly fun in a festive, patriotic atmosphere.

“Downtown Manteo will come alive with a street festival featuring live music, street performers, storytelling, arts and crafts vendors, nonprofit exhibits, and several food vendors,” Hester said. “The celebration continues into the evening at Roanoke Island Festival Park with the Star-Spangled Spectacular, which has officially sold out–an exciting reflection of the strong community interest and support for this event.”

Hester said that the committee has been meeting for more than a year “to thoughtfully plan how our community would mark this historic milestone.”

The Dare A250 Faire emerged as the cornerstone event of that effort, which she said was designed to bring residents and visitors together in a meaningful and memorable way.

“What began as an idea has grown into a true community-wide collaboration among Dare County, local partners, local organizations, businesses, volunteers and sponsors,” Hester said.

Related: Dare County begins America’s 250th commemoration

The Dare A250 Faire was originally scheduled at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, but was relocated to Manteo and Roanoke Island Festival Park “to allow all aspects of the planning committee’s vision to be included in the celebration,” organizers said in a press release in late February. The park “highlights the area’s rich history as the ‘Birthplace of America,’ with the historic Elizabeth II serving as a meaningful backdrop to the festivities.”

The Elizabeth II is a representational 16th-century English merchant ship from the 1585 Roanoke voyage berthed at the park, where a settlement site illustrates an English military colony from the era.

Hester urged those interested in attending the celebrations to visit DareA250.org/faire for full event details, as well as information about other A250 initiatives, including the interactive map, and additional events taking place throughout the year.

The Dare County committee organizes events under the umbrella of the state’s official celebration, America 250 NC, an initiative of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

The celebration committee launched earlier this year a passport program and an interactive online map to share the county’s history.

Musical performances

Entertainment begins at 11:10 a.m. Saturday at the All-American Stage in downtown Manteo with Cypress Society Singers & Dancers, representing the Lumbee and Kahtehnuaka Tuscarora Eastern Woodland Native nations.

An opening ceremony follows at 11:45 a.m., then attendees can listen to live music throughout the afternoon, including a jazz performance by Connected, Ruth Wyand to perform roots Americana and the Daniel Jordan Band to play Southern country-rock.

The Dare County All-American Award Ceremony starts at 3 p.m. The ceremony will recognize participants in a variety of categories, including patriotic attire, patriotic pet, most decorated business and boat displays, as well as Dare A250 Scholarship Awards. Participants should report behind the stage at 2:30 p.m. for judging.

Performances scheduled for the Magnolia Freedom Stage feature Ascension Music Academy, Shiloh and Enrique with the Mustang Music Outreach Program, and the OBX Jazzmen.

Street entertainment

Roving patriotic performers will wander throughout downtown Manteo from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., including stilt walkers, a bubble artist, a juggler and a hula hooper.

Historical interpreters from The Lost Colony, Roanoke Island Festival Park and Chicamacomico Lifesaving Station and more than 60 local artisans and community organizations will be on-site. Several local businesses and restaurants will offer special events and discounts. A list of visitors is available on the event website.

Student musicians from First Flight Middle School and Manteo Middle School will perform on Sir Walter Raleigh Street at noon.

Storytelling stage

The historic Pioneer Theater, 109 Budleigh St., Manteo, is hosting a storytelling series highlighting the people, traditions and defining moments of the Outer Banks.

Moderated by Miles Daniels, the program organizers are billing as “a marquee element of the Dare A250 Faire,” will feature the following four distinguished speakers sharing personal insights and historical perspectives:

• 11:30 a.m. Clark Twiddy: “Vision, Risk, and Reinvention: How the Outer Banks Became a Destination.”
• 12:30 p.m. Robin Daniels Holt: “The Families Who Stayed: Generational Memory and Cultural Continuity.”
• 1:30 p.m. Nancy Gray: “Water, Work, and Survival: The Working Coast of the Outer Banks.”
• 2:30 p.m. Ken Mann: “Stories of the Outer Banks: Voices, Characters, and Coastal Memory.”

Archival film and video presentations will be shown between speakers.

For young artists

Children can add their own touch from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. to a large patriotic painting. Local painter Brad Price is to enhance the artwork before going on permanent display at the Outer Banks Community Foundation. 

Families can also enjoy coloring a rendering of the first governor of an English colony in America, called a “Flat John White,” and festive tablecloths. Placemats that can be colored will be available at participating businesses throughout Manteo. 

Star-Spangled Spectacular Finale

The Star-Spangled Spectacular performances at Roanoke Island Festival Park will begin at 3:30 p.m. with Just Playing Dixieland, followed by an opening ceremony at 4:15 p.m. and an Earth, Wind & Fire tribute by the Ray Howard Band at 4:30 p.m.

The day will conclude with the Dare A250 Grand Finale at 6:15 p.m. with a multimedia patriotic production with a community choir and tribute.

Volunteers needed

With the committee expecting thousands to visit downtown Manteo and Roanoke Island Festival Park for the two events Saturday, there’s a need for volunteers to help oversee parking areas, serve as a friendly point of contact for guests, and to ensure everything runs smoothly in each designated lot, according to the county.

“No special experience is required, just a welcoming attitude and a willingness to help,” and volunteering is a way to “be part of a once-in-a-generation community celebration,” organizers said.

Volunteers can register online for any of the multiple shifts and activities or contact contact Patty O’Sullivan at patricia.o’sullivan@darenc.gov.

Dare County, Manteo, Outer Banks Visitors Bureau, Southern Bank, The Don & Catharine Bryan Cultural Series and Roanoke Island Festival Park are sponsors of the celebration.

Archaeologists and historians are going to share their evidence of mixed Elizabethan-Algonquian material culture at sites on Hatteras Island during the March installment of the “Science on the Sound” series.

“The Smoking Gun?: New Radiocarbon Dates and Hunting Practices Linking Hatteras Island to Fort Raleigh in the Sixteenth Century” is scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday, March 26, at the Coastal Studies Institute on the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus.

The public is encouraged to attend the program being offered at no charge or view the presentation via YouTube. “Science on the Sound” is a monthly, in-person lecture series highlighting coastal topics.

The nonprofit Croatoan Archaeological Society and the University of Bristol have uncovered evidence that “strongly suggests Hatteras was the location where at least some of the ‘lost’ colonists re-settled when they went missing between 1587 and 1590,” organizers said.

“These objects have been cautiously interpreted, however, since European objects may have been traded long after those who originally brought them to the Carolina coast had passed away,” they continued. “Here we summarize past findings and describe the clearest evidence to date that the 1587 colonists were present on Hatteras Island: biogeochemical, radiocarbon, osteological, and metalwork evidence that demonstrate the presence of late sixteenth century firearms and hunting practices on Croatoan land.”

Beth Scaffidi, Mark Horton and Scott Dawson are presenting.

Scaffidi is an assistant professor of Anthropology and Heritage Studies, director of the Skeletal & Environmental Isotope Laboratory, or SEIL, and co-director of various archaeological field research programs in Peru. She uses bioarchaeological isotopes, palaeopathology and spatial analysis to investigate how interactions between ritual, landscapes and resources co-constitute human and environmental health.

Horton is the pro vice-chancellor of Research and Enterprise and professor of historical archeology at the Royal Agricultural University of England. He specializes in landscape archeology and archaeological science methods as applied to maritime and Colonial contexts around the globe and emphasizes public outreach and conservation of material culture.

Dawson is an area historian, director of the Croatoan Archaeological Society, and owner of the Lost Colony Museum in Buxton. He has been co-directing archaeological excavation of Cape Hatteras sites with Horton and society volunteers for over a decade.

MANTEO — Shoaling in a Roanoke Sound channel just outside Shallowbag Bay has once again prevented the state attraction Elizabeth II from leaving its moorings at Roanoke Island Festival Park for maintenance.

And once again, Dare County has agreed to help manage another dredging project for the state so the ship can motor to the Wanchese state shipyard for its overdue haul-out.

“We’re still essentially in the planning stages,” Dare County Waterways Commission administrator Barton Grover said in a recent interview. “We’re not exactly sure what path we’re going to take moving forward.”

The 43-year-old wooden-hulled vessel, built to represent a 16th-century English sailing ship that participated in Sir Walter Raleigh’s 1584-1587 Roanoke Voyages, was last hauled out for dry-dock maintenance in 2021, after sitting in brackish water for four years.

Grover said that the proposed project would be addressing the same clogged area near where the channel intersects at Roanoke Sound and Shallowbag Bay that had earlier blocked the ship from moving.

In November 2020, the county had approved a contract and a grant application to conduct maintenance dredging in the channel to allow larger vessels, including the Elizabeth II, to access Manteo harbor. The vessel, which has an 8-foot draft, was able to safely leave its dock in Dough’s Creek about a week earlier than completion of the project in late February 2021, according to the county website.

Although the Roanoke Channel is officially a federally authorized channel, Grover explained that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers pipeline dredge does not do work north of Wanchese. Ultimately, a bucket-and-barge method was used for the 90-day project, which increased the depth of about 2.2 miles of channel from as little as 1 to 5 feet to 9 feet. Another 290 feet in a connector channel to the ship’s berth was also dredged. Costs for the $1.9 million project were appropriated by the North Carolina General Assembly, with an additional $170,000 provided by the state’s Shallow Draft Navigation Channel Dredging and Aquatic Weed Fund and the town of Manteo.

Some of the factors that come into play with the proposed dredge project, Grover said, include higher costs to dispose of the dredged material, as well as the lack of an obvious disposal area.

In the earlier projects, the material — scooped from the channel, piled onto a barge and then transported to land — was hauled off in a truck to the be placed on top of the county’s Manns Harbor landfill. But the increased expense may have made that option less attractive, he said. Other possibilities could include placement in a permitted area of water, or beneficial re-use along a shoreline or other area, he said.

Another consideration under review is whether the local hopper dredge Miss Katie would be capable of doing the necessary work instead of again using a bucket-and-barge method, Grover said. But the choice of an appropriate disposal site could also come into play in determining costs for that dredge to reach the site.

Typically planning and permitting for a similar dredge project takes at least “six-plus” months, he said. Also, the state has yet to secure the funding. Ideally, he said, a project would be ready to go during the upcoming winter of 2026-2027.

By then, the 69-foot-long ship will have been sitting in the brackish water alongside its dock in Dough’s Creek for about six years.

Michele Walker, assistant communications director at the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, said in an email responding to questions from Coastal Review that the last condition report was done by surveyor Paul C. Haley with Capt. G. W. Full & Associates Marine Surveyors in 2016, when numerous issues, including signs of rot and deterioration of the exterior and interior, were detailed.

When the vessel was hauled out in 2021, she added, Haley did not travel to the Outer Banks because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but he verified with the firm’s staff on site that the earlier repair recommendations had been completed.

“In addition, the ship is inspected annually by the U.S. Coast Guard,” Walker wrote. “This provides us approval to operate as an attraction vessel, which allows us to have passengers on board while moored.”

Walker added that the ship is maintained above the waterline throughout the year, with more extensive maintenance done while Roanoke Island Festival Park, a state museum that memorializes regional English precolonial and Native American history, and the adjacent Elizabeth II State Historic Site are closed January through mid-March.

Haley’s 2021 report, while emphasizing his familiarity with the vessel from doing the surveys in 2004, 2011 and 2016, also lauds the park for always following through on the surveyors’ recommendations.

Notably, when compromised planking documented in the earlier survey had been replaced, he said, the frames exposed during the work were observed to be in good condition. Also, all the critical repairs and plank replacements had been completed, he said.

“The vessel has a good maintenance program by the park and they haul out the vessel on a regular basis for repainting of the bottom and doing any maintenance work that requires the vessel being out of water,” he wrote.

Except for a few months in the winter, the Elizabeth II welcomes visitors aboard to experience a sailor’s view of ship life and duties, guided by interpreters in period costumes who regale them with stories.

As a representative vessel, the Elizabeth II was built based on knowledge of the tools, materials and basic designs used in Elizabethan-era shipbuilding, but there are no original design sketches of the actual merchant ships that sailed during the late 1500s to Roanoke Island from England. Still, the three-masted, square-rigged ship with dashing blue-and-white markings contrasting with its wooden hull — even while rarely moving from its dock across from the Manteo waterfront — has reliably served its mission as an ambassador for the state, the Outer Banks and Manteo’s heritage as the site of the first English colony in America.

But since the flashy ship’s 1984 launch during the town’s 400th anniversary celebration of the Roanoke Voyages, which culminated in the ill-fated “Lost Colony” that was never seen again after its governor left for supplies in 1587, once-routine day trips to visit coastal ports or join in community festivals fell by the wayside due to lack of funds, scheduling difficulties and other challenges. And gradually, even annual haul-outs started being delayed for multiple years, despite that prolonged time in the water for wooden hulls can lead to damage from shipworms and rot.

The ship’s current dockside stranding was not anticipated during the last review five years ago.

“It is the plan of this office to be present and to conduct a full survey at the haul out at the beginning of 2022,” Haley wrote in the report. “With this in mind, it is our opinion that the vessel is suitable for her present use.”

On Dec. 18, the nonprofit Friends of Elizabeth II indicated no intent to give up the ship, so to speak, posting a notice seeking to hire a new captain for the vessel. Applications were due Jan. 29. In addition to overseeing the maintenance of the ship and leading the crew and interpreters, the job’s responsibilities include training staff and volunteers in rigging, sailmaking and marine woodworking.

The required duties also illustrate that the Elizabeth II isn’t just a pretty ship decorating a small historic North Carolina town’s harbor. The captain must not only understand Coast Guard regulations associated with “moving watercraft” through waterways, the captain must be capable of “sailing the Elizabeth II as needed.”

The Outer Banks are known for vast, uncrowded beaches, towering lighthouses, and unique cottages, and while these features beckon millions of visitors, some Outer Banks communities are not as well-known.

Rather than towns, most communities here are unincorporated villages, each home to residential homes and unobtrusive tourist accommodations, a few businesses, and a post office. Hatteras may be one of the best known of these villages.

While it is much smaller than incorporated coastal towns like Beaufort or Edenton, Hatteras is home to centuries of history and a number of notable sites, particularly on the southwest tip of its namesake island.

Hatteras Island was populated in the 16th century by the Croatoan Native Americans. They hunted, fished and ate oysters, depositing the shells in massive middens that are one of the few remaining visible indicators of where they lived. They were one of the many Native peoples that the Roanoke Colony interacted with in the 1580s.

The Croatans allied with the Europeans and counted among their numbers Manteo, the first Native American christened by the English in the New World. They factor into the story of the Lost Colony, since Hatteras Island was one of the many areas where the colonists were rumored to have gone after leaving Roanoke. Due to the shifting sands of Hatteras and the lack of definitive records, the fate of the colonists remains a mystery to this day.

Europeans returned to the area in the middle of the 17th century. Historian David Stick notes in his book, “The Outer Banks of North Carolina,” that the first documented English settlers on Hatteras Banks, Patrick Mackuen and William Reed, likely arrived there by 1711. People on Hatteras lived by fishing, farming, and piloting boats. They also took cargo from the many shipwrecks that regularly washed ashore from the Graveyard of the Atlantic.

Despite a growing number of families living on Hatteras, the area was slow to develop as a proper town. Isolated and accessible only by water, Hatteras did not abut one of the major inlets that was open during the colonial period. As a result, it was ignored by the same legislative assemblies that facilitated town construction at nearby Portsmouth and Ocracoke islands. Although numerous people resided on the southwestern portion of the island by the late 18th century, colonial maps often showed just the empty banks and the cape. The area known today as Hatteras Village finally gained its first post office in 1858.

Hatteras remained mostly isolated through the 18th and early 19th centuries. But while it did not have obvious economic importance, it did have military significance to any group wanting to approach or protect North Carolina by water. This led to the construction of Confederate forts Hatteras and Clark on Hatteras Inlet in 1861.

The forts were surrendered to Union in the first combined action of the Army and Navy during the Civil War. This success, the first by Union Gen. Ambrose Burnside, helped the Union gain control of the North Carolina coast and allowed for future invasions of Roanoke Island and the eastern part of the state.

The post-Civil War period saw the emergence of coastal life-saving stations. These buildings housed crews organized to rescue victims from shipwrecks using the latest technology, such as the Lyle gun used to shoot rescue lines.

Three U.S. Life-saving Service stations lined Hatteras Island by 1905, from Durants near the village to Cape Hatteras at the eastern end of the island. Along with greater lifesaving capabilities came a new effort at political organization. Dare County, one of the last counties formed in North Carolina, was created in 1870 from what had been parts of Currituck, Hyde and Tyrrell counties to help administer the far-flung islands of the Outer Banks. Its southern boundary was the western tip of Hatteras Island.

The modern village of Hatteras began to develop in the early 20th century. Locals built a string of houses such as the Ellsworth and Lovie Ballance House, circa 1915, one of the oldest structures in the village and a survivor of numerous hurricanes over the past century, according to state historic preservation records. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.

Growth came mainly from tourism. Greater rail and automobile transportation helped more and more visitors reach the beach from such areas as Raleigh, Charlotte and northern cities. More tourists meant an increase in ferry traffic and the growth of roads that made those ferries accessible, such as the highway that became U.S. 264 connecting Belhaven, Swan Quarter and U.S. Highway 64 near Manns Harbor.

In the 1930s, the conservation movement also brought nature tourism to the island through the authorization of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore in 1937, one of the first seashore-protection programs in the country. Conservation protected a unique ecosystem that continues to bring thousands of birding, fishing, and native plant enthusiasts each year. 

With these dynamics in place, Hatteras became a popular vacation destination. Thousands flocked to the coast every summer and engaged in new recreational activities such as surfing and kiteboarding. Demand led to new transportation outlets. The state began to pave roads on Hatteras Island in the 1950s, but it was the completion of the Herbert S. Bonner Bridge in 1963 that provided a direct land connection between Hatteras and the rest of the country.

Soon, the island became home to shops, restaurants and hotels, as well as the familiar fishing shacks and isolated tourist cottages. A 1990 New York Times travel article that praised Hatteras Island’s beach as “one of the loveliest on the East Coast,” also singled out the village for offering “the color of a commercial fishing hub.”

Hatteras has become one of the most popular tourist destinations on the East Coast, growth that has fundamentally altered life in the sleepy fishing village. About 500 residents now live in Hatteras Village fulltime. There are about a dozen restaurants, several seafood markets, general stores, visitor centers, and the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. A number of these businesses operate year-round and cater to both locals and the summer influx of tourists.

Despite these changes, residents largely are thankful that Hatteras retains much of its village charm.

Patricia Peele, a lifelong resident of the island, told Coastal Review that as recently as 15 years ago, it was like “they used to roll the streets up at 9 p.m. on Labor Day.”

Now, there are always tourists, filling a plethora of mini-hotels across the island. But Peele said that despite the changes, she knows that Hatteras is still secluded compared to the rest of the Outer Banks. It is “not built up like a lot of other places are,” and with the protections provided by the National Park Service, growth will likely remain limited.

Still, Hatteras Village faces many of the same challenges as the rest of the Outer Banks, including those related to rising sea levels, limited resources and strong coastal storms.

The Basnight Bridge, which replaced the Bonner Bridge when the 2.8-mile, $254 million project was completed in 2019, keeps Hatteras Island connected to the mainland, and no matter the challenges, people of Hatteras will likely continue to adapt to life on their ocean sandbar — just as they always have.

One of North Carolina’s most famous mysteries, the “Lost Colony,” is among the more than 30 tales, tragedies and legends from the barrier islands to get lost in — virtually — while using Dare County’s new interactive map, “OBX Folklore: Your gateway to Outer Banks Legends, Ghosts, and Folklore.”

The map allows users to “delve deeper into the many eerie and mysterious occurrences that have taken place over the years and have ultimately become legends that are passed down from generation to generation,” the county said in an announcement earlier this week.

Dare County GIS Specialist Kristen Stilson and county librarians Meaghan Leenaarts Beasley and Theresa Cozart spent the last year collaborating on the website that celebrates Geographic Information Systems Day 2024 on Nov. 20.

“The Outer Banks has a long history full of lore to choose from, from Native American tales to modern day frights. This made for a really diverse set of stories to educate and entertain both the readers and us,” Stilson said in the announcement.

Stilson explained to Coastal Review Tuesday that the county had been creating special maps to celebrate GIS Day since 2019. Past projects include the 2019 Look Back Map, the 2020 Shipwreck Map, the 2021 Trivia Map, the 2022 OBX Days Gone By Map, and the 2023 Pop Culture Map, all available on the Dare County website.

The idea for this year’s map on Outer Banks folklore came about through a conversation they had about a year ago.

Cozart said that when she was hired last November, she and Stilson began talking about the 2023 Pop Culture Map, which had just been released for GIS Day, and of the interesting places in Dare County. 

“Kristen was telling me about all the fun maps she had created and how I should check them out to help me get a feel for the Outer Banks. Kristen’s excitement about these maps was infectious,” Cozart explained.

Coming from Wilmington, Cozart continued, “I started talking about all the ‘haunted’ locations down there and fun ghost tours. Kristen and Meaghan then started telling me about folklore associated with the Outer Banks and I said that sounded like a fun map that everyone would enjoy.”

Stilson said that since she tries to make a fun map for each GIS Day, she drew inspiration from Cozart’s idea and they decided to collaborate on the folklore map.

“It took us a few months to make, with all of us working on it in our spare time and adding a few things here and there,” Stilson said.

The map is best viewed on a desktop for all the effects but will work on all devices. “You can read the stories in any order you like thanks to the dropdown menu but I ordered the stories from North to South,” Stilson added.

The earliest stories date back to the “Lost Colony of Roanoke” and the “Legend of the White Doe,” both late 1500s, Beasley told Coastal Review.

The story of the “Lost Colony” begins in the summer of 1587, when men, women and children attempt to establish Roanoke Colony, the first permanent English outpost in North America. About 115 English settlers arrived at Roanoke Island, welcoming a month later Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World. Later that year, Roanoke Colony’s governor, John White, returned to England for supplies, leaving the colonists behind.

White’s return to North America was delayed by three years because of war with Spain. When he made his way back in 1590, he found the colonists had disappeared and the only clues were “CRO” and “CROATOAN” carved on trees. “Though there are many theories about their fate, the colonists were never found and what happened to them remains a mystery to this day.”

One version of the “Legend of the White Doe” suggests that Virginia Dare was raised among the Croatoan. As she matured, she became a great beauty, drawing the unwanted attention of a young chieftain who, angry at her rejection, tricks her into drinking a potion that turns her into a white doe.

Stilson said in the press release that they chose stories for the map based on ones “we knew growing up or ones that we hadn’t heard that spoke to us.”

Stilson explained in a follow-up interview Tuesday that one of the legends from her youth is about the “goat man,” the most recent tale featured on the map.

The goat man legend began circulating in the 1970s, gaining momentum in the decades that followed. The story goes that a man lived in a yellow shack in Nags Head Woods with just his goats to keep him company. One night, teens vandalized his house while he was away, killing all of his goats. It is rumored that he kidnaps or chases teenagers, the map states.

Stilson continued that when she was growing up, she had always heard the story of the goat man. “Friends and I looked for him in Nags Head Woods.”

One legend Stilson had not heard before is the story of the magic lute, she said, “but for some reason I was really drawn to that one and wanted to write it up.”

The magic lute is a tale from the 1600s about two sisters in Currituck vying for the same man’s affection, and the musician who used strands of the chosen sister’s hair, who was drowned by the rejected sister, to replace the broken strings of his lute.

Cozart moved to Dare County in November 2023 from Wilmington. She said in an interview that she “really enjoyed learning about the local legends” since she’s new to the Outer Banks and “I love a good ghost story.”

She said she is partial to their very own poltergeist in the Kill Devil Hills Library. The branch where she is based opened 34 years ago.  

“I usually get here first thing in the morning and I’ve heard stuff. Usually it’s in the back areas — meeting room and kitchen. I’ve raced back there to see what was making noise and there was nothing there. It’s happened several times,” Cozart said. “Others here say they’ve had books found on the floor that were on the shelves when we closed up the night before. I haven’t experienced that yet, but I’m keeping on the poltergeist’s good side.”

Cozart said her favorite story that she came across is about the Whalehead Club. Built in 1922, the 21,000-square-foot house in Corolla was a winter home until 1933 when the original owners made their last visit. The couple died in 1936. Uneasy feelings are reported at the building and it has been investigated by paranormal researchers.

“So creepy that the original owners just abandoned that huge house,” Cozart added.

For Beasley, the Queen of the Sounds is “a perfect Halloween tale with witches, explosions and ghosts.”

The Queen of the Sounds was a riverboat commissioned after the Civil War that toured through the Currituck and Albemarle sounds. The owner supposedly fell in love with a witch, and their relationship ended when the riverboat exploded on a Sunday, after a ceremony to summon the devil.

Beasley said in a press release that it was a “natural fit” for library staff to work with Stilson on the interactive map.

“Not only do we have physical collections of celebrated folklorists, most notably Charles Harry Whedbee, but we also have little-known Outer Banks authors and locally written pamphlets of eerie tales and legends that often go overlooked,” Beasley continued. “While some of these items reside in our reference collections due to their age or rarity and can only be viewed in our libraries, many are available for checkout by the public.” 

Beasley told Coastal Review that they used about 20 resources, including books and digitized newspapers from the Dare County Library holdings, as well as outside sources such as a photo from the archives of the Outer Banks History Center to build the map. 

“It was a pleasant surprise to find a diversity of sources for these legends in our collections – we’re not a large place geographically but we’ve had some legendary events here,” Beasley said.

In each of the county’s three branches, the resources are on display along with a 24-inch by 36-inch framed poster of the OBX Folklore Map. Patrons can enter the raffle at the branches located in Hatteras, Kill Devil Hills and Manteo between Thursday and Nov. 19. A winner will be selected from each branch Nov. 20, on GIS day.

ROANOKE ISLAND — While immigration is a hot election-year topic, it’s perhaps notable that speculation continues unabated about the fate of America’s first English immigrants who vanished into the mists of history 437 years ago, with yet another twist in the saga of the real people who became known as the “Lost Colony.”

Could at least a group from the colony that briefly settled on the shores of today’s Roanoke Island, on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, have moved, not only 50 miles south or west, as many believe, but simply to the other side of the sound?

According to records, when the colony’s governor John White returned three years after he left for supplies in 1587, the only evidence of the colony’s whereabouts was the word “Croatoan” – once the home of the Croatan Indians on Hatteras Island – carved on a fort palisade, and the letters “CRO” carved in an oak tree. That has been widely interpreted as a signal from the colonists that they moved to Croatoan – that is, Hatteras.

Alternately, there were signs that could have meant they went 50 miles into the mainland, as White said was discussed with the colonists before he departed.

But in a recent research report, “Croatan: The Untold Story,” veteran archaeologist Eric Klingelhofer, vice president of research with the nonprofit First Colony Foundation, says that a review of historic maps indicates that the Croatan tribe who had befriended the Roanoke colonists did not actually live on Hatteras Island; they lived on land across from Roanoke Island at what is now mainland Dare County. So if at least some colonists went to live with the Croatan Indians, they may have had to merely cross the sound.

“Cartographic study therefore suggests that a broad territory was attributed in the historical period to the remnant Croatoans, and that the likely location for their core habitation and Dasemunkepeuc itself lay northwest of Roanoke in the vicinity of modern Mashoes,” Klingelhofer asserts in the report, published on the foundation’s website.

Dasemunkepeuc, an Algonquian village, was located at present-day Mann’s Harbor, near Mashoes. The Croatan and Roanoke were branches of Algonquian Indians.

What his research shows is that the Croatan had left Buxton on Hatteras Island at some point after the arrival of the English in the mid-1580s, and relocated to the mainland where they could grow crops, Klingelhofer, a retired professor of history at Mercer University, told Coastal Review in a recent interview.

“It looks like, from these maps, which were most of the official governmental maps, that the Mashoes area and south of that Manns Harbor area was the land of the Croatoans,” he said, using an alternate name for the Croatan. “The Roanokes, who probably had more problems with disease because they had greater contacts, they may have been there for a while. But then they moved south, maybe because of better resources, or there were more friendly natives that they had relations with, or something like that. And then they don’t know what happened to them beyond the fact that they were no longer in this area.”

Long catnip for charlatans, fabulists and conspiracy dabblers, the disappearance of Sir Walter Raleigh’s colony on Roanoke Island – England’s first attempted settlement in the New World – has been dubbed the “nation’s oldest mystery” for a reason: Only bits of evidence have been found that point to what may have happened to most of the 117 men, women and children who had sailed to Roanoke Island more than four centuries ago.

Perhaps because of its ephemeral intrigue, the Lost Colony, a precursor to Jamestown in 1607, the first permanent English settlement, has been the focus of numerous archaeological surveys and digs – both professional and amateur – for decades. It has sparked a beloved long-running local summer theater production. It has spawned magical fables of a White Doe and of large stones carved with cryptic writing, both linked to Virginia Dare, a colonist’s baby born in 1587. And it has inspired many books, some more authoritative than others, including Klingelhofer’s, “Excavating The Lost Colony Mystery, The Map, the Search the Discovery,” published in 2023 in association with the foundation, which features a collection he edited of research by historians, archaeologists and others.

The foundation has worked closely with pre-colonial experts who have conducted research at Williamsburg and Jamestown in Virginia, as well as at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on Roanoke Island, which has yielded artifacts but no hints of the colonists’ settlement. In a recent archaeological exploration, the foundation had found evidence of first contact between the English explorers and Native Americans at Fort Raleigh, and also has unearthed artifacts that indicate some Lost Colonists may have lived for a time at riverfront sites in Bertie County, dubbed Site X and Site Y.

Despite the growing volume of information that has been collected over the years, and numerous Indian and English artifacts that have been unearthed, to date no pre-colonial smoking gun has been found that fills in the big blanks about the elusive Lost Colony.

“We don’t know where they started out from,” Charles Ewen, distinguished professor of anthropology at East Carolina University’s Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences, told Coastal Review. “We don’t know where they went. We have sort of the general vicinity and it’s become this wonderful mystery that people are trying to figure out.”

Ewen, more cohort than rival of Klingelhofer, has also recently written a book, with co-author E. Thomson Shields Jr.: “Becoming the Lost Colony, The History, Lore and Popular Culture of the Roanoke Mystery,” published in 2024.

Whatever detritus the colonists left behind may have been lost to erosion along the shores of the Croatan Sound or to decay in the swamps. But there are also unanswered questions about 16^th century people’s choice of living conditions, and Ewen agreed that the mainland could have provided better shelter and more food.

“In fact, I think most archeologists think that the Outer Banks were just seasonally occupied,” Ewen said. “So when they said they were prepared to move 50 miles into the main, I think the Outer Banks during the winter would not have been a terribly hospitable place.”

Deciphering the clues of the Lost Colony, like a 400-year-old board game, is why the mystery of their fate continues to fascinate.

Klingelhofer, a founding member of the First Colony Foundation, a volunteer group of professional archaeologists established in 2003, has explained that their overall mission is finding evidence to fill in the gaps about the 1584-1587 Roanoke Voyages, which ultimately led to early American English colonization. Still, it’s always the Lost Colony story from the 1587 Roanoke Voyage that most ignites the public imagination and spurs continued investigations and research, such as Klingelhofer’s work.

Both Klingelhofer and the foundation, and Ewen and East Carolina University, have a close association with the late archaeologist David Phelps, professor emeritus of anthropology at ECU who died in 2009 at age 79.

An expert on prehistoric and Algonquian archaeology, Phelps was renowned for his work studying Tuscarora Indian sites at Neoheroka in Greene County and Jordan’s Landing in Bertie County. When Hurricane Emily in 1993 exposed vast amounts of pottery sherds and shell midden in Buxton, it was Phelps’ numerous excavations that determined the site had been the Croatan capital that stretched a half-mile from Cape Creek to Buxton village.

Phelps had dated what he called “the Hatteras site” from 1650 to 1720.

Manteo, who had befriended the colonists, had lived in Croatan, and his mother was the tribe’s leader. For that reason, some historians hypothesized that the colonists may have fled there, although most say the Croatan had inadequate food and space to accommodate more than a small number.

An archaeologist who had worked alongside Phelps as a young man, Clay Swindell, is now working with the foundation, Klingelhofer said.

Even though centuries separate our contemporary population from historic colonial explorers, human nature was likely as prone to boasting and deception then as it is now.

Hence, Klingelhofer said it’s worth noting that everyone is presuming what White, the governor who reported the “CRO” letters at the Lost Colony’s fort, actually knew and didn’t know.

“John White wasn’t always trustworthy,” he said. “He assumes a lot of things. He claims a lot of things that are not necessarily fully the truth. A lot of it is his interpretation of particular people and their motives behind the people that he has gotten angry with.”

In other words, White’s account may not be the only version of Lost Colony history to consider.

“But any good historian knows better than to trust a person who’s even an eyewitness to things,” Klingelhofer said. “You need corroboration. And sadly, there isn’t any except for in these maps.”

As Ewen sees the Lost Colony, all of the foundation’s hypotheses could be legitimate, but as he and Klingelhofer agree, it’s all pieces of a puzzle yet to be solved.

“I think it’s very difficult to say with any degree of certainty, until we find some more physical evidence, that we have an idea of what happened,” he said. “We need to find Christian burials from the 16th century, and I think that will really start putting us in the vicinity.”

English burials, he added, would be east-west, with the head at the west end. The clothing items would date to the 16th century, and skeletal analysis would indicate they were European. But archaeologists and historians are by no means ready to throw in the towel in pursuit of the Lost Colony.

“Honestly, I think it’s going to be an accidental discovery,” Ewen said. “Somebody will come across something while they’re developing … (and) stumble upon some of this stuff. And the archeologists will get involved, and then it will be, ‘Oh, OK!’”

MANTEO — A two-day program held here last week brought together researchers who study the Indigenous people of the late 16th century who lived in what is now northeastern North Carolina.

Held on the College of The Albemarle Dare County Campus, the two-day program, “In the Spirit of Wingina … and beyond,” was sponsored by the nonprofit Secotan Alliance and focused on what happened when the English first encountered the Native peoples of the Albemarle region.

The event’s keynote speaker, Dr. Michael Oberg, distinguished professor of history at the University of New York at Geneseo, is the author of “The Head in Edward Nugent’s Hand,” which details the events leading to the death of King or Chief Wingina of the Roanoac.

Wingina was among those to first greet English captains Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe. In their account, the explorers reported to Queen Elizabeth I that “The king is called Wingina, the countrey Wingandacoa.”

The captains’ account makes clear that Wingina was initially friendly to the English.

“Hee made all signes of joy and welcome, striking on his head and his breast and afterwardes on ours to shew wee were all one, smiling and making shewe the best he could of al love, and familiaritie,” the explorers wrote.

By the time of the second English expedition, however, under the military command of Ralph Lane, European disease had begun to ravage the Native populations. Wingina was apparently becoming convinced that there was something spiritually out of balance in the lives of his people.

Oberg noted during his talk that the Roanoke were at the time part of the Algonkin, or Algonquin, people and that they operated, “on a belief that bad things happen for reasons often tied to the failure or the ineffectiveness of rituals or the malevolence of spiritually powerful figures.”

The Roanoac attempted prayer with the English, with Wingina and his people going to great lengths to change the horror of the diseases that were ravaging their villages.

“He (Wingina) and some of his people took the Bible, the most physical manifestation in English ritual … and rubbed the book on his body,” Oberg said.

Nothing worked and so the Native people withdrew from Roanoke Island, but before leaving, Wingina told Lane there was a gathering of tribes at the headwaters of the Albemarle Sound that were planning on attacking and wiping out the English.

Lane headed to the village of Chowanoac, captured the chief, who under duress said that Wingina was the actual plotter.

Lane then returned to Wingina’s village where he requested a meeting over what he claimed was the theft of a silver cup.

On June 15, 1586, Lane and Wingina met.

“After some time talking, Lane yells out the password, ‘Christ our victor,” and they opened fire,” Oberg said of the incident.

Wounded, Wingina ran into the forest with English soldiers in pursuit. Sometime later “… Edward Nugent emerges from the woods with Wingina’s head.”

With that history of deception and violence on the part of the English, the failure of the Roanoke Colony and the 115 to 120 colonists who arrived in 1587 may have seemed preordained.

There were, however, other factors.

Studies of tree rings show that the colonists arrived during a time of extreme drought, when it was all the area Tribal nations could do to feed themselves.

There was also a diplomatic outreach from the governor of the colony, John White, following the killing of colonist George Howe at the hands of a tribal leader, Wanchese.

The attempted diplomacy ended disastrously, with White, who had failed to get what he wanted from the local tribe, attacking a village, where “he kills the wrong people,” Oberg noted.

“And, like all little men and cowards, blame the victims,” Oberg continued. “‘If only they told us they were there, we wouldn’t have killed them.’”

Oberg, who had attended opening night of the outdoor drama, “The Lost Colony,” on Roanoke Island on the night before his lecture, talked about how the drama interpreted historic events.

“If you went to the play, you’ve seen one version of (what happened). I’m certain I don’t know what happened,” he said. “Whatever happened, Indigenous people decided their fate.”

For the Native people, it was the beginning of a period of change that was traumatic and devastating.

Oberg emphasized that there is a tendency to think of the story of the founding of the United States as a seminal event, but to the Native people it may have simply been a continuation of what they had already been experiencing.

“Was it just one chapter in a prolonged era of warfare that ran from the middle of the 18th century through the first quarter of the 19th century, the replacement of one tyrant imperialist, George III, with another, George the First, Washington?” Oberg asked.

Symposium attendees also heard from Dr. Charles Ewen, East Carolina University Harriet College Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, who explained how few contemporaneous accounts exist and that those accounts are from a European perspective.

He pointed in particular to what the Native tribes described as a village that would be the modern equivalent of a “crossroad where there’s a 7-11 and a gas station.”

North Carolina Central University Dean of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities Dr. Arwin Smallwood was reared in Bertie County and is a member of the North Carolina Tuscarora people. He focused on the history of the Tuscarora Nation and the relationship between North Carolina and New York stat,e where many of the Nation moved after the 1711-15 Tuscarora War.

Dr. Gabrielle Tayac shared a description of Powhatan’s Mantle, a decorative garment that has been in England since the middle of the 17th century. Now housed at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, it could be worn, although it is so large and heavy it was doubtful that it would have been.

Consisting of four hides sewn together with sinew and thousands of shells embedded in the fabric, the work that went into the piece is extraordinary, as is its artistry. As an example of the skill and creativity of the people of the coastal area, there may be nothing else quite like it.

Also included during the two-day event were the sounds of Native American song, dance and storytelling performed by solo performer IOSDN.

The First Colony Foundation has published a book tracing what the nonprofit group has learned since forming in April 2003 about the fate of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Lost Colony.

Edited by the foundation’s Vice President of Research, Dr. Eric Klingelhofer, “Excavating the Lost Colony Mystery: The Map, the Search, the Discovery” is a compilation of essays and writings intended to bring the significance of the “La Virginea Pars” map and Site X into perspective. Klingelhofer is professor emeritus of history at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.

Published by the foundation and the University of North Carolina Press, the book that includes contributions by historians, archaeologists and other experts is an exploration of science, research and history.

By design, “Excavating the Lost Colony Mystery” is intended to be read by everyone, Klingelhofer told Coastal Review.

“(The book) is not a collection of symposium papers for an audience of scholars,” he wrote in an email. “I chose those papers that most fit the story of what we did, why, and how, and the context of that story. I told each author about this, and that I would be editing all for the general public to follow. No footnotes to be used.”

For Sir Walter Raleigh, the New World represented economic opportunity and an opportunity for scientific discovery. Thomas Harriot, a mathematician and scientist, and artist John White were part of the scientific exploration of the new lands, and the pair created the Pars map, more properly Virginea Pars map, in 1585 during the second expedition to the North Carolina coast.

In 2012, a request by the foundation to the British Museum where the map is housed was made to examine two paper patches on the map. What researchers found was the symbol for a fort under one of the patches — what has now become known as Site X.

Located at the confluence of Salmon Creek and Chowan River in Bertie County, the Site X finding has led to a series of discoveries and new information about the more than 100 English men, women and children who disappeared from Roanoke Island sometime between 1587 and 1590, when the long overdue relief ship returned to find the site abandoned.

The only clue to their disappearance was the word “CROATOAN” carved into a tree.

In “Excavating the Lost Colony Mystery,” Klingelhofer takes the reader on a well-organized journey of discovery, beginning with Phillip Evans’ contribution, “The search for Raleigh’s Colony,” which gives an overview of known factual information, the false starts, pseudohistory and hucksters who have laid claim to certain knowledge of the fate of the Lost Colony.

The reader hears from the British Museum’s Curator of British Drawings and Watercolours Kim Sloan about when she realized how important what was hiding beneath that patch of paper could be, and foundation member, archaeologist Nicholas Lucketti in “The Prima Facie Case for Site X” chapter that details why there is good reason to think some, but not all, of the Colonists settled on the bluffs at Salmon Creek.

What adds to the story is the very human reaction even the most dedicated scientists and researchers share in the book.

Here is Sloan on realizing the significance of what she found beneath that patch of paper.

“I could see that the marking resembled what I thought to be the symbol for a fort. I said to Alice (Alice Rugheimer, a paper conservator at the British Museum), ‘I think we just discovered the intended site for the ‘Cittie of Ralegh’, the colony that John White was sent to Virginia to found.’ And then I think I swore,” she wrote.

In Lucketti’s introduction for “The Prima Facie Case for Site X,” he highlights the sensationalism of the press.

“Bold headlines and excited press reports in 2016 told the public about the First Colony Foundation’s amazing discoveries at Site X — equal to finding the Ark of the Covenant or Jimmy Hoffa’s body,” he wrote.

Like the Ark of the Covenant or Hoffa, the union activist who disappeared in the mid-1970s, what ultimately happened to the Lost Colony may remain unsolved, something Klingelhofer acknowledged, while also noting that the research may yet hold the answer.

“And yet the story of Raleigh’s colony continued to stir the public’s imagination. National Geographic Magazine had recently published (2013) One Hundred Greatest Mysteries, listing the Lost Colony among them. Site X and Mettaquem (the Native American village adjacent to Site X) would prove to hold important new clues toward a resolution of that mystery,” Klingelhofer wrote in his chapter “Science in the Search,” introducing the science behind the hunt for the fate of the Colonists of Roanoke Island.

The book does not provide definitive answers, and the writers go to some length to make it clear nothing conclusive has been discovered.

“We do not have a smoking gun — no artifacts undeniably of sixteenth-century European origin,” Luccketti wrote. “No features from English buildings, no burials. We did not find a fort. Nor did we claim that we had found the site of the main group’s relocation …”

What researchers did find suggests that the colonists left in small groups and coexisted with Native residents, especially the Chowanoke Nation who occupied much of what is now Gates, Hertford, Bertie, and Chowan counties. Site X is well within the boundaries of what would have been the Chowanoke Nation.

Asked in an email if it is reasonable to conclude that the Roanoke settlement broke up into small group, Klingelhofer answered, “Yes, that is exactly what we think, though do remember that the book only covers Site X. We are not ones for puerile speculation.”

“Excavating the Lost Colony Mystery” is a detailed chronology of how the conclusion that the Colonists left in small groups was reached and the discoveries along the way.

For example, the reproductions of White’s paintings are depicted as dull, almost two-tone images. But originally, the paintings were not dull at all, Sloan writes while describing the research British Museum Department of Conservation and Scientific Research Janet Ayers uncovered.

The point Janet Ayers made in her article was about John White’s use of gold and silver in his work. “Fish, for example when they are alive are iridescent, and in order to capture this, John White used these precious pigments,” Sloan wrote.

The historical research that the writers recount brings the men who explored the Albemarle region of what they had designated Virginia into focus.

Capt. Ralph Lane served as governor for the first attempt at a colony in 1586. Soldiers under his command beheaded King Wingina, the ruler of the Algonquian Indians on Roanoke Island. That action is often seen as a primary reason the closest Native nation to the colony would not help the colonists.

“Roanoke Colonies Illuminated” in East Carolina University’s Digital Collection, notes that although Lane returned to England in 1586, his actions impacted the 1587 attempt to settle Roanoke Island.

“It is likely that the bad blood fostered by Lane did not work much in the favor of Raleigh’s subsequent Roanoke expeditions,” the website points out.

But, James Horn, in his chapter, “Into the Maine: Why They Went West,” seems to question if Lane had complete control of the soldiers under his command in 1585-86, citing Lane’s description of them as ‘wylde men … whose unrulynes (was) suche as not to gyve leasure to the goovenour.’”

And according to Horn, who is president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation and on the board of directors for the First Colony Foundation, Harriot confirmed that observation.

“They killed Indians, he wrote, ‘upon causes that on our part, might easily enough have been borne,’” Horn recorded Harriot as writing.

Yet for all the detail there is a feeling as though the book has barely scratched the surface of what has been learned and is still to come.

It is, as Sloan writes at the end of her “Paper Patches” recounting of how Site X was identified, “the best kind of historical quest, one that just keeps asking us to try to find further truths about the past in order to learn from it for the future.”

ROANOKE ISLAND — Archaeologists have unearthed artifacts that appear to confirm the site of the Algonquian village on Roanoke Island, where Native Americans shared their dinner with the first English explorers.

“This is firm evidence that this locality was Roanoac, the village of first contact,” Eric Klingelhofer, vice president for research of the nonprofit First Colony Foundation, told a small group of reporters Friday during a briefing at the excavation site. “We’ve known about the village because that’s the place where English explorers sent by Raleigh first came.”

Pointing to broken pieces of pottery laid out on a makeshift table — a sample of the finds — the veteran archaeologist explained that the sherds came from Algonquian Colington ware and burnished ware pottery, both found during a recent excavation of the 16^th century strata. 

“Now that’s not the full story,” Klingelhofer added with a sly grin as he reached for small plastic bag. ‘’We found something else.”

He then gently pulled out a thread of copper that was bent into a ring shape, and was buried about 3 feet down in the top layer. Copper was much sought-after by Natives in the Southeast, but it was rare in the region and was nearly all acquired through trade.

“I was extremely pleased because I knew what it meant,” said Klingelhofer, referring to English contact. As he spoke, the waters of Roanoke Sound could be heard lapping at the shoreline behind the dig site, hidden by lush trees and bushes at the privately owned Elizabethan Gardens adjacent to Fort Raleigh National Historic Site.

Copper was a known currency for the first generation of American colonization, Klingelhofer said, adding that the copper strand most likely was a trade item that may have been worn by a Native as a ring. 

“There’s no other reason it would be here,” he said. “It must have come from the colonists.”

The Foundation team has asked conservators at Jamestown to analyze the copper, he said.

English explorers Phillip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe visited Roanoac in 1584 as part of a reconnaissance mission planned by Sir Walter Raleigh. The men were welcomed by the Algonquians, who invited them to dine and exchanged gifts with them. The Englishmen later described Roanoac as having nine cedar houses fortified in a round of “sharp trees.”

The following year, Ralph Lane, who was part of a larger Raleigh expedition, had been sent to Roanoke Island with about 100 soldiers to establish a fort and a settlement. Lane abandoned the island in 1586 because of hostilities — much apparently provoked by him — between the Native population and the English. Nonetheless, about 117 men, women and children from England arrived on Roanoke Island in 1587 to establish a permanent settlement. Known today as the “Lost Colony,” it disappeared without a trace and is often called the oldest mystery in American history.

Founded in 2003 by Klingelhofer and other professional archaeologists, the First Colony Foundation has conducted numerous archaeological explorations in and around Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on the north end of Roanoke Island, which is where the Lost Colony settlement is likely to have been built, as well as sites in Bertie County at the headwaters of the Albemarle Sound where, artifacts show, a small number of colonists likely had fled.

Findings over the years from Foundation digs have ranged from remnants of early wells, sherds from olive jars and pottery, a Cashie-type Indian pot, tobacco pipes, French ceramic flasks, glass trade beads, and an entire necklace of cut diamond-shaped copper sheets that the team believes may have been presented to a Roanoac noble. Advancements with remote-sensing technology have enabled First Colony researchers to eliminate some sites while homing in on other areas.

Klingelhofer and Foundation Co-Vice President Nick Luccketti had been part of late archaeologist Ivor Noel Hume’s Virginia Company Foundation team in the 1990s that determined that an area presumed to be associated with the reconstructed “Fort Raleigh” earthworks was instead the 1585-1586 workshop used by scientist Thomas Harriot and the metallurgist Joachim Gans — a notable discovery.

Further tests revealed evidence nearby of charcoal making and a brick kiln and led to other digs to the north and west that found 16th century artifacts. The work with Hume directly influenced establishing the First Colony group to create a partnership agreement with the National Park Service so that Elizabethan-era explorations could continue.

Although the Foundation, which includes academics and historians with expertise in precolonial and early colonial American activity and Native American culture, would welcome finding evidence of the Lost Colony, its focus has always been the broader story of the 1584-1590 Roanoke Voyages, which served as the playbook for English colonization and ultimately, for what became America.

Klingelhofer said that the team is up against time, as increased shoreline erosion consumes places to explore, and storms reconfigure potential historic areas.

Going back as far as the Great Chesapeake Hurricane in 1769, sand had buried the 16^th century site where archaeologists have recently dug. So far, Klingelhofer said, about 100 feet of shoreline has been lost on the north end of Roanoke Island, and water in the Albemarle Sound is about 3 feet higher than it was in the 1580s.

For the time being, he said, work on Roanoke Island is done. Meanwhile, he said he was looking forward to publication in November of a book detailing archaeology and historic research done by the Foundation and its predecessors, “Excavating the Lost Colony Mystery, The Map, the Search, the Discovery,” which is edited by Klingelhofer.

But the team plans to resume explorations soon at other sites in and around Fort Raleigh and Bertie County. They will also expand beyond the Native American village excavation to see how far it goes, now that the location has been nailed down to their satisfaction.

“So it’s been a good little dig,” Klingelhofer said. “We are very happy to bring our search for Roanoac to a conclusion.”

ROANOKE ISLAND — At first take, it was as dull as watching someone mow a lawn. But the man pushing an odd, three-wheeled cart back and forth over an open, grassy area at the Elizabethan Gardens on Wednesday could help archaeologists find one of the most significant locations in Colonial American history: the place where Native Americans had their first contact with the English.

“He’s looking for anomalies below 9 feet,” explained Eric Klingelhofer, a veteran archaeologist and founding member of the nonprofit First Colony Foundation, who was observing nearby.

Robert Chartrand, owner of Chartrand Geoarchaeological Solutions of Williamsburg, Virginia, was using GPS technology to survey about a fifth of an acre within the gardens that archaeologists believe could potentially contain artifacts from the Algonquian village of Roanoac, whose members interacted with English explorers in 1584.

Klingelhofer, one of the foundation’s vice presidents for research, said that reexamination of a previous 1953 exploration done by National Park Service archaeologist Jean C. Harrington indicated that there may be more to find.

During a dig that year at the Elizabethan Gardens, which is owned by the Roanoke Island Historical Association and is supported as a subsidiary of the Garden Club of North Carolina Inc., Harrington had unearthed a portion of a Colington Ware pot that was likely from the 1500s, according to a 2022 paper by Klingelhofer and Eric Deetz, “Searching for Roanoac, Archaeology in the Elizabethan Gardens 1953-2022.”

But in the foundation’s recent review of Harrington’s field notes, which were provided by the National Park Service, it appears that Harrington’s digs stopped at about 6 feet, rather than the 9-foot depth where circa-1600s artifacts would be, Klingelhofer recently explained to Coastal Review.

“So, we’re going to get a much better picture,” he said, watching as Chartrand worked. “About 90% of the grassy area here is untouched.” That means when the archaeologists reach the Native American ground surface level and go below it, they would have a better chance of finding evidence, such as post holes, food storage pits, or midden, than if the area had been disturbed.  

Chartrand, who is an archaeo-geophysicist, had also worked with archaeologists at Jamestown Island from 2015 to 2019. Although it looks like he’s simply pushing a cart with a small box in the middle, the description of his work is complex and highly technical.

“I’m systematically collecting data at certain intervals,” he explained in the simplest terms.

Every foot or so, working to the east, then to the west, from the center line he marked out on the grassy area on the north end of the gardens, the attached GPS device takes an image 1.5 to 3 meters, or about 5 to 10 feet, below the surface.

Once the data is collected, Chartrand will use software with a standard ground-penetrating radar program to interpret it.

“I can look at the cross section and then I’ll be able to create a 3D image based on all the lines (of data) I’ve collected,” he said, adding that the image is a bird’s-eye view.

“I can change the elevation so I can see the progression of what’s beneath the surface.”

Chartrand said that, in essence, the algorithm defines “unknown space based on known space” on the landscape. The program uses standard coordinates, which he defines, so that any ground-penetrating radar operator can later find them.

“So if an archaeologist wants to go back to excavate a subsurface anomaly, they can relocate it with the GPS,” he said.

The final report will take about a month to complete. At that point, the First Colony Foundation will determine whether excavation is warranted, Klingenhofer said. If so, it would have to be conducted with the cooperation of the Elizabethan Gardens, and the funds for the dig would have to be raised by the foundation.

“The Elizabethan Gardens is a memorial to the lost colonists and will forever be a part of that mystery,” said Elizabethan Gardens Executive Director Theresa Armendarez in an April 11 foundation press release. “To find artifacts from that time in America’s early history would be an exciting addition to our unique history.”

As the first of the 1584-1590 Roanoke Voyages, Sir Walter Raleigh sent explorers Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe on two ships to Roanoke Island with a mission to investigate land west of the barrier islands.

When the explorers landed on the island, Algonquian leaders greeted them. The Natives later shared food and clothing with the English strangers and invited them to warm over their fire at their village, which the explorers described as “nine houses, built of cedar, and fortified round with sharp trees.”

“This notable moment of hospitality, where Englishmen first entered the home of an Algonquian noblewoman, and were treated with such respect and kindness, is the true First Contact between the cultures,” according to the paper.

Those first English visitors were dazzled by the Natives. “We found the people most gentle, loving, and faithful, void of all guile and treason, and such as lived after the manner of the golden age,” the explorers wrote.

Unfortunately, the good feelings did not last long, with later Roanoke voyages marked by attacks on tribes and retaliation by the Native Americans, perhaps leading to the failure of the 1587 settlement of 117 men, women and children which disappeared without a trace.

While the so-called “Lost Colony” that was last seen in August 1587 gets the most attention, the foundation, from its beginning in 2003, has been focused as much on the earliest English explorations on Roanoke Island. They served as a lesson plan for later colonization in 1607 at Jamestown.

Whether or not there are anomalies found by Chartrand’s technology, the work will lead to an answer of where — or where not — to look for Roanoac and the “Point of First Contact,” Klingelhofer said.

But with accelerated erosion of the Roanoke Sound shoreline along the border of the Elizabethan Gardens, there is a sense of urgency for the foundation. Much of the land that may have revealed secrets has already been lost.

“Since the 1800s, the shoreline here has receded more than a hundred yards, with numerous Indian artifacts found in the water and beach,” the 2022 paper said. “It must be watched carefully for archaeological artifacts and features being destroyed by coastal erosion.”

This story has been updated to correct William Weaver’s nationality.

Marvin Tupper Jones has deep roots in his native Hertford County, but part of his heritage is what some historians have described as lost.

Jones is the executive director of Chowan Discovery, a Hertford County nonprofit working to tell the history and heritage of the multiracial communities of northeastern North Carolina.

Jones shared the story of his family during a talk Aug. 17 at the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City, putting his ancestors’ stories in the context of the nation’s history. Not necessarily the wars, battles and great events, although there was plenty of that, rather, his narrative showed how interwoven his family’s history is in the American fabric.

On his father’s side, Jones is descended from William Weaver, an East Indian man who lived in India before coming to North America. Arriving in 1690, he was the father of biracial children, none of whom were enslaved.

But on his mother’s side of the family, the history goes back even further and is traced to the earliest inhabitants of northeastern North Carolina, a culture that had “disappeared.”

“I’d like to tell you a story about a long period of time here in the Albemarle and that is my family from before the Lost Colony up to now,” Jones said as he began his lecture.

His ancestors were from the Chowanoke of the Albemarle region. The Chowanoke, who lived along the banks of the Chowan River, were described by Ralph Lane, military captain of Sir Walter Raleigh’s first exploratory mission to the Albemarle, as the most powerful tribe in the area, with some 19 towns and 700 warriors ready for battle.

In 1585 Lane, in an action that would presage the violence against the region’s tribal nations, seized the Chowanoke king and questioned him for days, Jones explained.

“He seized the Chowanoke leader, Menatonon, and interrogated him for three days, departing with Mematonon’s son as a hostage,” he said.

Jones traces his family’s links to the Chowanoke to John Robins. There is no known documentation of Robins’ birthdate, but it’s generally listed around 1665. The family name was eventually spelled as Robbins.

Robins lived in a turbulent period. The Chowanoke had entered into a treaty in 1663 with the lords proprietors who controlled at the time what would become North Carolina. By the terms of the treaty, according to the Naive American Project, the tribe, “submitted themselves to the Crown of England under the Dominion of the Lord Proprietors.”

But as the Colony’s population grew, treaty violations became more numerous, leading to a largely forgotten 17th-century conflict.

“Because of encroachments in 1676 between the Chowan River and Dismal Swamp, there was the Chowan River War, which is almost never mentioned in North Carolina histories. It was the first Colonial war against Indians. It was sustained. It covered a period of about two years,” Jones said.

The Chowanoke lost the war and a new treaty relegated them to 12 square miles along Bennetts Creek, a Gates County tributary to the Chowan River. Over time much of the original tract was sold, probably to satisfy taxes and debts.

“Now we get into my mother’s part of the family,” Jones said. “John Robbins, born say 1700, was one of the Chowan County Indians who sold some of their land on Bennetts Creek.”

The sale of land continually shrank the size of what was probably the first North American Native American reservation. By the 1750s, almost all the land had been sold.

Jones cites Moravian missionary August Gottlieb Spangenberg who wrote in 1752, “the tribe of the Chowans is reduced to a few families.” Going on to say that their condition was “deplorable” and “their land had been taken away from them.”

But Jones clarified that if the land that was once their native soil was no longer theirs, the Chowan people still saw themselves as unique.

“As a collective community when some disappear from the historical record … a lost tribe, the Chowanoke blended with others on the margins of Colonial society,” he said, citing Michael Leroy Oberg from his 2009 book, “The Head in Edward Nugent’s Hand.”

“Hey, I’m here,” Jones said to that, adding that the blending with others on the margins of society was, “not true at all.”

He cites research done by Forest Hazel, published in North Carolina Archeology, that showed the Chowanoke dispersed throughout northeastern North Carolina.

“You had Chowanokes who moved as far east as Currituck County, of course Hertford County and Bertie County, but still you have a core who stayed in Gates,” he said.

As Jones reviewed his family’s history, even if the Chowanoke tribe was no longer recognized, the descendants of the tribe were creating their own community in Hertford County.

In 1790, James Robbins, probably the grandson or great-grandson of John Robins, with other members of his family, sold the last remaining 400 acres of the original tract granted to the Chowanoke people in 1724.

At that time, any sale of land involving nonwhite citizens had to be approved by the state legislature and in approving the sale, Jones quoted the legislature as noting the sale was, “Leaving a parcel of Indian women which is mixed with Negroes, and there is now several freemen or women of Mixed blood as aforesaid has descended from said Indians and they behave themselves in the late contest with Great Britain as good and faithful soldiers.”

James Robbins had, in fact, been a “good and faithful soldier.” Among the documents Jones found in researching his family history was a 1782 pay voucher for Robbins’ service in the Revolutionary War.

The James Robbins household also is found in the 1790 census. It was a large household, listed as having 15 free people of color and a white woman. The white woman is listed in the 1800 census, also. The woman is not named; at that time only the male head of a household was listed in census records. However, Jones points out, the couple were probably married.

“I have a white great-great-great-grandmother,” he said.

The designation as a free people of color became extraordinarily important after the 1831 Nate Turner rebellion. The oldest document in his family’s personal possession is a court statement from 1831.

“It belonged to my great-great-grandfather, Noah Robins,” Jones said. “The document states: ‘Noah Robins a man of color hath made application to this court to grant him a certificate certifying that his a free man and a native of this county Gates County and in proofs being rendered to that effect, it was then and there that ordered that the Clerk of said Court give to Noah Robins a certificate certifying that he is a free man of color and is a native of said County and is entitled to all the rights and privileges of free persons of colour …’”

“This is four days after the Nat Turner Rebellion,” Jones explained. “This document was required of all free people of color in North Carolina, but many of them didn’t get it until they needed it. He needed it because of the great backlash in Virginia and North Carolina all the way to South Carolina from the Nat Turner rebellion. He needed it to save his life, his household and everything.”

Although the court document granted Robbins “all the rights and privileges of free persons of color” in antebellum North Carolina, it is unclear what those rights and privileges were. The state legislature stripped free people of color of the right to vote in 1835, one of a series of increasingly restrictive laws.

The result was that the ranks of the Union Army were filled with members of the Hertford County Robbins family.

In February 1862, the Union Navy seized control of the Chowan River, and free people of color and formerly enslaved people flocked to the Union banner. According to Jones, eight Robbins served in the Union Army. The various members of Robbins family served throughout the states in rebellion.

“(They) served in Virginia, South Carolina, Florida and Texas,” Jones said.

Sergeant major Parker David Robbins and his brother, Augustus Robbins, regimental quartermaster sergeant, went on to serve in the North Carolina legislature after the war.

But when Reconstruction ended in 1877, the hope that people of color could participate in the political process in North Carolina seemed to die. The tenuous coalition of Republican legislators combining white political leaders and people of color elected to state office was shattered. Physical intimidation and laws made it ever more difficult for people of color to vote.

Yet, nearly a century after the end of Reconstruction, Jones’ mother served as a Hertford County elections official.

“Noah Robbins lost the right to vote in 1835,” Jones said and pointed to an image he posted on the screen in the lecture hall. “This is his great-granddaughter, my mother Pearlene (Robbins) Jones, who was an elections judge in 1972.”

In July 1587, the English ship Lyon put ashore on Roanoke Island with 118 men, women and children.

The attempt to establish an English colony in the New World was the culmination of Sir Walter Raleigh’s investment in exploiting lands he had been granted by Queen Elizabeth I.

Hoping to be met by the 15 men Capt. Ralph Lane had left to hold the island for the colonists’ arrival, they instead found only the sun-bleached bones of one of the soldiers.

Nonetheless, they remained and began the work of repairing the fort and building a town. After a month, though, it was apparent that without more supplies and additional colonists, Raleigh’s investment in the New World would not succeed, and Governor John White returned to England, hoping to secure the supplies and people needed to strengthen England’s toehold in the New World. But a proxy war that was being waged with Spain became open warfare and the Spanish Armada intervened. White was not able to return to Roanoke until 1590.

When he arrived, there were no colonists, the only clue to their fate was the word “CROATAN” carved in a tree. It may have been an indication that the colonists had relocated to Hatteras Island, but the loss of the rescue expedition’s captain, a hurricane and a near-mutinous crew sent the relief ships back to England before they could explore Hatteras Island.

What is now called the “Lost Colony,” might have the appearance of a desperate, almost unplanned attempt by England to colonize the Americas, but it was instead the product of a carefully planned investigation of an uncharted, unknown new land.

At the center of that investigative work was Thomas Harriot, a scientist and mathematician whose “A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia,” was the most complete description of that first attempt by the English to understand the New World.

The recent “OBX History Weekend: Searchers of the New Horizons” was a three-day, in-depth look at some of the most significant events and people who shaped the history of the area. Produced by the First Colony Foundation, Elizabeth R and Co. and the National Park Service, an entire day was devoted to exploring the life and times of Thomas Harriot.

What emerged from the lectures was a portrait of a remarkable man — a mathematician who was dabbling in algebraic equations at a time they were little known in Europe.

He was a linguist whose work presaged a 19th century syllabary alphabet, an astronomer, and chemist. Although in 16th century England, Harriot’s work combining various materials was called alchemy.

Yet for all his intellectual accomplishments, Harriot’s only published works were his depictions of the English experience in the New World, which may be why he is not better known today.

Dr. Robyn Arianrhod, speaking during the symposium from her native Australia, is the author of, “Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science,” a book that explores Harriot the scientist.

She introduced him to the audience, outlining why so little is known about Harriot.

“He is nothing if not enigmatic. Without really knowing where he was born, or who his parents were, although we do know they were working people, not gentry,” she said. “To add to the mystery, we only know about him because some 8,000 pages of his research notes were found hidden away in an old castle 150 years after he died.”

He was a man who was, in many ways, ahead of his time. A hundred years before Newton, Arianrhod said, Harriot was experimenting with prisms and the diffusion of light. He was also the first mathematician, she noted, to work entirely in mathematical formula.

Astronomy fascinated him and when telescopes became available at the beginning of the 17th century, Harriot was one of the first to understand the scientific potential of the new instrument.

“Harriot was the first to leave a surviving record of a telescopic astronomical observation,” Arianrhod said. “It was a rough outline … sketch of the crescent moon. But it was the very beginning of the new era of telescopic astronomy,

The sketch dated July 26, 1609, was “… Apparently a few months before Galileo began doing the same thing,” she added.

But it is his descriptions of the New World that Harriot is best known. His “A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia” was originally published in Latin in 1588. In 1590, publisher Theodor de Bry translated the Harriot’s work into four languages and included copperplate reproductions of John White’s depictions of the New World, making it an early international bestseller.

He was in the New World because of his relationship with Raleigh, and it was probably his mathematical skills that brought him to Raleigh’s attention.

Raleigh had been granted the right to colonize the New World in 1584. An experienced sailor, he knew that a journey of 3,500 to 4,000 miles across the ocean would require new ways of thinking about navigation.

“Raleigh wanted his captains and navigators to be the best trained in the world,” Arianrhod said.

At that time, ocean navigation used the sun and stars to determine position, and Harriot, with his interest in astronomy and math, was the ideal person to create a more precise way to navigate.

But Harriot was much more than an armchair scientist. When Raleigh sent his first expedition to Roanoke Island in 1585, Harriot was a part of it and what he observed has become a remarkable eyewitness account.

How he saw the people of the Roanoke area and how he described them was influenced, said Dr. Robert Fox, Emeritus Professor of the History of Science at Oxford, by his days as a university student. It was a time of dynamic intellectual challenge and Harriot, who attended the Oxford from 1580-83, was in the middle of it.

“These new students were receptive to the tide of Renaissance humanism that was beginning to circulate in Oxford,” Fox said during the event. “And I think that tide of humanism had its long-term consequences for Harriot.”

Fox noted the way Harriot writes about the Algonquin people of the area as evidence of his education in humanism. His description of Native Americans departs significantly from the view of the time that they were simple savages.

“What he saw was a settled society, codified social structure, a simple legal system, hierarchy of gods headed by a single god. There was even some notion of an afterlife. And for Harriet, Algonquin religion has all the character, I think, of a pristine faith, perhaps the face of a prelapsarian world,” he said. “It was a world — I’m thinking back again to his Oxford experiences — free from the confessional tensions that he had known and witnessed in Elizabethan England.”

Perhaps more than anyone else on the 1585 expedition, Harriot had the best understanding of the culture and politics of native peoples.

A first reconnaissance mission led by Capt. Philip Amadas and Master Arthur Barlowe returned to England in 1584 with two Native Americans named Manteo and Wanchese.

They were housed at Raleigh’s London residence, Durham House, and while there Manteo worked with Harriot to learn each other’s language. From that, Harriot devised a syllabary — a sound-based alphabet — more than 200 years before the same technique was successfully developed by Sequoyah of the Cherokee Nation in the late 1810s. 

“Manteo and Harriot collaborated to produce one of the most remarkable achievements in 16th century science. Harriot called it a new way of recording language by sound, rather than by meaning. Harriot called it, ‘an universal alphabet containing six and 30 letters whereby maybe expressed the lively image of man’s voice in what language soever …'” said Dr. Karen Kupperman, Silver Professor of History Emerita at New York University, during her History Weekend presentation.

Harriot understood that the society he was seeing was not some pure form of humanity that existed before the Biblical fall of mankind, that even if there were not the religious tensions of Catholic and Protestant religions of England, there was still conflict. While he was there, a war was being waged between the villages and Roanoke Island that comprised King Wingina’s kingdom, and he wrote about that.

“Their maner of warres amongst themselues is either by sudden surprising one an other most commonly about the dawning of the day, or moone light; or els by ambushes, or some suttle devises …” he wrote.

But as he looked at their cultures realistically, he also applied that standard in describing the actions of the English, and his mention of the violence against Native Americans may have presaged the failure of the Lost Colony, when the tribal nations of the region turned against them because of death of King Wingina at the hands of the English.

“And although some of our companie towardes the ende of the yeare, shewed themselues too fierce, in slaying some of the people, in some towns vpõ (upon) causes that on our part, might easily enough haue been borne withal …” he wrote.

MANTEO – The question of what happened to the 115 men, women and children of the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island has endured in the American psyche for generations.

Established in 1587 and soon abandoned in a land of warring Native American tribes, short on supplies and lacking the skills needed to survive, the mystery of their fate has been unsolved since John White found the word “Croatoan” carved into a tree in 1590.

Using his perspective as a journalist and science writer, Andrew Lawler weaves a compelling and remarkable tale in “The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke.” Lawler is also the author of “Why Did the Chicken Cross the World? The Epic Saga of the Bird that Powers Civilization,” the story of how a semi-flightless Asian bird spread across the globe and become a source of food and power. As a journalist, his byline has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, Smithsonian and others. He is a contributing writer for Science and contributing editor for Archaeology.

Lawler’s research bringing “The Secret Token” to life is astonishing, traipsing back and forth across the Atlantic to research original sources. Interviewing researchers, archaeologists, historians and the occasional quixotic theorists in his quest to discover what truly happened, he guides the reader on a journey of discovery, and he is a wide-eyed guide, as astonished at what he discovers as his tour group.

“I thought I knew the story when this all began,” he said.

The writing reflects Lawler’s journalism background. The sense of wonder comes in the sheer volume of information; the style though is objective and fact-based, and if there are conclusions to be drawn, it is because of the details that are presented in the book and not because of any opinion that he ventures.

Because he avoids expressing an opinion, as the facts build, “The Secret Token” seems, at times, like a mystery novel constructing a compelling case. Yet there is no smoking gun in this instance, saying “This is what happened.” What there is, rather, is the tapestry of the American experience as it has evolved over 400 years.

The search for the lost colonists becomes a reflection of the evolution of American thought.

“It was lost by us only in the 19^th century,” he said, pointing to the first comprehensive history of this country, George Bancroft’s “A History of the United States.” The first three volumes of his 10-volume set were published in 1834 and covered the time from the first attempt at colonizing America to the Revolution.

Although Harvard-trained Bancroft had spent considerable time in Europe, especially Germany, at a time of rising romanticism in thought and a belief in myth to define an emerging German society.

“He cast it in those Gothic terms,” Lawler said

Seeped in the romantic writings of Europe, Bancroft wove a tale that fit the narrative.

“He called Virginia Dare the first English child born in the New World. He made her into a national symbol,” Lawler said.

That romanticized 19^th century view of a white babe born among the “savages” still lingers. It can be seen even today in Paul Green’s “The Lost Colony,” the outdoor drama performed, in theory, upon the very land of the Lost Colony.

The play ends with the weakened yet determined colonists walking off into the wilderness, her father Anais dead at the hands of the savages, her mother holding the babe in her hands.

Green, though, was a radical in his day. During a period in U.S. history when miscegenation was illegal, especially in the South, his English settler Old Tom and native Agona marry, foretelling, perhaps what many archaeologists and historians feel eventually did happen.

“He (Green) supposed an assimilation there, with Old Tom and Agona marrying,” Lawler said.

Lawler does not just look at the influence of the Lost Colony on American thought, he also examines in detail the events that were occurring in Europe at the time.

What emerges is a place of political machination and intrigue. Spain, the dominant power of its time, pitted against England, an impoverished backwater land suspicious of science and innovation.

The detail is extraordinary but important in carrying the story forward.

In Green’s play the colonists are terrified of the Spanish. History demonstrates they were justified in their fear. On more than one occasion, all the inhabitants of a non-Spanish colony were put to the sword, and Roanoke Island was well within land Spain claimed.

The power struggle for control of the Americas and the seas played out in those 115 colonists. The colonists were seeking opportunity — a chance to better themselves economically and socially.

Whatever the game Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth and Simao Fernandes may have been playing is not as clear.

Fernandes, the pilot who insisted the colonists be deposited on Roanoke Island even though plans called for them to begin their life in the Chesapeake area, has always been suspect. But in Lawler’s nuanced examination of the man and the times his motivation does not seem nearly as sinister.

The modern characters who comprise the search for the Lost Colony may be the most fascinating. A remarkable conglomerate of scientists, quasi-scientists and crackpots fill the pages.

Lawler’s eye for detail in describing them is wonderful.

There is British archaeologist Mark Horton, who “… to the dismay of his dig team, refuses to wear a belt around his perpetually sagging trousers.” Nor does the man bathe as often as the people he is working with would wish.

Fred Willard, who lived on the Outer Banks, was convinced the Dare Stone, a rock brought to light in the 1930s that seemed to tell the story of Virginia Dare’s demise, was real. He led his own excavations trying to find proof. “His bald pate, scraggly beard and piercing eyes gave him the look of a vengeful marsh prophet,” Lawler writes in describing him.

But the physical descriptions are the frame of a picture, a way to introduce the personalities. What emerges from Lawler’s interviews and observations are nuanced and complex characters who believe the quest for the truth will have an ending.

“The Secret Token” is a great read. It does not give a definitive answer to what happened to the Lost Colony. And in reading the book, the thought that there may not be a definitive answer seems likely. Yet what Lawler has done is expand the search for the inexplicable and unknowable into an examination of how we think of ourselves and our history.