Driving on Roanoke Island you feel as though you are back in the real south, no more beach houses, no more Wings stores selling “all you need to reach the beach”; instead we found quaint cottages set between the trees and history galore.
Yesterday Uncle Mike and I decided that we needed to do something outside of the house, as it had been a few days since we had seen any sights. I suggested that we take a trip down to Roanoke Island; since I knew that as a history teacher there must be something I could learn by visiting the site of the first British settlement in the so-called “New World.” Uncle Mike agreed and we made the hour drive down to Manteo. Our first goal was to visit the national park at the end of the island. We drive in. Usually at national parks there is a nice welcome center to greet you. I read online that the welcome center offered a 17-minute video about the history of the “Lost Colony” as historians have dubbed that first British colony. The welcome center seems to be nonexistent… strange. In the middle of the area there are some rather large trailers, think the kind of trailer that schools rent when they need extra classroom space. I could not conceive that this was actually the welcome center, but Uncle Mile spotted a note on the door claiming that these temporary buildings were the welcome center. Fearing that we had driven down to Roanoke for nothing now, we enter the building. A friendly park ranger greets us. I ask about the film, and sadly because of these truly temporary quarters during the reconstructions of the true welcome center, there is no film. I got over it, but I had been excited as it was under my documentaries shouldn’t be longer than 20 minutes rule. We went on a short walk to view the actual site of a fort that was built here with one of the expeditions, either 1585 or 1587.
Before approaching the archeological site there was a monument to the famous Virginia Dare, the first child born to English colonists in America. This woman is celebrated in all aspects of life in this part of North Carolina: Dare County, North Carolina, Virginia Dare Road, the Duke of Dare hamburger place, the museum is built in honor of Virginia Dare etc. It is perplexing because we know absolutely nothing about her except who her parents were, when she was born and that she was baptized two days later, and that her grandfather happened to be the man destined to be the colonial governor of the colony. For all we know she might have died a few days after her baptism. But she was the first child born in America. Truly the signs were more culturally celebrated, they all refer to her as, “the first child born to English parents,” but I feel that fact that we celebrate her at all is a tad Eurocentric, as there were countless Indian children born in the “New World” centuries before Europeans ever knew it was there. None of them are celebrated in such a way. I find the mystery of what ever happened to the celebrity Virginia Dare even more interesting than what a happened to the colony as a whole. The fact that she has a name preserved by the history books brings her alive; gives her a persona. People want to know what happened to Virginia Dare, but they never will.
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