Leonard Calvert was a quiet boy who grew up in England a long time ago. At school, other boys called him a dunce and a blockhead. "Don't listen to them, " his brother Cecil told him, and Leonard didn't. Instead, when he was grown, Leonard went adventuring. He went to New-foundland with his father, George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, and fought French privateers. When his father died and Cecil became the second Lord Baltimore, Leonard went adventuring again. This time, he led the first colonists to settle in Maryland. It was his greatest adventure of all. Leonard was just twenty-seven years old when he became Maryland's first governor. He faced fierce Indians, unfriendly Virginia fur traders, and plundering pirates who wanted to chase him out of Maryland and take the colony away from the Calverts. This is the story of how Leonard Calvert founded the Maryland colony and in the process proved that he was not a dunce or a blockhead.