L O OK B AC K
SET IN
STONE A 19th-century sculptress created a marble statue of Virginia Dare that defied historical records – and took more than a century to find its place on Roanoke Island.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY BRITTON RICKETTS STORY BY AMELIA BOLDAJI
V
irginia Dare is remembered as the first English child born on New World soil, and a marble statue bearing her name in a quiet corner of Roanoke Island’s Elizabethan Gardens does nothing to dispel that account. But the oft-told story of Virginia most commonly begins and ends with her birth – shortly thereafter she vanished along with the Roanoke Island colony of 1587, fatefully immortalized by virtue of her infancy. The statue in the gardens is not that Virginia Dare. Wearing an expression of both confidence and calm, this Dare is a full-grown woman. With arms lightly crossed and a bent knee, she’s simply adorned by a few strands of beads and a slight covering of fishnet that drapes just above the bowed neck of a heron. This Virginia is self-possessed with only the slightest suggestion of mystery. She’s also a radical reimagining of the stories that have long defined her history – a bold creation that was made possible by the imagination of a young woman with virtually no prior connection to Dare, the colonies, or even the island that this statue now calls home. continued on page 20
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Louisa Landers’ Virginia Dare sculpture in its permanent home amongst the oaks at The Elizabethan Gardens. Photo by Elizabeth Neal.
