A Ballad of Adventure
By Sarah Simpson Laird (my maternal grandmother)
Found by my uncle Laird Baldwin in the pages of “The Dwarf”,
the yearbook of the Tutoring School in Norfolk, VA, 1927

Nathaniel Munn was a brave stalwart youth,
Adventurous, ready with quip �
      And so in the year of sixteen-two,
      With a very polite and quite gallant crew,
He sailed him away on a ship.

The land that they sailed for they called the New World,
But people knew nothing of this,
      For the journey was made at the word of the king,
      Equipped with a charter and every old thing,
So at first there was nothing amiss.

The �Search� had sailed slowly for several months,
And still had no sight of the shore,
      When the waves, in a tempest, rose miles and miles high,
      And the crew of great gentlemen thought they would die
As their feelings grew frightfully sore.

But at last, in the dawn of a lovely May day,
Land was seen by Nathaniel Munn.
      Oh, then amid shouting, the anchor was cast,
      With surprising disorder the ship was made fast,
And the band thought their troubles were done.

But alas! How mistaken are those of this earth!
After taking the ship�s boat ashore,
      A tribe of fierce Redskins attacked � two to one �
      In the rows of the captured Nathaniel Munn
Stood up to his doublet in gore.

The savages built a magnificent fire.
They killed what was left of the crew.
      And the single word �Redskins� found carved on a birch �
      Found by the men sent in search of the �Search�
Was all that the world ever knew.

My uncle Laird adds:

(note � the only Nathaniel Munn I can turn up on the internet lived to be rather old and had ten children. He was born in Massachusetts in 1661 and died there in 1743. I suspect the author either thought the name up, combined two names, or had come across his name in an historical document and thought it would be a good one to create a story around and to hell with posterity�s concern for political correctness. Redskins, indeed!)