Man spends life researching Lost Colony mystery

KNOTTS ISLAND, N.C.

Sam Sumner retired as a schoolteacher, left his Hawaii home and recently moved to North Carolina, all for the purpose of solving the mystery of the Lost Colony.

The answer lies not in Buxton where experts and amateur sleuths have searched for decades, he says, but at Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge in Currituck County, a site that leaves experts skeptical.

A 1923 map in the lobby of Mackay Island ranger station shows an image on the ground next to the Currituck Sound that looks just like an old drawing of Fort Raleigh.

"I looked at that map and I knew immediately what it was," Sumner said. "I have the evidence on my side. It is up to the archaeological experts to say the image is not a 16th-century fort."

Sumner, 63, has researched one of America's oldest mysteries for 31 years, traveling almost annually from Hawaii to Roanoke Island. He has partnered with a psychic archaeologist; rented underground radar equipment at budget-busting costs; queried experts; researched books, maps and papers; and written reports.

But the most compelling clue is the map.

Sir Walter Raleigh sent 118 colonists to the New World in 1587 to establish a settlement. Led by John White, they landed at what is now Roanoke Island.

In August 1587, White left for England to get supplies, returning in 1590 to find the colony gone. All he found were the letters CRO carved on a tree and CROATOAN carved on a post. The colony possibly split up, one group going south to Buxton on Hatteras Island where the Croatan Indians lived and the other north toward Chesapeake. White wrote that a group was to go 50 miles inland.

"There are two islands 50 miles away," Sumner said. "One is at Hatteras and one is Knotts Island."

The colonists lived there for 20 years, until 1607, when the Powhatan Indians massacred them, according to a history from 1612. That is another strong piece of evidence they were there, Sumner said.

Forts of that day were made of earth piled high after digging a ditch around the perimeter, said Doug Stover, historian at the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on Roanoke Island.

The image on the map has a long nose at one end and is star-shaped at the other, just like the old, undocumented drawing used to show what Fort Raleigh may have looked like.

Sumner could seek help through Fort Raleigh if the evidence is strong enough, Stover said. Mackay Island will not issue Sumner a permit to excavate unless he has backing from a sanctioned archaeologist or group.

It is hard to get backing without more evidence and hard to get more evidence without excavating, Sumner said.

Lost Colony researchers do not give credence to his Mackay Island theory.

"We know of no archaeological evidence to indicate a Raleigh colony there," said Phil Evans, president of the First Colony Foundation, a group that researches the Raleigh colonization efforts.

The group would have settled in a place where the Indians were friendly, said Nick Luccketti, principal investigator at the James River Institute for Archaeology and a vice president of the First Colony Foundation.

"I'm not sure Knotts Island fits that bill," he said.

The Mackay Island site, called the Sumner site by Sumner, is now an oval shaped pond. Sumner believes the site, located in low lands, may have been dug out and filled with water for duck ponds.

Joseph Knapp, the wealthy owner of Mackay Island in the 1920s, hunted there and practiced waterfowl conservation.

"They're all looking at Buxton," Sumner said. "No one looks anywhere else."

Jeff Hampton, (252) 338-0159, jeff.hampton@pilotonline.com