Write what should not be forgotten.
Isabel Allende
Much of what is known about the founding of Plymouth Colony comes from Mourt’s Relation, a collection of documents published in London in 1622 by George “Mourt” Morton, a Leiden Separatist.
Sadly, little is known about George. But Mourt’s Relation has a decent story of its own.
Writing From the New World
George probably wrote very little of the publication that bears his name. The manuscript he edited and published was written by Mayflower passenger Edward Winslow, the same who had assisted Elder Brewster in printing the seditious religious tracts from the Netherlands that made it dangerous for the group of English refugees to remain in Europe. William Bradford, Plymouth Colony’s long-time governor (though not at first), is also believed to have contributed. Using whatever paper, pen, and ink they brought with them, and often surrounded by discomfort and death, these two men scratched out their record.
The first section of their manuscript is a daily journal of the colonists’ activities from the day they landed at the tip of Cape Cod in November through that ugly first winter, ending in late March. It describes the pilgrims’ initial expeditions on land as they searched for a permanent settlement site; their early efforts to forge a town; and their first contact with the natives in the spring, which culminated in a written treaty. Notably, their many dead are barely mentioned in the published version, quite possibly to avoid discouraging future colonists and investors.
The remaining sections document their interactions with the natives between June 1621 and the “first Thanksgiving” feast in November, as well as a letter to “a friend in these parts” describing the land and climate and making suggestions to benefit future supply ships.
Given the timing, it seems possible the first section, the early journal, might have traveled to England on the return trip of the Mayflower, which sailed from Plymouth Colony on April 5, 1621, shortly after the last journal entry. However, the remaining documents (and possibly all of them) did not sail for England until December.
Their journey into the hands of George Morton was anything but swift and sure.
Maritime Navigation in the 1600s
In those days ships at sea had no reliable means to figure out where they were. It would be over a hundred years before John Harrison built H1, the first reliable sea clock, that allowed vessels to confidently determine their longitude (east-west) position. Further, a ship’s navigator estimated the ship’s latitude (north-south) position using the position of sun and stars measured with sextants, astrolabes, and celestial globes. None of these primitive instruments worked on a cloudy day, and on the north Atlantic there are many cloudy days.
Given the limitations of latitude-longitude navigation, most ships of the day used dead reckoning. From a known fixed point they regularly measured speed and direction to estimate their position over the course of the ocean crossing. The problem with dead reckoning, then as now, is that navigation errors accumulate, and back then measurements of speed and direction were imprecise at best. On a long ocean voyage there would be many such errors, ones that often added up to ships straying far off course.
The Fortune
Despite these limitations, the second ship dispatched from England to Plymouth Colony, the Fortune, arrived in Massachusetts Bay safely in November 1621, almost exactly one year after the Mayflower. And, unlike the Mayflower, almost everyone aboard the Fortune was in good health.
Any excitement the colonists might have had at the sight of the English vessel seems to have quickly dissipated, however, since instead of additional equipment and provisions, the Fortune carried only mouths to feed. Heaping insults upon the added burden, the ship also carried letters from the colony’s investors who – ignoring the tragic suffering the colonists endured that first winter – criticized the pilgrims for returning the Mayflower the previous spring without any marketable goods.
For the next two weeks the Fortune lay anchored in the harbor. The colonists, to their credit, made a good faith effort to load a pleasing cargo for their investors: two hogsheads of beaver and otter skins – almost four hundred pelts in all – as well as “good clapboard” for fashioning oak casks and barrels. With an estimated market value of 500 pounds, the cargo represented a healthy 30% return on the Merchant Adventurers original investment.
The Fortune’s Misfortune
The Fortune appears to have made good time on the return crossing but, when it reached the Old World, the crew could not determine where they were. In a costly error, the captain apparently mistook the Brittany coast of France for the Lizard Peninsula in southwest England. As a result, the Fortune sailed, not into the English Channel, but into the Bay of Biscay off the west coast of France, directly into the hands of a waiting French warship.
At the time France and England were not at war. However, the French did suspect the English of helping the Huguenot rebellion plaguing their west coast, and any English vessel approaching the shore was liable to search and seizure.
The French warship stopped the Fortune and forced it into port. The French soon learned the captured ship carried no contraband, yet even so the French governor seized her guns, cargo and rigging. He locked the ship’s master in a dungeon and kept the crew on board under guard.
The governor also confiscated the manuscript for Mourt’s Relation. Given the competition for control of the New World, it seems reasonable to presume a copy was made to be distributed among the French authorities. News of the settlement would have been of considerable interest.
Two weeks later, the French governor freed the ship’s master and allowed the Fortune to depart. But the ship was lighter than when it was stopped, arriving in London on 17 February 1622 without its cargo of beaver skins. The confiscated goods represented an enormous loss to the Merchant Adventurers, who had paid to send two ships to the New World and seen nothing in return.
Fortunately for historians, the Fortune did return with Winslow and Bradford’s manuscript, which was delivered to George Morton.
George “Mort” & Juliana Morton
George was about 35 years old when the Mayflower sailed in 1620. He had stayed behind, at least in part, to help organize the venture’s business affairs from England. Little is known about his activities during that time, beyond that he is presumed to be the publisher of Mourt’s Relation in 1622. It is also possible he is the “friend” Edward Winslow wrote to in the document’s final section.
What is known: The following year, in 1623, George himself emigrated to Plymouth Colony aboard the ship Anne. Traveling with him were his wife, Juliana Carpenter, and her sister, the widow Alice Southworth, and their children. Alice later remarried William Bradford, a widower.
Juliana was the eldest of five Carpenter sisters in all, all of whom emigrated from Leiden to Plymouth Colony. She and Alice and one of their sisters (plus one more who never married), became matriarchs of prominent families. The Carpenter sisters are credited with maintaining a stable family life through many years of religious uncertainty and harsh living conditions.
George, on the other hand, did not live long in the New World. He died in 1624, before his 40th birthday, leaving Juliana a widow with eight children. She eventually remarried another Anne passenger, Manasseh Kempton. They lived together until his death in 1662. Juliana died a few years later, at age 81.
Nathaniel Morton
At some point Governor Bradford took a keen interest in helping to raise the Morton children, who by 1627 were his nieces and nephews by marriage. One was George’s son, Nathaniel.
Nathaniel was about ten years old when he came on the Anne with his family. It is said he lived in the Bradford household for much of his teenage years and, as an adult, worked closely with Bradford in the management of colony affairs. Nathaniel was annually elected Secretary of Plymouth Colony from 1645 until his death forty years later. Most of the later colony records are in his handwriting.
Nathaniel’s work enabled him to compile New England’s Memorial, considered the first comprehensive history of the colony, published at Cambridge (Massachusetts) in 1669. It was also the first book of history published in the United States.
We descend from Nathaniel Morton through Herbert Kimball’s mother, Fannie Peabody.
Sources:
The Pilgrims, Frederic Alphonso Noble, 1907
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mourt%27s_Relation
http://www.histarch.illinois.edu/plymouth/mourt1.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Morton_(Pilgrim_Father)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Morton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_(Plymouth_Colony_ship)
https://www.geni.com/people/George-Morton-of-the-Plymouth-Colony/6000000000931399697
https://www.geni.com/people/Juliana-Kempton/6000000006441386644
Wicked Moxie 