On August 18, 1587, on a tiny island off the coast of what is now North Carolina, a baby girl was born inside a wooden fort. Her parents, Ananias and Eleanor Dare, were English settlers who had sailed from London just months earlier. Her grandfather, John White, was the governor of the new colony. They named her Virginia, because she was the very first English child ever born in the Americas.
The little colony on Roanoke Island had big dreams but big problems. Food was running low. Supplies hadn't arrived. So when Virginia was only nine days old, her grandfather got on a ship and sailed back to England to fetch help. He promised he'd be back soon. He had no idea it would take three long years to return because of a war with Spain that kept all English ships home.
When John White finally sailed back to Roanoke in August 1590, the fort was empty. The settlers, including baby Virginia, were gone. The only clue was the word 'CROATOAN' carved into a wooden post. No bodies, no signs of a fight, just silence. Historians, archaeologists, and explorers have been trying to solve the mystery of the Lost Colony ever since. Did the settlers join a friendly Native American tribe? Move inland and start over? More than 400 years later, no one knows for sure. Virginia Dare became the first English-American baby and also America's oldest missing person.
