Roanoke Mystery

Picture of a man in a suit wearing gloves holding a stone inscribed with text
Geologist Ed Schrader, president of Brenau University, holds one of dozens of so-called Dare stones debunked in the early 1940s.

Eric Doehne, a Los Angeles art conservator who analyzed the Dead Sea Scrolls and Sistine Chapel frescoes, says that new methods for identifying trace elements and isotopes, as well as ultraviolet and multispectral photography, could help determine the truth of the stone’s message.

Eric Doehne, a Los Angeles art conservator who analyzed the Dead Sea Scrolls and Sistine Chapel frescoes, says that new methods for identifying trace elements and isotopes, as well as ultraviolet and multispectral photography, could help determine the truth of the stone’s message.

They told a gothic story of a nightmarish trek by Eleanor and the remaining colonists, ending not far from what is now Atlanta, Georgia.

When a team of Emory scholars deciphered the carved message, they were stunned to find a heartrending plea from a grieving daughter to her father, detailing the bloody murder of her husband and child—and potentially solving the nation’s oldest mystery.

By then, Emory officials had grown skeptical of the first stone’s authenticity after the tourist could not be located, and the rock was transferred to Brenau College outside Atlanta.

Citing the initials, the use of Arabic numerals, and several word choices unlikely to have been in Eleanor Dare’s repertoire, Diarmaid N.J.

Tragedy struck when Indian shamans warned that the spirits were angry and all the remaining English, save seven, were abruptly killed.

Brenau’s Schrader hopes to organize such a study in the near future to see, once and for all, whether the message writ on rock is one of America’s most important artifacts—or a remarkable fake that duped some of the country’s most respected scholars.

Married to Ananias Dare, Eleanor gave birth to Virginia—the first English child born in the New World—shortly after the English colonists landed on Roanoke Island.