The Daily Record
Find Out What Happened To ‘The Lost Colony’ June 6
RALEIGH — “There is something interesting under this patch.” With these words curators at the British Museum addressed a mystery dating to 1587 and the disappearance of the first English settlement in America on Roanoke Island. Close examination of a map from the period has led to new information causing researchers to rethink the fate of North Carolina’s “Lost Colony.”
Brent Lane has been actively involved in archaeological and archival research that informs not only what befell the Roanoke Colony, but also the enduring effect that enterprise wrought. He will discuss this research in “‘Bring Them Home’: Why We Search for the Lost Colony,” June 6 at 1:30 p.m. in the State Archives/Library Building, 109 E. Jones St., Raleigh. The program is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Friends of the Archives.
John White, governor of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Roanoke Colony, documented the early Americas in subtle water color maps and paintings of native peoples and their environments. In the custom of the time, paper patches overlaid parts of the original map that were altered or updated.
One of Mr. White’s maps held at the British Museum, La Virginia Pars, contained two such patches. At the prompting of Mr. Lane and his colleagues at the First Colony Foundation, British Museum staff performed an ultraviolet light examination of the map. The exam revealed symbols underneath a patch that may have indicated a fort and an American Indian settlement. For Mr. Lane, this discovery raises new questions about Sir Walter Raleigh’s first colony.
Brent Lane is professor of heritage economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Kenan-Flagler Business School. He works with local, national and international organizations on the importance of the natural and cultural heritage in conservation, education and the economy.
For additional information, call (919) 807-7326.
Sir Walter Raleigh and map of The Lost Colony.
