List of colonists at Roanoke

[2]: 259  White is known to have arrived at Roanoke with the colonists, but there is no record of him remaining with the colony through the winter or returning to England with Richard Grenville's fleet.

David Beers Quinn argued that White must have remained in the colony long enough to produce a map based on the colonists' 1586 exploration of the region.

[3]: 40–41, 196–197  In contrast, James Horn observed that White produced no known artwork of the people and towns discovered after August 1585, suggesting he was no longer present in the colony.

[7]: 232  Hakluyt's Principal Navigations provides a list of 119 individuals who "safely arrived in Virginia" and remained there as of August 1587.

In a 1955 analysis of the list, David Beers Quinn determined "therefore, eighty-five men, less one dead (George Howe) and two returned (John White and Simon Fernandes), seventeen women and eleven children, making 113 brought from England and 110 left by White, plus two children born on Roanoke Island and two Indians, the total left behind being 114."