Virginia Dare

Virginia's death and the fate of the other colonists were purportedly described in a series of inscribed stones written by Eleanor Dare and others. Most of these were later revealed to be forgeries, with the authenticity of one remaining in dispute.[22]

Reverse of a commemorative 1937 US half-dollar coin, depicting Eleanor and Virginia Dare

In 1937, the United States Mint issued a half-dollar commemorative coin that depicted Virginia Dare as the first English child born in the New World. This was also the first time that a child was depicted on United States currency.[23][24]

Illustration from Virginia Dare: A Romance of the Sixteenth Century, 19th century novel by Mrs. E.A.B. Shackelford loosely based on the life of Virginia Dare

Virginia Dare quickly entered into folklore as the first white child born in British America. The fate of Virginia Dare and the Lost Colony has been the subject of many literary, film, and television adaptations, all of which have added to her myth:

• One of the first was Cornelia Tuthill's 1840 novel Virginia Dare, or the Colony of Roanoke, in which Virginia marries a Jamestown settler. Virginia Dare met the Indian princess Pocahontas in E.A.B. Shackleford's 1892 novel Virginia Dare: A Romance of the Sixteenth Century. Virginia Dare was the main character in Sallie Southall Cotten's 1901 book in verse The White Doe: The Fate of Virginia Dare. In the book, she is turned into a white doe by an Indian witch doctor after she rejects his advances. When her true love, an Indian warrior, shoots her with a silver arrow, she turns back into a woman just before she dies in his arms. Cotten has asserted, however, that the tale of Dare as the White Doe had survived for some three centuries as part of colonial folklore.[25] In the 1908 novel The Daughter of Virginia Dare, author Mary Virginia Wall made Pocahontas the daughter of Virginia Dare. In Herbert Bouldin Hawes' 1930 novel The Daughter of the Blood, Virginia Dare is involved in a romantic triangle with John Smith and Pocahontas.
• Neil Gaiman has extended this story in his comic book series 1602, where a Native American named Rojhaz meets Virginia Dare when she is about twelve, and an artifact of his travels causes her to transform into a series of white creatures whenever she is in danger. The storyline ends when Peter Parquagh and Virginia Dare head home to her father to plot the rescue of those left in England. In later stories in the 1602 universe (much like the figure of legend), when attempting to flee in the form of a white doe, she is shot by Master Norman Osborne and reverts to human form in front of Peter before dying.
• Other authors have given the myth a fantasy twist. In Margaret Peterson Haddix's novel "Sabotaged", a girl finds out that she herself is actually Virginia Dare. In Philip José Farmer's 1965 novel Dare, Virginia and the other Lost Colonists are abducted by aliens and settled on a planet called Dare. In 1969, Steve Cannon wrote Groove, Bang and Jive Around, in which Virginia Dare is one of two stewardesses aboard the Statecraft One who engages in a wild orgy with Annette, the foxy adolescent girl from New Orleans, and Estavanico, "Little Stevie" to some, the flight engineer. Near the end, in the land of Oobladee, she is eventually magically transformed into a frail, old woman with a cane, who explains the reasons for which she was left to explore much darker horizons, sexually. Ultimately, she falls to the floor as a pile of ashes. Virginia Dare appears in Mark Chadbourn's fantasy trilogy Kingdom of the Serpent, comprising the novels Jack of Ravens, The Burning Man, and Destroyer of Worlds. She is kidnapped along with the other Roanoke colonists and taken to the Celtic Otherworld, the home of all myth and legend. She plays a key role in the final volume of the trilogy. A woman named Virginia Dare appears in Gregory Keyes' fantasy novel The Briar King. Keyes uses several hints and word clues to indicate this character is meant to be the historical figure. In Volume I of Tales of the Slayer, a horror story collection set in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe, Virginia Dare appears as the vampire slayer "White Doe", an English girl adopted by the Croatoan Indians. She is turned into a white doe by a wizard of the tribe when she rejects his advances. Her true love, Seal of the Ocean, finds her but later kills her because he does not recognize her as a deer.
• Dare is the main villain in the short-lived television show FreakyLinks. Inspired by The X-Files and The Blair Witch Project, it follows a young man who takes over his twin brother's paranormal website, Freakylinks, after his death. It is later found that his brother's death was related to his investigations into the lost colony of Roanoke. It is implied that Virginia Dare was a demon who destroyed the colonists, either directly or indirectly. However, the show was canceled before the end of the first season, and the mystery was never resolved.
• In the 2007 made-for-TV movie on the SciFi Channel, Wraiths of Roanoke, Virginia Dare is the sole survivor after the colony is wiped out by Old Norse ghosts, or wraiths, who had died on the island centuries earlier but failed to achieve transit to Valhalla. In the movie the infant Virginia, whose innocence is needed by the wraiths, is used by her father to lure the wraiths onto a flaming raft set adrift for a Viking funeral. The last act of Ananias is to cast Virginia away from the raft in a wicker basket. She is found and adopted by the mainland Indians the next day.
• In The Necromancer, the fourth book in Michael Scott's "Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel" series, Virginia Dare was introduced as an immortal who disables her enemies with charms from a magic flute. It is later revealed in the story that her father is the one who carved the word "Croatoan" onto the fence post and part of the tree.
• In Sabotaged, the third book of the "Missing Series" by Margaret Peterson Haddix, Virginia Dare is a missing child from history who had been kidnapped by one of the evil villains when she was a child, but then accidentally landed in the twenty-first century. The main characters, Jonah and Katherine, are sent back into time, again, to return her to the colony. However Andrea (also called Virginia) is tricked by a mysterious character named Second to sabotage the mission. The book takes place in Roanoke Island and they eventually travel to Croatoan Island.
• In the 2011 faux-Southern Gothic show The Heart, She Holler the town matriarch, commonly referred to as "Meemaw", is named Virginia Dare. In Season 3 it is confirmed that she is the actual Virginia Dare, "the first white person born on this continent". Her birth so offended the gods of the indigenous peoples that she was "cursed" with immortality and various psychic powers including but not limited to telekinesis, extrasensory perception, and unexplained reality bending powers.
• She is a character in the novel The Last American Vampire written by Seth Grahame-Smith.
• She is mentioned in the Sleepy Hollow season 1 episode John Doe, which features the lost Roanoake colony.

Virginia Dare Tobacco, label, circa 1871

Virginia Dare Flavoring Extracts

Virginia Dare's name has become a tourist attraction for North Carolina. Many locations are named after her, including Dare County, North Carolina; the Virginia Dare Trail, a section of NC 12; Virginia Dare Memorial Bridge, the second, newest, and widest bridge spanning the Croatan Sound connecting Roanoke Island to Manns Harbor, carrying US 64. Residents of Roanoke Island celebrate Virginia Dare's birthday each year with an Elizabethan Renaissance fair. A statue of Virginia as a grown woman, nude and wrapped in a fishnet,[26][27] is on display in the Elizabethan Gardens on the island.[12] At Smith Mountain Lake, a reservoir in Virginia created by damming the Roanoke River, there is an active tour boat named Virginia Dare.

Virginia Dare's name has also been used to sell a number of products. Virginia Dare was the name of the first commercial wine to sell after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933.[28] The Virginia Dare Extract Company, a maker of vanilla products, sells its products with a symbol of Virginia as a fresh-faced, blonde girl wearing a white ruffled mob cap. The company's Web site notes that Virginia Dare symbolizes "wholesomeness and purity".[29] In Rancho Cucamonga, California, a now-defunct winery called Virginia Dare is on the corner of Haven Avenue and Foothill Boulevard (U.S. Route 66).