Governor of American Colony, Artist. He is remembered as being the Governor of the Colony of Virginia, or the “Lost Colony” of Roanoke Island, which is now located on North Carolina's Outer Banks. Leaving England on May 8, 1587 on the ship the “Lion,” he and a group of settlers made a third attempt to settle the coastal area of Virginia, the first two had failed. They had originally planned to settle in the Chesapeake Bay area, but the Portuguese captain of the “Lion,” Simon Fernandez, left the settlers on Roanoke Island.Among these settlers was his pregnant daughter Ellinor and son-in-law, Ananias Dare. His granddaughter, Virginia, was born on August 18th and the first English child to be born in North America. While he was on Roanoke Island, he made many watercolor sketches of the land and Native Americans. He also was a mapmaker on Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition. His first trip to America was in May of 1577, and he had been an artist with Sir. Richard Grenville's first attempt to settle the area. When Virginia was nine days old, Governor White sailed back to England for supplies and support. It was a long, difficult trip with a storm and many of the crew dying; they arrived in November. Upon his arrival, war was starting between England and Spain. The Spanish Armada attack of 1588 delayed his return to Roanoke. When his ship returned to the colony site three years later on August 18, 1590, the only sign of the inhabitants was the word “Croatan” carved into a tree. No trace of the 117 colonists, including his daughter and family, was ever found. Today, his granddaughter's birthday is celebrated with a festival on Roanoke Island. Many historians speculate, if the settlers lived, that they were absorbed into the friendly coastal Native American tribe of the Croatans, and a DNA project has been established to prove or disprove this reasoning. The tribe eventually became part of the Cherokee Nation with many migrating to the State of Georgia. In February 1593 he wrote an account of his final voyage to Virginia. His surviving seventy plus watercolors are now preserved in the print room of the British Museum in London. In 2007 his watercolor were on public display under the collection called, “A New World: England's First View of America.” Hopefully, the exhibition will be coming to the North Carolina Museum of History. An English gentleman, he retired to Raleigh's estate in Ireland, never forgetting the ordeals in America and always having hope that his granddaughter and daughter, who was his only child to live to adulthood, survived.