One of America’s most notorious mysteries occurred early in the country’s existence. The Roanoke people, who were among the first settlers of the New World, mysteriously disappeared without a single trace, and to this day, their disappearance remains unknown. However, throughout history, we have made some leads into solving this conundrum, but whether these leads are authentic or fake is another question we must first tackle.
In 1937, a tourist brought a rock with strange markings on it to geologists at Emory University. The Emory scholars deciphered the rock’s engravings and were shocked to discover the contents of the inscription. It was a plea from a grieving daughter named Eleanor Dare to her father Governor James White about the gruesome murders of her husband (Ananias Dare) and her child (the first English newborn in the New World). These scholars were certain that this rock was the missing piece of history for over 400 years and the Roanoke puzzle could finally be put to bed.
The rock goes into detail about how Indian shamans believed the settlers were cursed and began killing them over the span of 2 years. Dare explains how her child and husband are buried 4 miles from “The River.” The tourist says he found the stone 50 miles inland from Roanoke Island, where the settlement was located, which matches Governor White’s description that settlers planned to move 50 miles inland after these confrontations with Indians didn’t die down.
However, shortly after the authentication of this rock, a Georgia stonecutter discovered over 3-dozen more stones, claiming they too were written by Eleanor Dare. In 1940, Harvard historian Samuel Eliot Morison studied all of the rocks and declared that these new stones were all authentic as well and through these stones, we could piece together an entire story about the lost colony. However, a 1941 investigative article published by the Saturday Evening Post found that the Georgia stonecutter was a fraud, severely damaging the reputation of the Harvard historian.
For over 75 years, these stones were locked away. But recently, with new methods for identifying trace elements and isotopes being improved every day, these stones have emerged back out of the dark. And while a detailed chemical analysis of the carving’s crevices has yet to be completed, we can only hope that it will happen in the near future.
Matthew Champion of the Norfolk Medieval Graffiti Survey believes that the original stone is in fact authentic. The inscription is faded to the right degree for the duration of its existence (400+ years), and Champion believes artificially creating this faded text with chemicals would prove incredibly difficult. The faded text is something only nature could do so perfectly.
Heather Wolfe at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. analyzed high-resolution images of the stone’s texts and determined nothing jumps out as a forgery to her. Wolfe’s only doubt was the way Dare signs the inscription (she used her 3 initials EWD), as it is unusual for the time period she allegedly wrote this in.
However, there are plenty of skeptics. Diarmaid N.J. MacCulloh, a Tudor historian at Oxford University, believes that the initials, the usage of Arabic numerals, and several world choices throughout the inscription all point to fraud. MacCulloh seems to believe that these oddities all seem to point towards a counterfeit stone.
Matthew Champion perfectly sums up what needs to happen to put this debate to rest. He says we need a multidisciplinary study of the first stone with chemical analysis, epigraphy, and study Elizabethan inscriptions to determine whether the text on the stone is authentic or not. We, as history mystery lovers, can only hope that this analysis will be done in the near future.
Feature Image via Pixabay/GAEvans2
