I've been intrigued by the Roanoke colony from the time I first heard about it as a child

Now people are taking an interesting approach to disappearance of the 'Lost Colony' by trying to prove they were assimilated into the native peoples of the area through genotyping.

Lost Colony DNA

Genotyping could answer a centuries-old mystery about a vanished group of British settlers.

Archaeological digs, weather records, historical writings, genealogy—none have fully answered the question of what happened during White’s absence. But Roberta Estes, who owns DNAeXplain, a company that interprets the results of genetic heritage tests, is looking to DNA for help. Her hypothesis is that the Lost Colonists survived, and that evidence of their salvation is tucked away in the mitochondrial or Y chromosomal DNA of living descendents.

“They were stranded,” Estes says of the settlers. “They knew they couldn’t survive there on the island.” The colonists’ solution, in her estimation, was to go native.

I don't know if it will bear fruit, but it's an interesting angle.