Mabel Augusta Evans Jones (December 6, 1888 – August 31, 1982) was an American educator and writer. As superintendent of schools in Dare County, North Carolina, she wrote and produced the silent film The Lost Colony (1921), directed by Elizabeth B. Grimball and intended for classroom and community educational use.
Mabel Augusta Evans was born in Manteo, North Carolina, the daughter of Richard Coles Evans and Cordelia Augusta Cofield Evans. She graduated from Greensboro College in 1908. [1] In the 1920s she studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and she completed a master's degree at Teachers College, Columbia University. [2] [3]
Mabel Evans Jones was superintendent of schools in Dare County, North Carolina, beginning in 1920. She visited the island schools in her county by boat. [3] She wrote the script for The Lost Colony (1921), a silent film directed by Elizabeth B. Grimball for use in classrooms and community education. Jones also produced the movie and appeared on screen as Eleanor Dare. [4] [5] She stayed involved with organizing The Lost Colony performances at Manteo into the 1960s. [6] [7] [8]
Evans supervised the elementary schools in Northampton County, North Carolina in the late 1920s. She taught in Alabama for ten years, and worked at Seatone Children's Camp near Manteo. [3] In 1950, she was a member of the Dare County Board of Education. [9] Much later in life, in 1971 and 1976, Evans recorded commentaries about the making of the film. [2]
Evans married grocer Onslow Jennings Jones in 1939. Her husband died in 1958, [10] and Mabel Evans Jones died in 1982, aged 93 years, in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. The Roanoke Island Historical Association holds a copy of the 1921 film she wrote and produced. [2] Her great-niece Patricia Baum Salgado was producer of The Lost Colony in Manteo in the 1990s. [11]
Roanoke Island is an island in Dare County, bordered by the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It was named after the historical Roanoke, a Carolina Algonquian people who inhabited the area in the 16th century at the time of English colonization.
The establishment of the Roanoke Colony was an attempt by Sir Walter Raleigh to found the first permanent English settlement in North America. The colony was first founded in 1585, but the colonists had disappeared under unknown circumstances when a ship visited the colony five years later in 1590. The colony has since been known as the Lost Colony, and the fate of the 112 to 121 colonists remains unknown to this day.
Dare County is the easternmost county in the U.S. state of North Carolina. As of the 2020 census, the population was 36,915. Its county seat is Manteo. Dare County is named after Virginia Dare, the first child born in the Americas to English parents, who was born within the county's current borders. Founded in 1870 from parts of Tyrrell, Currituck and Hyde counties, it consists of a large segment of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, along with Roanoke Island and a peninsula of land attached to the mainland. Most of the county consists of a string of resort communities along the Outer Banks. While lightly populated by year-round residents, the population swells during the summer with vacationers.
Manteo is a town in Dare County, North Carolina, United States, located on Roanoke Island. The population was 1,602 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Dare County.
Virginia Dare was the first English child born in a New World English colony.
Ananias Dare was a colonist of the Roanoke Colony of 1587. He was the husband of Eleanor White, whom he married at St Bride's Church in London, and the father of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in America. The details of Dare's death are still unknown.
Manteo High School is one of ten schools located in Dare County, North Carolina. The high school was named after the Native American chief Manteo, who assisted the Roanoke Colony. Renovations to the school were completed in 2007.
The Outer Banks are a 200 mi (320 km) string of barrier islands and spits off the coast of North Carolina and southeastern Virginia, on the east coast of the United States. They line most of the North Carolina coastline, separating Currituck Sound, Albemarle Sound, and Pamlico Sound from the Atlantic Ocean. A major tourist destination, the Outer Banks are known for their wide expanse of open beachfront and the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. The seashore and surrounding ecosystem are important biodiversity zones, including beach grasses and shrubland that help maintain the form of the land.
Fort Raleigh National Historic Site preserves the location of Roanoke Colony, the first English settlement in the present-day United States. The site was preserved for its national significance in relation to the founding of the first English settlement in North America in 1587. The colony, which was promoted and backed by entrepreneurs led by Englishman Sir Walter Raleigh, failed sometime between 1587 and 1590 when supply ships failed to arrive on time. When next visited, the settlement was abandoned with no survivors found. The fate of the "Lost Colony" was a celebrated mystery, although most modern academic sources agree that the settlers likely assimilated into local indigenous tribes.
Manns Harbor is a census-designated place (CDP) in Dare County, North Carolina, United States. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 821.
The Croatan were a small Native American ethnic group living in the coastal areas of what is now North Carolina. They might have been a branch of the larger Roanoke people or allied with them.
The Inner Banks is a neologism made up by developers and tourism promoters to describe the inland coastal region of eastern North Carolina. Without historical precedent, the term "Inner Banks" is an early 21st-century construct that is part of an attempt to rebrand the mostly agrarian coastal plain east of I-95 as a more attractive region for visitors and retirees.
Eleanor Dare of Westminster, London, England, was a member of the Roanoke Colony and the daughter of John White, the colony's governor. While little is known about her life, more is known about her than most of the sixteen other women who left England in 1587 as part of the Roanoke expedition.
The Lost Colony is an historical outdoor drama, written by American Paul Green and produced since 1937 in Manteo, North Carolina. It is based on accounts of Sir Walter Raleigh's attempts in the 16th century to establish a permanent settlement on Roanoke Island, then part of the Colony of Virginia. The play has been performed in an outdoor amphitheater located on the site of the original Roanoke Colony in the Outer Banks. More than four million people have seen it since 1937. It received a special Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre award in 2013.
Wraiths of Roanoke, is a 2007 Syfy original supernatural period horror film, directed by Matt Codd and stars Adrian Paul, Frida Farrell, Rhett Giles, Michael Teh, and George Calil.
Manteo was a Croatan Native American, and was a member of the local tribe that befriended the English explorers who landed at Roanoke Island in 1584. Though many stories claim he was a chief, it is understood that his mother was actually the principal leader of the tribe. This leadership would not have automatically passed down to her children as many English at the time may have assumed.
Wanchese was the last known ruler of the Roanoke Native American tribe encountered by English colonists of the Roanoke Colony in the late sixteenth century. Along with Chief Manteo, he travelled to London in 1584, where the two men created a sensation in the royal court. Hosted at Durham House by the explorer and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh, he and Manteo assisted the scientist Thomas Harriot with the job of deciphering and learning the Carolina Algonquian language. Unlike Manteo, Wanchese evinced little interest in learning English, and did not befriend his hosts, remaining suspicious of English motives in the New World. In April 1586, having returned to Roanoke, he finally ended his good relations with the English, leaving Manteo as the colonists' sole Indian ally.
The William B. Umstead Bridge is a two-lane automobile bridge spanning the Croatan Sound, between Manns Harbor and Roanoke Island, in Dare County, North Carolina. The bridge carries US 64 and is utilized by local and seasonal tourist traffic. The bridge speed limit is 55 miles per hour (89 km/h), except during the months of July and August when it will drop to 20 miles per hour (32 km/h) during dusk and dawn; the west end of the bridge becomes home of more than hundred-thousand purple martins as they prepare for their annual migration to Brazil.
James Ainslie Pryor was an American actor.
Elizabeth Berkley Grimball was an American theatrical and film producer, writer, director, entrepreneur, and educator. She founded and directed Inter-Theater Arts in New York, and produced more than two dozen historical pageants.