Louis Roney: Lost and found

• “Where did we come from?” the little boy asked his modern fashionable mother. The mother launched into a long rigmarole about man’s descent from the apes and Darwin’s theories of evolution. The little boy was surprised and said, “When my teacher asked me that today, I told her we came from Hartford.”

Way back in the hoary past of post-World War II, I dropped in on an extant relative living in Atlanta. A friend of mine had inherited a Chicago in-law (who was married to an Englishman no less!)

I had a small taste of English immigrant student guys during my Massachusetts college days and had never fit this curious breed into any fitting American mode. Each Englishman was a thing unto himself, and altogether no one to holler “hallelujah” about.

My own English heritage had long ago been realized in my ancestors’ skirmishes with rude tribes from the North, and I accepted the responsibility of preserving my share of whatever Anglo-Saxon charm might still be identifiable.

Southerners, of course, are highly expressive people, and about as far as you can get from the frigid Albion influence.

A relative of mine was told by an English neighbor that his house was burning down, with these words: “I think there’s something going on over at your place.”

I’ve always remembered the English as our enemies in the Revolution — and I never forgot 1812 either. Having English blood may help me appreciate English literature, but likely has acquainted me also with England’s peculiarities. The English rarely think of Americans of English decent as their blood-cousins, but rather as outcast orphans.

Actually, Spanish should possibly be our national language in the U.S., as the Spaniards were in St. Augustine in 1565, even before the unsuccessful English attempt to settle Roanoke Island in 1585.

In 1587, the English again tried to settle Roanoke Island. John White (father of the colonist Eleanor Dare, and grandfather to Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World) left the colony to return to England for supplies. He expected to return to Roanoke Island within three months. Instead, England was at war with Spain, and all ships were confiscated for use in the war. White's return to Roanoke Island was delayed until 1590, by which time all the colonists had disappeared. The settlement was abandoned. The only clue found was the word “CROATOAN” carved into a tree. White had left instructions before leaving the colony three years earlier that if the colonists left the settlement, they were to carve the name of their destination, with a Maltese cross if they left due to danger.

“CROATOAN” was the name of an island to the south (modern-day Hatteras Island), where a native tribe friendly to the English was known to live. Colonists might have tried to reach that island. However, foul weather kept White from venturing south to search on Croatoan for the colonists, and he went back to England never to return to the New World. Unable to determine exactly what happened, people referred to the abandoned settlement as “The Lost Colony of the Roanoke.”

There are historians who, unlikely as this may be, believe that the colonists somehow returned to England. More likely, the colony died of starvation, however, no other clue of the colony has ever been found.

• “Wisely, therefore, we consider union and a good national government as necessary to put and keep us in such a situation as, instead of inviting war, will tend to repress and discourage it. This situation consists of the best possible state of defense, and depends on the government, the arms, and the resources of the country ” — John Jay

“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!” — Patrick Henry

“As unbalanced parties of every description can never tolerate a free inquiry of any kind when employed against themselves, the license, and even the most temperate freedom of the press, soon excite resentment and revenge.” — John Adams

“Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.” —Thomas Jefferson

Think our present president ever learned any of this?