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Buried beneath farmlands in Western Illinois, lies the remains of the first American town founded by a freed slave before the Civil War. The story of New Philadelphia is a little-known episode from our frontier past and a dramatic testament to victory over enslavement. In 1836 "Free Frank" McWorter purchased his freedom from a Kentucky plantation owner and headed North. When he reached Illinois, he planted roots, started a town, and sold enough property to purchase the rest of his family out of slavery. Eventually, New Philadelphia became a thriving, multi-racial community which endured until well after the Civil War. The local landowners, descendants of the town's residents and the McWorter family want to uncover what remains of New Philadelphia to commemorate its place in history. Time Team America was invited to join the research already in progress and to help search for the schoolhouse where New Philadelphia's African American children learned to read and write in freedom.

It is one of the oldest mysteries in American history: What happened to the "Lost Colony" of Fort Raleigh? In 1587 the English sent a group of hardy, hopeful colonists to make a go of it in the New World. But when English ships returned with supplies just three years later, they found the settlement empty and the colonists gone. Only one clue was left behind: the word "Croatoan" carved in the gatepost of their fort. To this day, the fate of the colonists and the location of the original settlement remain a mystery. Time Team America travels to Roanoke Island to look for evidence of the colony, find out what it looked like, and learn what life might have been like for those first English colonists.