John White was an English colonial governor, explorer, artist, and cartographer. White was among those who sailed with Richard Grenville in the first attempt to colonize Roanoke Island in 1585, acting as artist and mapmaker to the expedition. He would most famously briefly serve as the governor of the second attempt to found Roanoke Colony on the same island in 1587 and discover the colonists had mysteriously vanished.
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 America. The colony was founded in 1585, but it was visited by a ship in 1590 and the crew found that the colonists had disappeared under unknown circumstances. It has come to be known as the Lost Colony, and the fate of the 112 to 121 colonists remains unknown to this day.
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.
Wanchese is a census-designated place (CDP) on Roanoke Island in Dare County, North Carolina, United States. It was named after Wanchese, the last known ruler of the Roanoke Native American tribe encountered by English colonists in the sixteenth century. The population was 1,642 at the 2010 census. Today, Wanchese is the center of commercial fishing and boatbuilding on the Outer Banks.
Thomas Harriot, also spelled Harriott, Hariot or Heriot, was an English astronomer, mathematician, ethnographer and translator to whom the theory of refraction is attributed. Thomas Harriot was also recognized for his contributions in navigational techniques, working closely with John White to create advanced maps for navigation. While Harriot worked extensively on numerous papers on the subjects of astronomy, mathematics and navigation, he remains obscure because he published little of it, namely only The Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588). This book includes descriptions of English settlements and financial issues in Virginia at the time. He is sometimes credited with the introduction of the potato to the British Isles. Harriot invented binary notation and arithmetic several decades before Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, but this remained unknown until the 1920's. He was also the first person to make a drawing of the Moon through a telescope, on 5 August 1609, about four months before Galileo Galilei.
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.
Roanoke Island Festival Park is a North Carolina state historic site located at the end of NC 400 in Manteo, North Carolina on Roanoke Island. The park includes a recreated 16th-century sailing ship, living history demonstrators, a museum, and a variety of performing and visual arts. Admission includes the main attractions and is valid for two days.
Durham House, also known as Durham Inn, was the historic London town house of the Bishop of Durham in the Strand. Its gardens descended to the River Thames.
Carolina Algonquian was an Algonquian language of the Eastern Algonquian subgroup formerly spoken in North Carolina, United States.
The Roanoke, also spelled Roanoac, were a Carolina Algonquian-speaking people whose territory comprised present-day Dare County, Roanoke Island, and part of the mainland at the time of English exploration and colonization. They were one of the numerous Carolina Algonquian tribes, which may have numbered 5,000 to 10,000 people in total in eastern North Carolina at the time of English encounter.
The Secotans were one of several groups of Native Americans dominant in the Carolina sound region, between 1584 and 1590, with which English colonists had varying degrees of contact. Secotan villages included the Secotan, Aquascogoc, Dasamongueponke, Pomeiock (Pamlico) and Roanoac. Other local groups included the Chowanoke, Weapemeoc, Chesapeake, Ponouike, Neusiok, and Mangoak (Tuscarora), and all resided along the banks of the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds. They spoke Carolina Algonquian language, an Eastern Algonquian language.
The Aquascogoc is the name given to a Native American tribe of Secotan people and also the name of a village encountered by English colonists during their late 16th century attempts to settle and establish permanent colonies in what is now North Carolina, known at the time as Virginia. Together with the rest of Secotan people they formed a part of the Native American group known as the Carolina Algonquian Indians, and spoke the now extinct Carolina Algonquian language. In 1585 the village of Aquascogoc was burned by Sir Richard Grenville, in retaliation for the alleged theft of a silver drinking vessel.
Simon Fernandes was a 16th-century Portuguese-born navigator and sometimes pirate who piloted the 1585 and 1587 English expeditions to found colonies on Roanoke island, part of modern-day North Carolina but then known as Virginia. Fernandes trained as a navigator in Spain at the famed Casa de Contratación in Seville, but later took up arms against the Spanish empire, preying upon Spanish shipping along with fellow pirate John Callis. Charged with piracy in 1577, he was saved from the hangman's noose by Sir Francis Walsingham, becoming a Protestant and a subject of the Queen of England. In 1578 Fernandes entered the service of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and later Sir Walter Raleigh, piloting the failed 1587 expedition to Roanoke, known to history as the "Lost Colony".
The Dasamongueponke is the name given to a Native American tribe of Secotan people and also the name of a village encountered by the English during their late 16th century attempts to settle and establish permanent colonies in what is now North Carolina, known at the time as Virginia. Together with the rest of Secotan people they formed a part of the Native American group known as the Carolina Algonquian Indians, and spoke the now extinct Carolina Algonquian language. Dasamongueponke in Carolina Algonquin means "where the extended land is surrounded by water.
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 native ally.
Wingina, also known as Pemisapan, was a Secotan weroance who was the first Native American leader to be encountered by English colonists in North America. During the late 16th century, English explorers Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe explored the region inhabited by Wingina and his people, detailing conflicts between Wingina's tribe, the Secotan and a rival tribe known as the Neusiok. When English colonization of the region began, relations between the colonists and the Secotan quickly broke down. On 1 June 1586, in an effort to gain more stocks of food for the colony, Sir Ralph Lane led an attack on the Secotan; Wingina was decapitated during the attack by one of Lane's men. This attack and crime doomed the Roanoke colony.
Philip Amadas (1550–1618) was a naval commander and explorer in Elizabethan England. Little is known from his early life, but he grew up within a wealthy merchant family in southwestern England. Amadas was instrumental in the early years of the English colonisation of North America. He served alongside Arthur Barlowe in the 1584 exploratory voyage to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Leaving on 27 April 1584, he captained the Bark Ralegh with Simon Fernandes as his master and pilot on the voyage. Fernandes is best known for his controversial decision to maroon the colonists of the infamous "Lost Colony" on Roanoke Island in 1587. The voyage of 1584 determined Roanoke Island as the location for the future colonies under the leadership of Sir Walter Raleigh. For his role in the Roanoke voyages of 1584 and 1585, Amadas was nominated Admiral of Virginia by Raleigh in 1585. When he returned to England to report their findings, the Queen named the country after herself, Virginia.
Raleigh was a Native American who was among the first to be brought to England from America in the late 16th-century. Living in the home of Sir Richard Grenville in Bideford, he was the first Native American on record to have a Christian conversion and an English burial site preceding Pocahontas.
