Statewide County NcArchives History .....The Roanoke Colony Bill 1896
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Daily Charlotte Observer
28 Feb 1896

The Roanoke Colony Bill - The Ideas of Mr. Skinner as to the Celebration of 
the Anniversary of the First Settlement in America.

Washington, Feb. 26 - Representative Skinner of North Carolina has introduced 
a measure which is of sentimental and historical interest beyond the borders, 
even of the United States. It is a bill to provide for the commenoration of 
the landing of the first British American colony of Roanoke Island, North 
Carolina, on or about July 4th, 1584 (old style). The preamble states that "it 
is meet and proper that this remarkable event in the history of our race upon 
this continent should be fitly commemorated and honor done to the names of 
those whose enterprise and courage achieved it." 

This colony of Sir Walter Raleigh was abortive, it is true, as was the 
succeeding attempts down to that at Jamestown, but the priority of the Roanoke 
colony over all other Anglo-Saxon colonies in the hemisphere should be noted 
as working off the beginning of a colonization which has borne such grand 
fruit. There is a romantic association, too, with the spot and the fate of the 
lost colony of a succeeding year, Gov. White's.

The only clue to the latter - that is certain clue - is the statement of the 
cultured secretary of the Virginia colony, Strachey, who in his work of 1609, 
entitled "Virginia Britannia" briefly referred to the facts which he intended 
in a subsequent book to set out fully. This latter work, it is believed, never 
saw the light, or if it did is not included in the historical collections, 
Hakluyt's, which contain the "Virginia Britannia." Strachey says that the 
colonists went up a river whose Indian name he gives and which is supposed to 
be the Roanoke, and, uniting with the Indians, built two-story houses, some of 
them of stone, inter-married with the redskins, and gradually became 
amalgamated. 

The traditions of the Croatan tribe, now residing in southeastern (Cape Fear) 
North Carolina point to these colonists as their ancestors. The Croatans 
created a tremendous sensation years ago by an outbreak which had its origin 
in the effort to protect from the authorities a murderous outlaw, one of their 
kinsmen, named Henry Berry Lowery.

But to return to the bill. Provision is made for a joint committee of three 
Senators and five Representatives, to be selected by the presiding officers of 
the two houses of Congress, who are appointed to prepare a design and arrange 
for the erection of a suitable monument or column at or near the spot where 
Raleigh's first colony landed. They are likewise to procure sufficient ground 
and cause to be placed on the monument erected such inscriptions as will 
properly commemorate the great event and the heroic actors in the same.

The bill appropriates $12,000 or so much as may be necessary for the purpose, 
to be expended under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior. The 
corner stone is to be laid the 4th of July, 1896, in the presence of the joint 
committee of Congress, the Governors of Virginia, North Carolina and South 
Carolina (the States which constitute the "Virginia" of the early charters and 
first settlers) and such officers of the executive departments as the 
President may see proper to designate. Not more than $2,000 shall be expended 
in defraying the actual expenses of the persons named as witnesses in the 
ceremonies of laying the corner stone. It may be added that in all probability 
invitations will be extended to the Governors of all the original States, 
possibly of all the States now composing the United States of American, whose 
auspicious beginning is thus sought to be celebrated.


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