Raleigh (Native American)

Living in the home of Sir Richard Grenville in Bideford, he was the first Native American on record to have a Christian conversion and an English burial site preceding Pocahontas.

Grenville was planning another voyage to America and it could have been his intention to take Raleigh back to Roanoke where his local knowledge and native language would have been useful.

[6] He died from influenza in Grenville's house on 2 April 1589, his interment in the churchyard of Saint Mary's Church in Bideford taking place five days later.

[4][7] A record in the Bodleian Library at Oxford dated 1792 states that Raleigh was not buried in the church crypt, but in the Churchyard.

As this record pre-dates the Victorian rebuilding of St Mary's church in the mid-1860s it is probable that his now unmarked grave lies somewhere there still.