The first guy through the wall… he always gets bloody… always.
— Red Sox Owner, Moneyball
The first settlers in New England were not Puritans or separatist pilgrims. They were adventurers and entrepreneurs.
In May of 1607, some thirteen years before the Mayflower landed in Massachusetts, about 120 colonists sailed from Plymouth (England) aboard two ships, the Gift of God and the Mary & John, en route to the New World. The Jamestown colony in modern-day Virginia was only weeks old at the time. Several young gentlemen accompanied the expedition, but most were soldiers, artisans, farmers and traders. There was also several native “red skins” that had been living in England at Plymouth Fort.
Also aboard the Mary & John was the ship doctor’s apprentice, David Thomson. David’s father had died when he was ten and for several years David and his mother had been living in the home of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the governor of Plymouth, where David’s mother was a servant. David would have been fourteen in 1607.
The new settlement became known as the Popham Colony. It was a strictly commercial venture. The colony leader, George Popham, was the nephew of one of the colony’s main financiers, Sir John Popham, the Lord Chief Justice of England. Another backer was Sir Ferdinando Gorges. Their goal was to trade precious metals, spices, and furs with the natives and show that the local forests could be used to build English ships. They landed in present day Maine, near what is now Phippsburg, on August 13th of that year.
Over the fall of 1607 they build a crude fort and made contact with the Abenaki tribe, though their first attempts to trade goods with the locals met with failure. And since they arrived too late in the year to farm any food, in December half the colonists left aboard the Gift of God to return to England.
Those who stayed survived a cold winter, a fire that destroyed their storehouse, and numerous leadership squabbles. Unlike Jamestown, which lost half the colonists that year, almost everyone lived. Possibly the only casualty was George Popham himself, who died in February. Leadership fell to a young gentleman named Raleigh Gilbert, son of Sea Dog Humphrey Gilbert, who at 25-years-old was named colony president.
In 1608 the colonists completed one major project: the building of a 30-ton ship, a pinnace they named Virginia. It was the first ship built in America by Europeans, important evidence the colonies could be used for shipbuilding. The colonists also finally managed to trade with the Abenaki for furs and gather a cargo of wild sarsaparilla.
When a supply ship came in the spring of 1608, it brought a message that Sir John Popham had died. Gilbert sent the Mary and John to England with cargo. When the ship returned later in the summer, it brought news that Gilbert’s elder brother had also died, making him heir to his father’s title and English estate. Gilbert decided to return to England. With Sir John Popham dead and the financial support of the colony uncertain, the 45 remaining colonists also left, sailing home in the Mary and John and their new Virginia.
David Thomson learned a great deal about boat building during that time. Upon returning to England, David Thomson found work in the Plymouth shipyard. He also courted and married Amias Cole. They started a family and lived in a home owned by her parents.
They might have stayed there and lived a comfortable life, but David wanted to return to the New World. While in Plymouth he met with numerous English merchants. He is said to have advocated for the establishment of a fishing center on the Isle of Shoals, and had occasion to lobby Sir Ferdinando Gorges for a patent to allow him to settle on the Piscataqua River.
In 1620, when the Mayflower and the leaking Speedwell stopped at Plymouth (still England) for repairs, both David and Amias met with the pilgrim group. There was keen interest among the settlers to hear of David’s experience in the New World.
Sir Ferdinando Gorges’ royal charter for the Council of New England “passed the seals” in November of that year, the same month the Mayflower landed at Cape Cod Bay. In 1621 Gorges gave David instructions to sail to New England with a recruited construction crew aboard the ship Jonathan. They crossed in eight weeks, arriving at the Isles of Shoals. They then sailed into the mouth of the Piscataqua River and landed at present-day Odiorne’s Point, New Hampshire, where they constructed a fort. The fall fishing crew wintered there and by 1622 David Thomson had returned to London, reporting to Sir Ferdinando Gorges. The military ordnance for the new fort was brought across the sea by Thomas Weston on his ship Charity in 1622 and installed.
In the spring of 1623, David and Amias sailed to New England with their son John, while their daughter Priscilla remained in England with Amias’ parents. The Thomsons stayed initially with the new fishing settlement on the Piscataqua, where they had further contact with the Puritan settlers. When Myles Standish arrived in a small shallop later in the year seeking fish for the (once again) starving Plymouth Colony, David returned with him to visit the settlers he had met back in England.
David’s fishing colony did not last long. In 1625 he wrote a letter to the Earl of Arundel describing the many problems facing the settlers, including increased aggressiveness from the natives, traders inflating the cost of goods, and freelance fishermen moving into disputed areas. As with the western frontier two hundred years later, the New England coast was filling with rogues: Roger Conant at Cape Ann, William Blaxton at what became Boston, and Samuel Maverick on the Mystic River, to name a few.
Once such freelancer seems to have been David himself. That same year he & Amias took possession of Thomson’s Island in Boston Harbor, which had been separately claimed by a colonist from Plymouth, William Trevore, in 1621. Thomson asserted his claim originated from a 1619 fishing trip and pre-dated Trevore’s. Either way the Thomsons were the first to settle the island. They are believed to have built the first English-style house in the Boston area.
One of the last known contacts came in 1626, when David sailed with William Bradford and others to Monhegan Island in Maine. There they bought supplies from the failing fishing business. In Bradford’s opinion, David bought more than he could afford on that trip, though who he might have become indebted two is not known.
David and Amias never returned to England, possibly because they never had a chance. In 1628, at age 35, David disappeared. The cause of his death is not known. Perhaps he drowned, or met with foul play at the hands of natives or an affronted English colonist. A hundred different things could have killed him.
Two years later the Winthrop fleet arrived and the Massachusetts colony was founded. For a time Amias lived with the Puritans. She eventually remarried and moved to New Amsterdam. Their son, however, did not. John Thomson stayed in Boston, married and raised a family of his own.
We know about John because he was born in England. There are no official records of any children from David and Amias after they reached the new world, if for no other reason than there was no one there to keep records. But in the five years from 1623 to 1628 it is logical to assume they would have had several more children, and indeed some say that David and Amias had a son named Miles in 1627 while on Thomson Island.
It is possible that this was the same young Miles Thomson who in 1641 was known to be in Boston. And the same Miles Thomson who in 1651 was fined in a Middlesex court for playing cards after dark. And the same Miles Thomson who settled in South Berwick Maine, where he was fined at least once for skipping civic meetings (the troublemaker!).
Miles eventually married and raised a family. He was a carpenter by trade. He lived in Maine until his death in 1708.
Miles Thomson was my ninth great-grandfather. Not the only one, of course. If my math is right I have 1023 other ninth great-grandparents and 2048 tenth great-grandparents before them. Two of those might have been David and Amias. If so David was probably the first of my ancestors to hit the shore.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popham_Colony
https://www.geni.com/people/David-Thomson/6000000003938691764
Wicked Moxie 