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History
May 28, 2007 14:46:38 GMT -5
Post by Rylan Avery on May 28, 2007 14:46:38 GMT -5
We all know the myth about the Roanoke colony, right? Founded in 1585, 22 years before Jamestown, and 37 years before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts, the Roanoke colony was developed by Sir Walter Raleigh. This colony was run by Ralph Lane after Sir Richard Grenville was forced to return to Britain for supplies, as the colonists were running low. (Grenville had first transported the colonists to Virginia when they originally came). Grenville's return was delayed, and as a result, when Sir Francis Drake put in at Roanoke after destroying the Spanish colony of St. Augustine, the entire colony returned with Drake to England. Drake left behind about 15 of his own men, who supposedly were never heard of again. This foreshadowed a large mystery of North America, Roanoke's so-called "Lost Colony" consisting of 90 men, 17 women and 9 children, founded in 1587, and discovered to be missing in 1590. When John White returned to the colony, it was deserted, and on one of the palisades (fence-like structure) he found the word "CROATOAN", and the letters "CRO" carved in a nearby tree. Although both the English and the Spanish searched for clues to the colony's disappearance for many years, the mystery has never been solved.
As for the history of the school, no one would build upon the original colony, by which they believed was bad luck. The land stood idle for a couple hundred years, until a man by the name of William Caine decided to buy it in he late 1800's and make an academy of it. It remained strictly a boarding school for boys until the 1950's. The academy was then converted into Roanoke Preparatory Academy, and both boys and girls were admitted. William Caine died shortly before the academy switched into a cross-gender school, and one of his children mysteriously went missing. This boy, only about five years of age, returned to the Academy when he turned twenty, claiming he found people that resembled the earlier colonists, the ones who had dissapeared. He said they had gray eyes, a trait only the Natives around the time of the dissapearance had. Historians investigated, but found nothing, and the man was sent to a mental institution. His children however, would rather have forgotten what their father said about the neighboring community. However, the mystery of what happened on the turf still lingers. If you're lucky, you might catch a glimpse of the exact tree the letters were carved in, and perhaps uncover a mystery of the unknown.
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