The first white settler ever born in colonial America was a young girl named Virginia Dare. Last seen by anyone in recorded history as just a baby, her name is put to record during the time period after her grandfather John White returned to England for supplies. Upon his return to her home in the Roanoke Colony, she and every other member of the one hundred plus member village were gone.
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| Marvel 1602's Virginia Dare, illustrated by Andy Kubert. |
To this day, no one knows what happened to Virginia or any other member of the Roanoke Colony. Both the baby and the colony have entered popular culture as the first great mystery of American history.
Over the 530 years since the Roanoke Colony vanished, Virginia has appeared across multiple media forms from Neil Gaiman's Marvel 1602 to the Adrian Paul SciFi Channel film Wraiths of Roanoke. She's portrayed as an often tragic figure, the tiny girl that doesn't really get a chance at life. Often she ends up the only survivor of her colony by some fate and is brought elsewhere to learn and grow.
Yet as I look at her as a character from folklore, my immediate thought is very different. Why would the first white settler born in the nascent United States be good and pure? What if she's the literal representation of the corruptions of colonization? If Virginia Dare survived, why wouldn't she serve to show the inescapability of that corruption, or even become the bearer of it herself.
This is the two hundred twenty-five year old woman that plays a central role in The Hidden War. She makes her debut next month on Patreon, in Book Two of that feature. I hope you'll come see.
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