In the summer of 1587, more than 100 English settlers arrived on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North Carolina. They hoped to establish a permanent English colony in the New World. Among them were families, skilled workers, and a woman named Eleanor Dare, who would give birth to Virginia Dare, the first English child known to have been born in the Americas to English parents. Then, within a few years, the settlement disappeared from the historical record in one of the most enduring mysteries in American history. When the colony’s governor, John White, returned in 1590…
