A map in the British Museum holds an intriguing clue

By Jay Price
jprice@newsobserver.com

Posted: Thursday, May. 03, 2012

"La Virginea Pars”, a map of the east coast of North America (c. 1585-87) produced by the Elizabethan artist and gentleman, John White (P&D 1906,0509.1.3, c. British Museum).

CHAPEL HILL Scholars on both sides of the Atlantic have uncovered perhaps the strongest clue in more than 420 years to North Carolina’s biggest mystery.

Researchers at the British Museum in London, prompted by questions from an amateur historian who teaches economic development at UNC-Chapel Hill, found a symbol hidden for centuries under a patch on an Elizabethan map that could show where the settlers of the Lost Colony went after they vanished in 1587.

The missing colonists, it turns out, may have moved to what is now an Arnold Palmer-designed golf course in Bertie County.

The discovery was announced Thursday at UNC’s Wilson Library by a panel from a Durham-based group of historians and archaeologists named the First Colony Foundation and two scholars at the British Museum, who appeared via video webcast.

"La Virginea Pars”, a map of the east coast of North America (c. 1585-87) produced by the Elizabethan artist and gentleman, John White (P&D 1906,0509.1.3, c. British Museum). Read more here