Virginia Dare

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Virginia Dare
US postage stamp issued in 1937, the 350th anniversary of Virginia Dare's birth
Born	August 18, 1587 Roanoke Island, Colony of Roanoke
Died	Unknown Unknown

Virginia Dare (born August 18, 1587) was the first child of English parents to be born in North America. She was born on Roanoke Island in the short-lived Colony of Roanoke, in present-day North Carolina.

Birth

Her parents, Eleanor (Ellinor, Elyonor) and Ananias Dare, had been among the approximately 120 settlers who left England on May 8, 1587, on an expedition sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh. Raleigh had intended that the settlement should be established in the Chesapeake Bay area, but the captain of their ship, the Lion, had his passengers land instead on Roanoke Island, the site of an unsuccessful earlier colonisation venture.

Aside from the circumstances of her birth, Virginia Dare's life remains a mystery. Nine days after her birth, on August 27, 1587, her grandfather, Governor John White, left the colony for England, acting as Roanoke's agent in obtaining further aid and assistance for the colony. He arrived in England that November as the nation was about to go to war with Spain. It was not until August 1590 that White reached Roanoke with a relief expedition. It found no trace of the settlers—only the word "croatoan" carved on a post. The infant Virginia Dare had vanished along with all other Roanoke colonists. Some believe that the survivors of the "Lost Colony" were absorbed into the Croatoan tribe. Others believe that the colonists moved to another nearby island, although no trace was found. Archaeologists excavating a site on nearby Hatteras Island have uncovered an old gold ring believed to belong to an individual known in England about 1520, so the theory that they were absorbed by the Croatoan Indians has gained some credence in recent years.

Other first birth claims

While Dare is given credit for being the first child born of English descent in what was to become the US, manuscripts and documents in the archives of the Library of Congress of the United States indicate that the first child of European-descent born on the Atlantic coast of the United States was Martin de Arguelles. Martin was born in 1566 in St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest permanent European settlement in the United States. Martin was born about 21 years before Virginia Dare.

It has also been claimed that the first child born of modern European descent in land associated with the North American continent (Greenland) was of Norse descent, but documentation is lacking (see:Snorri Þorfinnsson).

Fiction

A woman named Virginia Dare appears in Gregory Keyes' fantasy novel The Briar King. Keyes uses several hints and word clues to indicate this character is meant to be the historical figure. Another fictionalized version of Virginia appears in the Neil Gaiman Marvel comic 1602.

From 1937 until 1941, the so-called "Dare Stones" were in the news. The carved stones were allegedly found in northern Georgia and the Carolinas. The first bore an announcement of Virginia Dare's death. Later ones, brought in by various people, told a complicated tale of the fate of the Lost Colony. Professor Haywood Pearce Jr. of Brenau College (now Brenau University) in Gainesville, Georgia, believed in the stones, and his views won over some well-known historians, according to contemporary press accounts. But a 1941 article by journalist Boyden Sparks in The Saturday Evening Post discredited the story, exposing absurdities in the stones' account and producing evidence that the "discoverers" were hoaxers. Pearce and the other scholars were not implicated in fraud, and no legal action was ever taken. Sparks believed the fakery was inspired by the 1937 publicity in North Carolina surrounding the 350th anniversary of the Lost Colony. Today, Brenau keeps the Dare Stones as a sort of 20th-century media curiosity, but generally does not display them or publicize their existence.

Things named after Virginia Dare

• Dare County, North Carolina
• The VDARE Project of the Center for American Unity
• Virginia Dare Trail, a section of NC 12
• Virginia Dare Bridge, the second, newest, and widest bridge spanning the Croatoan Sound connecting Roanoke Island to Manns Harbor; it carries US 64

See also

• Lost Colony