Dare Stones
The Dare Stones are a series of stones inscribed with messages supposedly written by members of the lost Roanoke Colony, allegedly discovered in various places across the Southeastern United States in the late 1930s. The colonists were last seen on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North Carolina, in August 1587, and the mystery of their disappearance has since become a part of American folklore. The stones created a media circus in the United States, as the public became fascinated with the possible resolution of the Lost Colony's fate.
A total of 48 Dare Stones are catalogued at Brenau University in Gainesville, Georgia, although additional stones were also reported. Nearly all of the inscriptions in the Brenau collection purport to be messages from Lost Colonist Eleanor Dare to her father, the colony's governor John White, who had left for England in 1587 and returned three years later to discover all of the colonists missing. Taken together, the messages compose a narrative describing the fate of the missing colonists between 1591 and 1603, in which they are said to have migrated from Roanoke to the Chattahoochee River Valley near present-day Atlanta, Georgia, in September 1587.
The first stone was reported in 1937 by Louis E. Hammond, who claimed to have found it near the Chowan River. The inscription referred to another stone marking a mass grave, prompting an intense search. The other 47 stones at Brenau, presented in response to a reward offer, were of a markedly different style; all of these were eventually connected to Georgia stonecutter Bill Eberhardt and discredited. By 1941 scholars and the press had dismissed all of the Dare Stones as hoaxes, although the authenticity of Hammond's stone has not been conclusively proven or disproven.
Background
The settlement now known as "The Lost Colony" was England's second attempt to colonize the Virginia territory in North America, following the failure of Ralph Lane's 1585 Roanoke settlement. The colonists arrived at Roanoke in July 1587, with John White as the appointed governor. Their intended destination was the Chesapeake Bay, but the crew of the expedition refused to take them farther than Roanoke. Hostilities between Lane's colony and the mainland Secotan tribe made Roanoke a dangerous choice for a new colony, although White's group was able to renew friendly relations with the Croatan on nearby Croatoan Island.According to White, the settlers had already discussed plans to relocate "50 miles further up into the maine," referring to Albemarle Sound, which would place the new location near the mouth of the Chowan River. When the fleet prepared to leave in August, the colonists persuaded White to accompany it back to England, to arrange a resupply mission in 1588. They expected White to return the following year, but the Anglo–Spanish War delayed his return until 1590, by which time he found the Roanoke settlement dismantled, abandoned, and surrounded by fortifications. White discovered the word "CROATOAN" carved into a post of the village palisade, but was unable to follow this lead, as poor weather forced a search of the island to be hastily abandoned. Subsequent investigations into the area were limited, and frustrated by storms and the dangerous waters of the Outer Banks.
In 1612, William Strachey wrote that the Lost Colonists and the Chesepians were slaughtered by the Powhatan tribe shortly before the founding of Jamestown in 1607. According to this account, the Powhatan leader Wahunsenacawh was warned by his priests about a nation that would one day arise from the Chesapeake Bay to threaten his tribe, and therefore the massacre was carried out to avert the prophecy. Strachey reported that seven surviving colonists – four men, two boys, and a young woman – fled up the Chowan River, where they were captured by another tribe and kept in a place called "Ritanoe" to beat copper. Strachey's theory was widely accepted in the mid-to-late 20th century, although historians have since questioned the objectivity of his sources and his agenda against Wahunsenacawh. In any event, the details of Strachey's account would not have been easily familiar to most Americans in the 1930s.
The story of the Lost Colony became popular in the United States following several dramatic accounts published in the 1830s. Eleanor Dare's daughter, Virginia Dare, who was the first child born in an English colony in the New World, became an iconic figure, and celebrations of her birthday became a major North Carolina tourist attraction. In 1937, a Paul Green play, The Lost Colony, debuted on Roanoke Island. President Franklin D. Roosevelt attended a performance on Virginia Dare's 350th birthday.
The Chowan River Dare Stone
On November 8, 1937, Louis E. Hammond visited Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, with a 21-pound stone, asking for help to interpret the markings on it. Hammond claimed to be a California tourist traveling the country with his wife. He said he found the stone in August 1937 by the east bank of the Chowan River, in Chowan County, North Carolina.On one side the stone reads:
The other side elaborates:
The inscription was interpreted as a message from Eleanor White Dare providing an update on the state of the Lost Colonists to her father, John White.
A group of Emory professors, including Haywood Pearce Jr., traveled with Hammond to the site where he claimed to have discovered the stone. They could not determine the precise location of the find, but the trip convinced the professors that Hammond was a reliable source. Emory announced the find on November 14, 1937.
Pearce published his findings in the May 1938 issue of The Journal of Southern History. "The authenticity of this stone," he wrote, "can never be fully and finally established without further corroborative evidence." Nevertheless, he argued that the content of the stone was consistent with Strachey's account of seven survivors of a supernaturally-motivated massacre, who escaped up the Chowan River. He also explained that the spelling conformed to expectations of Elizabethan orthography, and that the necessary tools for such an inscription were likely to have been in the possession of the colonists.
Further stones discovered
Because Hammond's stone alluded to a rock marking a burial site, rumors swirled about Virginia Dare's tombstone. Pearce felt that locating this second stone would solidify the legitimacy of the first, and create a legacy for the person who found it. When Emory declined to purchase the Chowan River stone from Hammond in 1938, Pearce made his own offer with backing from Brenau, which was owned by his father, Haywood Pearce Sr. Pearce, his father, and his stepmother Lucille all made several trips to Edenton, North Carolina, to conduct surveys and excavations in 1938 and 1939. To raise awareness in the local community, they spoke before community organizations, and offered a reward of to anyone that could produce the second stone.At least two North Carolina men – T. E. Chappell of Tyner, and Tom Shallington of Tyrell County – came forward purporting to have found the stone the Pearces were looking for. However, there is no record of the Pearces examining either claim, and the stones were never added to the Brenau collection.
Bush River stones
In May 1939, Bill Eberhardt made several visits to Brenau to deliver stones he claimed to have found at a hill near Greenville County, South Carolina, near the town of Pelzer. Initially, his finds were dismissed until the Pearces showed him Hammond's stone, and explained what writing they expected to find on the stone they were seeking. Shortly thereafter, Eberhardt produced a stone that fit their description. The Pearces quickly set out to purchase the hill, although Eberhardt claimed to have already removed every stone with writing from the site.Eberhardt, a Fulton County, Georgia backwoodsman, claimed to be a stonecutter by trade, and he was later found to have a history of selling counterfeit Native American relics. Nevertheless, as he had only a third-grade education, the Pearces evidently believed he was not intelligent enough to perpetrate a hoax. As a test, they offered him a choice between the original $500 reward or $100 in cash plus a 50% stake in whatever was excavated from the hill. Eberhardt chose the latter, which reassured the Pearces that he genuinely believed his finds indicated some great archaeological value in the site.
The thirteen stones Eberhardt purportedly found in Greenville County were added to Brenau's collection, becoming Dare Stones Numbers 2–14. The inscriptions on the new stones were noticeably very different from that of Hammond's, with large, mixed-case letters in a loose, rounded style. They also indicated that the 1591 massacre described by the Chowan River stone had occurred in South Carolina, approximately from the Chowan River. Pearce Jr., attempted to rationalize this by suggesting that Stone Number 1 was inscribed in Greenville County and then carried to Chowan County by a Native American courier.
Hall County, Georgia stone
Dare Stone Number 2 contains the text "Father wee goe sw". The Pearces reasoned that a southwestern course would lead the colonists along the Chattahoochee River into present-day Georgia, and asked Eberhart to look for more stones there.This strategy was seemingly confirmed when Dare Stone Number 15 was reported in July 1939 by Isaac Turner of Atlanta. Turner claimed to have found his stone in Hall County, Georgia back in March, prior to the Pearces' dealings with Eberhardt. The Turner stone resembled Eberhardt's finds, and claimed the Lost Colonists "pvtt moche clew bye waye" for John White to find.