Virginia Dare Descendants Descend on Manteo

The Société of the Tribe of Dare has announced their annual gathering will be held at Ft. Raleigh in August 2017.

Members of the Société all claim direct lineage to Virginia Dare, the first European anchor baby born in America in 1587. Virginia was an adorable bundle of joy, six pounds, eleven ounces at birth and 1.2 cubits long, though a significant portion of that weight dropped off due to a general lack of food in the colony. Dare’s parents, Ananias and Eleanor, came to America fleeing religious persecution in England with other members of Governor John White’s ill-fated expedition and are believed to have opened the first Wings store on the Outer Banks.

While 98% of historians agree that the 114 members of the Lost Colony either perished during an unusually hellish Pleiades meteor shower or were consumed by bears, there has long been a fringe group of researchers who have disagreed. The point to evidence such as the Eleanor Dare Stones, the literary works of E.A.B. Shackelford, and an eye-witness illustration of an unknown Native Americans spiriting away a woman who looks suspiciously like Virginia Dare.

Ursula Goldberg is the president of Société of the Tribe of Dare. She has been able to link her connection to Virginia Dare through documents discovered during a routine attic cleaning in her parent’s home in Pennsylvania.

“I found this hand-written paper of my grandfather’s with one of those tree-branch things that shows where you came from,” Goldberg said. “It shows how we’re related to the Kennedy’s and then you follow that branch back on past Mary Todd Lincoln and then there’s a direct line of descendants right to Virginia Dare. Her blood runs in my veins.”

The Société’s founder, Sallie Southhall Woolblend, said this will likely the last gathering of Virginia Dare’s family that she attends. At 102 years old, she does not expect to live much longer.

“I got the STD going way back in 1929,” Woolblend said. “Ever since, I worked tirelessly to bring the STD’s message to as many people as I could: that Virginia Dare is alive in so many of us and we’re special. I reckon I brought over three thousand people into the STD’s embrace in my lifetime, and who knows how many people they’ve touched.”

The three day gathering runs from August 15-18, 2017. Individuals wishing to apply for STD membership may visit the group’s website at www.VDrules.com and fill out an affidavit.