Course Sample for Our American History for Beginners Homeschool Curriculum

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Sir Walter Raleigh and Roanoke Island

Have you ever heard of the ‘Lost Colony?’ The Lost Colony of Roanoke Island has been a mystery for 425 years. To learn more about it, you will need to become an explorer yourself! Imagine – you are on a ship sent by Sir Walter Raleigh. Destination – the New World!

A little background information is necessary before your trip: Walter Raleigh was born in England around 1552 to a wealthy merchant family. Some accounts of his life say he was homeschooled by his half-brother. He studied at Oxford University, served in the Huguenot army, and studied law. He was a good friend of Queen Elizabeth I. There is a legend that one day the Queen was traveling by coach through the streets. Raleigh was there, and when the Queen stepped out of her coach, he threw his cloak over the mud puddles to keep her feet and skirts clean. She gave him money and land, but when he wanted to sail to new countries to explore, the Queen wouldn’t let him go. She knighted him in 1585, making him Sir Walter Raleigh. He organized three different trips to America.

Historians don’t agree on if Raleigh personally came to the New World. The first trip he organized was in 1578, and he (or the people he sent) scouted out the area of what we call North Carolina and south into Florida. He named the region Virginia in honor of his Queen Elizabeth, the “Virgin Queen,” which means the Queen who had never married.

He sent a second expedition of colonists to settle at Roanoke Island. After a difficult winter on the island, the colonists had problems with the nearby Indians and were also threatened by Spain. When Sir Francis Drake showed up to bring them supplies, they told him how hard their life was and he took them back to England in the summer of 1586.