White, John (c. 1539 - c. 1593)

John White (c. 1539 - 1593) was an English colonial governor, explorer, artist, and cartographer. He was among the adventurers who sailed with Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Richard Grenville in the first attempt to colonize what would become North Carolina in 1585, settling on Roanoke island. White became Governor of the Roanoke settlement, the first attempt at a permanent English colony in the New World, in 1587. His granddaughter, Virginia Dare, was the first English child born in the Americas.

Most significant in the map collecting world, was White's service as artist and mapmaker to the expedition, producing images of the region's natives, flora and fauna. His sketches of the Algonkin peoples were the most illustrative depictions of any Native North American populace to date, and represent the sole visual record of the inhabitants of America encountered by the first English settlers. With Harriot, he produced a map of the colony's surrounds. White would make three trips in all to America; between the second and third he met the German engraver Theodore De Bry, who produced and printed the first published editions of White's paintings and map. It was on his third voyage, following the meeting with De Bry and much delayed by the threat of the Spanish Armada, that the Roanoke colony famously disappeared.

White's birthdate is uncertain, as is his training. He is thought to have accompanied Frobisher in his searches for a northwest passage: though he was not mentioned, his surviving drawings from this period were of the lands and people encountered on the voyage. Following the failure of the Roanoke Colony, White returned to England and never returned. Little is known of his life thereafter. He was known to live for a time in Plymouth and kept a house in County Cork, Ireland.