The Lost Colony DNA Blog Nominates Melungeon Historical Society Blog for the Kreative Blogger Award

Since we've won the Kreative Blogger award, we also receive the honor of nominating other blogs. The Melungeon Historical Society has a creative and active blog run by MHS member, Dennis Maggard. This blog, professionally run by Dennis, has a large following, and is extremely useful for researchers. We are proud to announce we nominate the Melungeon Historical Society blog for the Kreative Blogger award.

In keeping with the spirit of the Kreative award, instead of telling seven things about the History Chaser bloggers, Janet Crain and Penny Ferguson, with Roberta Estes helping with this blog, we've chosen to tell you seven things about the Lost Colony.

1. In total there were 117 colonists. Of those, 18 were females.

2. Only 115 colonists sailed from England. Two babies were born here on
what would become American soil after they landed and before John White
left. He recorded them in his journal. One of course is the famous Virginia
Dare. The other is a child of unknown gender born after Virginia Dare's
birth to the Harvye (Harvie) family.

3. Of those 117 colonists, one is not lost. George Howe was murdered while
searching alone for crabs by unfriendly Indians in retribution for acts
committed by the military colonists on their previous expedition. Given
this, only 116 colonists were actually unaccounted for.

4. Of the colonists, 11 were children, including the two born after the
colonists' arrival. The children were Virginia Dare, the Harvie child,
Thomas Archard, Robert Ellis, George Howe, Thomas Humfrey, John Prat, John
Sampson, Thomas Smart, Ambrose Viccars, and William Wythers. Other than
Virginia Dare and perhaps the Harvye child, all of the children were males.
Of these children, Humfrey, Smart and Wythers seemed to be alone, or at
least there were no adults of the same surname along. These children may
have been with other family members, their mother may have been widowed or
remarried, or they may have been brought along as young servants. Of the
rest, 4 had surnames that matched those of other colonist males (Ellis,
Howe, Prat and Sampson) and 4 were with their parents (Archard, Dare,
Viccars, Harvye). No family had more than 1 child, probably indicating they
were young couples.

5. After subtracting George Howe, the women and children, there were 88
male colonists.

6. There were 8 couples, or at least we assume they were couples because
there were women whose surnames matched those of males colonists. In two
cases, we know they were couples because the births of their children were
recorded. In two other cases, we presume they were couples because there is
also a child of the same surname with them. This means where were 80
unattached males no mates.

7. Of the women, 8 appear on the colonist list with no males of the same
surname. None of the women have children, which would imply they are young,
or old, and of those two cases, young is much more likely. Assuming they
were all young, they would have been the most popular women on the
continent, as they were the only English women available for marriage.
Assuming each of them selected a husband, this leaves 72 adult male
colonists with no mates and at least 9 male children who could well have
been in their teens at the time of the sailing. The only available partners
would have been the Native women.

With the departure of John White and the unsuccessful rescue and resupply
expeditions in 1588 and 1590, at some point, the colonists would have given
up hope. Some probably took wives sooner than others, but eventually,
everyone who wanted any semblance of family life would have taken a Native
wife. The next English woman to reach maturity would have been Virginia
Dare, some 15 years later, assuming she lived.

The colonists told us where they went, to Croatoan, the home of the friendly
Indians, the birthplace of their friend Manteo. The colonists didn't leave
in distress as is evidenced by the lack of the maltese cross, a sign agreed
upon with John White. It's unlikely that they all perished and left no
descendants. Of course, eventually the original group would all pass, but
most likely, they left descendants who were part of the Croatoan tribe, who
would become the Hatteras Indians referenced by John Lawson in 1701, whose
ancestors were white people and talked in books, who wore European clothes,
who had grey eyes and English mannerisms. Perhaps the Lost Colonists were
only a matter of perspective, and were only lost to the English, and
therefore, of course, to history. We get closer with our research to
finding those colonists every day. Join the quest!




© History Chasers

Click here to view all recent Searching for the Lost Colony DNA Blog posts