Dare Stones

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.

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Dare Stones

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