18 August—Today is Virginia Dare’s 437^th birthday. Born on Roanoke Island in what was then the Virginia colony and is now North Carolina, Virginia Dare is said to have been the very first English—presumably non-indigenous, at any rate—child born in the New World, as the Americas were known in the 16^th century. And still are, to some.

Virginia was named after the colony of her birth. The Virginia Colony, of course, had been named for Queen Elizabeth I, known as the Virgin Queen (for whatever reason), by Sir Walter Raleigh, who funded and founded it not too long before Virginia Dare’s birth, without ever having taken the trouble to sail to North America—although he did venture to South America later on a couple of occasions, looking for the legendary or mythical golden land of El Dorado.

Since the Raleigh-less expedition to Virginia had sailed from England on 8 May, unless Virginia Dare was a preemie, her momma must have been pregnant on the cruise. Couldn’t have been fun for Ellinor White Dare, daughter of Roanoke governor John White and wife of Ananias Dare. Presumably Ananias was named after the Bishop of Damascus rather than the embezzler and liar. And it’s safe to say that Virginia Dare was White.

In all events, Little Virginia Dare disappeared just nine days after her birth. There was probably only rudimentary record keeping; and security for the maternity ward must have been lax in Roanoke General Hospital. At least there’s no record of the little white neonate after 27 August 1587.

As you may recall, the whole Roanoke Colony mysteriously disappeared by 1590. Not quite an American Atlantis, since the buildings were still there.

It’s entirely possible, although our resident historian can’t be sure, that non-indigenous children had been born in North America before Virginia Dare. Because it’s pretty certain that women came over with the Vikings centuries before the Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, and Brits. And even though Bluetooth is named after a tenth-century Scandinavian king, computers and cell phones of the day were rather primitive and certainly were no substitute for good healthy sex . . .