Who Was The First European Child Born in "Virginia"?

The first known English child to be born in Virginia was Virginia Dare in 1587, at the Roanoke Colony. Of course, today the location of the Roanoke Colony is in North Carolina. Within the current boundaries of the state, Virginia Laydon was the first English child born in Virginia. She was the daughter of John Laydon and Anne Burras.

Anne Burras was the maidservant to Mistress Forrest, and together they were the first two women to arrive at Jamestown, and who married John Leyden in December, 1608, shortly after her arrival. Only a few other women arrived before 1619, when the Virginia Company consciously sought to make Virginia a more attractive colony for long-term settlement by sending prospective wives to Jamestown.

If you find a pre-1970's textbook on Virginia history, see if it refers to Virginia Dare as the "first child" born in the New World. If so, be aware that such an English-centric perspective completely ignores the fact that Native American children had been born for 10-15,000 in the New World.

A narrower claim that "Virginia Dare was the first European child born in the New World" still assumes the Spanish in St. Augustine, Florida, had no children. (Martín de Arguelles Jr. is reported to have been born there in 1566. He could have been 21 years old before Virginia Dare arrived.)

Even the claim that Virginia Dare was the first English child assumes no English sailor ever went onshore and fathered a child with a Native American before the colonists arrived. English sailors in the region before 1587 were rare and maybe no one had a chance to father a child... but do you think all those Spanish sailors who passed through the "the bay of St. Mary" were celibate?

location of Roanoke Colony on White-De Bry Map of Virginia
location of Roanoke Colony on White-De Bry Map of Virginia,
from Thomas Hariot's A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia (1590)
(note that "west" rather than "north" is at the top of the map) Source: Library of Congress


Was Virginia Destined to Be English?
Geography of Virginia