0 comment Wednesday, November 26, 2014 | admin
''Let us not become vanished Americans.''
It's a little corny, but that was the concluding sentence of a piece I posted here on this date in 2007. Every August 18, since I began this blog in 2006, I've written a little piece on Virginia Dare, whose birthday this is. Virginia Dare, as I am sure most of you who read this blog know, was the first English child born in North America. Those of you who know the story will remember that Virginia along with her parents, Ananias and Eleanor Dare, who were part of the Roanoke Colony in the late 15th century, disappeared. Their fate is not known for certain, unto this day.
As I wrote in the 2007 piece,
... I wonder if we in a sense are not the lost colony of our time; will future archeologists and historians wonder what happened to us and our colony? Will they ask what happened to those European interlopers who lived here for 400-some years, and then vanished, along with their way of life?
Some may think this hyperbole, but if present demographic trends continue, we will one day be quite outnumbered, as those 113 or so English men and women and children were outnumbered by the Indians. Numbers matter. History has lessons for us, if we can decipher them and heed them.
But for the time being at least we are still here, and there is still hope for us. Let's not become another footnote in history like the Lost Colony. Let us not become the Vanished Americans.''
I'd like to encourage you to read James Fulford's annual piece on Virginia Dare over at the namesake webzine, VDare.
Nicholas Stix's piece on Virginia Dare, from his blog, is worth reading if you have not yet seen it.
It's a little corny, but that was the concluding sentence of a piece I posted here on this date in 2007. Every August 18, since I began this blog in 2006, I've written a little piece on Virginia Dare, whose birthday this is. Virginia Dare, as I am sure most of you who read this blog know, was the first English child born in North America. Those of you who know the story will remember that Virginia along with her parents, Ananias and Eleanor Dare, who were part of the Roanoke Colony in the late 15th century, disappeared. Their fate is not known for certain, unto this day.
As I wrote in the 2007 piece,
... I wonder if we in a sense are not the lost colony of our time; will future archeologists and historians wonder what happened to us and our colony? Will they ask what happened to those European interlopers who lived here for 400-some years, and then vanished, along with their way of life?
Some may think this hyperbole, but if present demographic trends continue, we will one day be quite outnumbered, as those 113 or so English men and women and children were outnumbered by the Indians. Numbers matter. History has lessons for us, if we can decipher them and heed them.
But for the time being at least we are still here, and there is still hope for us. Let's not become another footnote in history like the Lost Colony. Let us not become the Vanished Americans.''
I'd like to encourage you to read James Fulford's annual piece on Virginia Dare over at the namesake webzine, VDare.
Nicholas Stix's piece on Virginia Dare, from his blog, is worth reading if you have not yet seen it.
Labels: American History, Colonial America, Lost Colony