Roanoke Island
Roanoke Island was the site of the Roanoke Colony, an English settlement initially established in 1585 by Sir Walter Raleigh. A group of about 120 men, women and children arrived in 1587. Shortly after arriving in this New World, colonist Eleanor Dare, daughter of Governor John White, gave birth to Virginia Dare. She was the first English child born in North America. Governor White returned to England later that year for supplies. Due to impending war with Spain, White was unable to return to Roanoke Island until 1590. When he arrived, the colony had vanished. The fate of those first colonists remains a mystery to this day and is one of America's most intriguing unsolved mysteries. Archaeologists, historians, and other researchers continue to work to resolve the mystery. Visitors to the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site can watch "The Lost Colony", the second-longest-running outdoor theatre production in the United States, which presents a conjecture of the fate of Roanoke Colony.
Roanoke Colony
Between their arrival in Roanoke in April 1585 and the July 1586 departure, Harriot and White both conducted detailed studies of the Roanoke area, with Harriot compiling his samples and notes into several notebooks that did not survive the colony's disappearance. Harriot also wrote descriptions of the surrounding flora and fauna of the area, which survive in his work "A Brief and True Report of the New Founde Land of Virginia," written as a report on the colony's progress to the English government on the request of Raleigh. Viewed by modern historians as propaganda for the colony, this work has become vastly important to Roanoke's history due to Harriot's observations on wildlife as well as his depictions of Indian activities at the time of the colony's disappearance.