Secretly Locked Away

Join me in Greenville NC on June 24th at the Joyner Library on the campus of East Carolina University as I reveal a locked away secret.

The secret… a 16^th century gunlock. The artifact motivated me to write A Storm Coming, set during the Tuscarora War, 1710-1715.

500 Years of American History

This gunlock solves the mystery of the Lost Colony. It is physical evidence linking the English who sailed to the New World from 1584-1587 with Croatoan Indians of Hatteras Island.

The 1580s “snaphaunce” gunlock was discovered by archaeologist Dr. David Phelps, Professor Emeritus at East Carolina University, in 1998 at Buxton, NC.

The name snaphaunce comes from the Dutch Snaphaan, which roughly means “pecking rooster.” This is due to the shape of the mechanism and its downward-darting action. Manufacturing of these gunlocks began in Scotland about 1575. One of the earliest known records of these gunlock is a document dated 1580. It is the sale of “9 cases of snaphaunces at 40s the peece” (40 shillings each). English soldiers sent to put down the Irish rebellion used these guns. These were some of the same soldiers who traveled to Roanoke Island in 1585.

During my research, I enjoyed visiting the places where the story occurred. But I also spent time in libraries, such as the Joyner Library. This is where I was able to hold this gunlock linking the Lumbee people and the Lost Colony.

Meet Runehu’hu

A Storm Coming tells the story of my 7x great-grandmother, starting with her as a seventeen-summers-old Tuscarora woman, named Runehu’hu. She reluctantly accepted her English name, Jane, “…just one syllable, plain.” Jane was unflinching until a handsome, yet mysterious, stranger arrived, recruiting allies to fight the English. She hoped for a wedding proposal, but he recruited her to spy against her own people instead. A Storm Coming is a story about forbidden love, survival, and redemption.

Despite attempts to exterminate Native American people, we are still here.

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