Mrs. Murphy and the Mysterious Postage Stamp

 

I am growing older. It’s a fact. There is no denying it. With age comes many changes. My hair is mostly silver. I have age spots and wrinkles and my body is disappointingly saggy in places. 🤨 However, the thing that I find most annoying is my change in vision! I have a very hard time reading the fine print...even with my glasses! 🤓 

Therein lies the rub. The world of postage stamps is undeniably miniature...tiny works of art with tiny print. And the older the stamp the more faded everything is. 😔

(🤔 wait...is that a metaphor?! 👵🏻) 

And it certainly doesn’t help when the Postal Service puts a big, bold cancellation mark right over the entire stamp. 😫😭

I was puzzling over one such mysterious stamp in my collection. You can imagine my delight to discover not only was the image a mystery, the subject matter was, too! 🕵️‍♂️ 

(My Mystery Stamp)

This light blue stamp was first issued on August 18, 1937 to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Colony of Roanoke Island in July 1587 and the birth of the first English child born in the New World, little Virginia Dare. 👶🏻 She was born on August 18, 1587. The Roanoke Island Colony has become known as the “Lost Colony”. No one knows exactly what happened to its 117 members. 🤔

The British, under the direction of Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth I, had been attempting to establish a colony in the New World. After a first failed attempt, a second ship set sail from England on April 26, 1587. This group was unique because it included women and children. The Governor of the group was John White. He traveled with his pregnant daughter Eleanor and her husband Ananias Dare. Eleanor gave birth less then a month after their arrival in the colony. (What a woman!🤰) Baby Virginia was the first of two children known to be born in the colony. 

Life was hard and the colonists struggled to establish their homes. They begged Governor White to return to England for more supplies. He hesitantly returned to England on August 27. He had plans to return to the colony in  one year, but he was delayed and didn’t return for three years. When he finally made it back to Roanoke, all of the people had disappeared from the area!! No people, no bodies...nothing! They simply vanished.🤔

Before he left, Governor White instructed the people to carve a Maltese cross on a nearby tree if they had been forced to leave. No cross carving was found so White concluded they left of their own free will. The only clues that were ever found were the words “Croatoan” carved on a post and “Cro” on a tree. White believed that they had relocated to the Croatoan Island (Hatteras Island) but he was never able to search there. How sad for this father and grandfather to lose not only everyone in his colony but his daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter. 😭

Virginia Dare and the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island remain a mystery to this day! Most historians believe the colonists were taken in by a Native American tribe, but no one knows for sure. 

Is there someone in your life that is seemingly missing? Perhaps you’ve lost contact due to this most inconvenient, world-wide pandemic? Well, don’t let them disappear with out a trace like Virginia Dare!! Send them some snail mail!! 

Go postal, people!! The game is afoot!! 

XOXO, 

Mrs. Murphy 🕵️‍♀️