THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 18, 1996 TAG: 9608160709
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: 67 lines
No account of the 1587 Lost Colony at Roanoke Island, N.C., is considered complete without a mention of Virginia Dare, the first child to be born of English parents in the New World 409 years ago today. Even so, nothing is ever said of ``Harvie,'' another baby who was born a few days later in the same place. Nor are there any references to nine other ``boys and children'' who were also at Roanoke Island at the same time.
Together with Virginia Dare and ``Harvie,'' these Lilliputian first English-American settlers were the Lost Children of the Lost Colony. As such they deserve belated recognition.
The tragic saga of Sir Walter Raleigh's second attempt at American colonization began on July 22, 1587, when Gov. John White and 115 settlers arrived at Roanoke Island to pick up caretaker colonists who had been left there when the first settlement ended in failure in 1586. Once that was accomplished, White had orders to sail on to the Chesapeake Bay area to found the ``Cittie of Raleigh'' there.
White's instructions were thwarted by the mariners who had transported him and his group to the New World. Their refusal to further assist the settlers resulted in their being dumped on mosquito-infested Roanoke Island in the midst of hostile Indian territory.
On Aug. 18, 1587, White's daughter Elenor, the wife of Ananias Dare, one of his councillors, gave birth to a daughter who was named Virginia for the New Found Land. Shortly thereafter, Margery Harvie, the wife of Dionis Harvie, another councillor, gave birth to a boy whose given name has not been preserved. By then, conditions at Roanoke Island had become desperate, and the settlers insisted that White return to England for supplies. After he sailed, the fate of the Lost Colony became one of the enigmas of history.
Modern historians believe, however, that most of the settlers migrated northward by boat to the headwaters of Currituck Sound. After reaching that place, they presumably proceeded overland to territory then occupied by the friendly Chesepian Indians whose main town, called Skicoak, was located within the present limits of Norfolk. The Chesepians were also the most important Virginia tribe then not belonging to a group of Indian tribes known as the Powhatan Confederacy.
As for the men who remained at Roanoke Island to guard Governor White's personal possessions, they are believed to have eventually abandoned the site and moved southward to live with the Croatoan Indians near what is now Cape Hatteras. If this scenario is correct, the children of the settlement undoubtedly accompanied their elders when they migrated northward into the area now occupied by Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake and Virginia Beach.
This theory is given credence by a statement by William Strachey in his ``History of Travell into Virginia Britanica'' (1612). Strachey, who was the first secretary of the Jamestown colony, reported that James I was told that the Lost Colonists lived peacefully with the Chesepians for 20 years until Powhatan, the ruler of the Powhatan Confederacy and the father of Pocahontas, ordered the total extinction of the Chesepians and their English friends shortly before the Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery brought the Jamestown colonists to Virginia in April 1607.
If Strachey's account is correct, the Lost Colonists, including Virginia Dare, ``Harvie'' and the other ``boys and children'' who came to the New World with John White, lived from around 1587 to around 1607 at some still undiscovered spot in the Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake or Virginia Beach areas.
To conclude this brief account of the Lost Colonists, I would like to make a suggestion. Crediting Strachey's plausible evidence that they met their fate at some unknown place within the limits of the four South Hampton Roads cities, the historical societies of those places should combine to dedicate a memorial of some sort to the brave band who presumably migrated here from Roanoke Island in 1587, only to be wiped out in an Indian massacre some 20 years later. by CNB