In 1587 John White brought a colony to Roanoke Island. The National Park Service gives 117 or 118 people; NCpedia says about 150. [3][5][6]

White sailed home that August and did not return until 1590. He found “CROATOAN” carved on a post and no sign of distress. [2]

Croatoan was a place and a people: Manteo’s Carolina Algonquian community on what is now Hatteras Island. [5][9]

Digs have found English objects, none firmly tied to the colonists. [5]

July 1585. White draws the Algonquian towns. On an earlier voyage, White drew the town of Pomeioc and its people, then Secotan. [10]

May 8, 1587. The colony leaves Plymouth. The plan was to go on to “the Bay of Chesepiok, where we intended to make our seate and forte.” [1]

July 22, 1587. Arrival at Hatorask. The fleet’s captain, Simon Fernandes, refused to take them farther, so they stayed on Roanoke Island. [1][3]

July 28, 1587. George Howe is killed. White wrote that Howe, one of the twelve Assistants, was slain. The people of Croatoan later said the attackers were “the remnant of Wingina his men” from Dasamonquepeuk. [1]

August 1587. A raid on the wrong people. An English reprisal struck people who had come “from Croatoan to gather the corne,” friends of the colony. The NPS says it “was only stopped by Manteo.” [1][3]

August 13, 1587. Manteo is christened. By Raleigh’s order he was christened on Roanoke and named its lord. [1][6]

August 18, 1587. Virginia Dare is born. White’s daughter Elenor, wife of Ananias Dare, “was delivered of a daughter in Roanoak,” named Virginia as “the first Christian borne in Virginia.” She was christened August 24. [1][7]

August 27, 1587. White leaves. The colonists wrote that they had “incessantly requested” him to go to England for them. They meant “to remove 50 miles further up into the maine.” [1][3]

1588. In the Armada year, White sailed with two small ships and 15 new settlers, but attacks at sea forced them home. [4][6]

March 7, 1589. A new agreement. Raleigh reached an agreement with White and London merchants to fund the effort. [6]

March 20, 1590. White sails again. He left Plymouth with the Hopewell, the John Evangelist and the Little John. [2]

August 15, 1590. Smoke. Anchored at Hatorask, they “saw a great smoke rise in the Ile Roanoak neere the place where I left our Colony.” [2]

August 17, 1590. Seven drowned. A boat overturned: “They were a 11 in all, & 7 of the chiefest were drowned.” That night the men saw a fire and sang “many familiar English tunes,” but “had no answere.” [2]

August 18, 1590. CRO and CROATOAN. It was Virginia Dare’s third birthday. [6] On a tree were “curiously carved these fair Romane letters C R O.” Inside “a high palisado of great trees,” on a post, was “graven CROATOAN without any crosse or signe of distresse.” His chests were dug up, his “bookes torne from the covers.” Still, he “greatly joyed” at this token of “their safe being at Croatoan, which is the place where Manteo was borne.” [2]

Late August 1590. No search of Croatoan. A storm left them “but one Cable and Anchor left us of foure.” The plan to sail to Croatoan was dropped. They reached Plymouth on October 24. [2]

About 1606. White dies. The NPS says he died, possibly in Ireland, around 1606. [4]

The map patches, 2012. After a First Colony Foundation inquiry, British Museum curators examined two paper patches on White’s map. Under one, where the Roanoke and Chowan rivers join Albemarle Sound, lay “a large ‘fort’ symbol in bright red and bright blue.” [11][12]

Site X and Site Y, from 2013. Foundation archaeologists led by Nick Luccketti found English pottery of the period in Bertie County. In 2015 the Foundation suggested only “a small group of survivors.” It now says Site X and a larger Site Y upriver were farms of the colony and that “The Lost Colony is Found!” The NPS says the artifacts “have not been definitively linked to the Lost Colony.” [5][12][18]

Cape Creek, Hatteras Island. Mark Horton of the University of Bristol and the Croatoan Archaeological Society reported a rapier handle, a writing slate and a Nuremberg counter. Horton said: “These are still just clues, we have no smoking-gun proof that the colonists survived into the 17th century.” National Geographic reported that many colleagues were skeptical. [13][14]

The Dare Stones, 1937 to 1941. Forty-eight stones purporting to carry the survivors’ messages surfaced from 1937 to 1940. On April 26, 1941, Boyden Sparkes called them a hoax in the Saturday Evening Post. NCpedia says most were faked, but the first, the Chowan River Stone, “has the potential to have been inscribed during the era of the colonists.” [15]

Croatoan. The carved word points to Hatteras Island. The NPS notes that objects found there may have come through trade, and that the island “may not have been able to support an additional 117 people.” [5]

Inland. The hidden fort and Site X fit the plan to move “50 miles” inland, but no graves or buildings have been found. [1][5]

Killed or absorbed. Jamestown colonists heard the Lost Colonists had died in a battle. Others propose that survivors joined Native communities; one theory names them among the ancestors of the Lumbee. [5][6]

Hurricane, drought, or Spain. The NPS lists these too, noting the buildings were taken down, not destroyed, and that Vicente Gonzalez sailed into the area in 1588. [5]

The “curse.” No source documents a curse. The episode frames it this way: “its curse seems to be how often we repeat the story without really hearing what it says about the foundations of this country.” [17] A later legend, retold by NCpedia, has Virginia Dare raised by Manteo’s people and turned into a white doe. [16]

Still unknown. The NPS says “no one has definitively proven what happened.” [5]