Sources

Summer, 1837

“Tell the story again, Grammie,” said young Elizabeth Nelson, late on one of those muggy nights when, on a New England farm, even the barn animals can’t sleep.

“What story, Miss Lizzy?” asked old Lydia Spofford, happy for any kind of company during the dark hours. She’d outlived three husbands and now, at ninety-two, was one of the oldest people in Georgetown. The oldest, probably.

“What story?” Elizabeth repeated in disbelief. “Why, the one where you caught the redcoat, of course!”

“Oh, yes. That one. I still remember.”

“So, tell it,” the child prodded.

“All right, dear.”

Lydia paused to collect her thoughts, often scattered these days, like berries overflowing from a basket. She spoke slowly, but with passion. An old woman, yes, but she still knew how to tell her heroic tale, one she’d repeated often since that spring day in 1775, when all of Massachusetts revolted against the British crown.

So many lifetimes ago. . .

Lydia Warren Barnard Wood Spofford

Born in 1744, one of the fourteen children of Phineas and Grace Hastings Warren, Lydia Warren grew up outside of Watertown, a small farming community of roughly seven hundred residents from one hundred families. Since schools were not yet taken for granted in New England, Lydia received little formal education. The town’s biggest expenses were the minister’s salary and simple welfare, for example ensuring widow Tanner had a roof (making it up) and young Sam Coolidge had britches (not making it up).

Lydia grew to be six feet tall, “a woman of strong mind and body, weighing more than two hundred pounds”. As she remarked in her later years (often enough for the Boston Herald to report it), “she never saw a man that she thought she could not have handled.”

In 1766, at age 21, Lydia married David Barnard, a cordwainer (shoemaker), from Watertown. They lived in a house just off the “main road”. The marriage produced no children, which by 1775, almost ten years later, must have left Lydia in a different state of mind than most women her age.

And since she was also much larger. . .

The Day of the Battle

“The day of the battle of Lexington,” Lydia told her granddaughter so many years later, “my husband and brothers and all the other able-bodied men had gone to the fight, leaving only women, children, and a few old men at home, anxiously awaiting the result.”

She meant “few” literally. Even Lydia’s father, 58-year-old Phineas, had marched to the fight with Captain Pierce’s company. Watertown must have felt all but deserted.

“Toward night,” she continued, “several women came running to my house, crying, ‘Mrs. Barnard, the Regulars are coming!’”

“Were you scared?” young Elizabeth asked.

“No, Miss Lizzy,” Lydia said. “I was mighty angry though. I looked up the street and saw that redcoat riding towards us on a horse. He was only a private, the lowest rank, but it seems he decided to steal himself a horse. He thought he would return to Boston in style! He rode right up and inquired if he was on the right road. The nerve of him, to ask us for directions!”

“What did you do?” Elizabeth asked.

Lydia said, “I stepped through the group, and I grasped the horse’s bridle, and I ordered that soldier to DISMOUNT!”

“Did he obey?”

“He did not,” Lydia smirked. “But pulling him from the saddle was but the work of a moment. I shook him vigorously and shouted, ‘You villain!’”

Elizabeth giggled. The idea of her old grandmother shouting at a man, and with so much anger, seemed funny indeed.

“You villain!” Lydia repeated, enjoying the pleasure on her granddaughter’s face. “Then I said, ‘How do I know but that you have been killing some of my folks?’”

“Had he?”

Lydia said, “He protested that he had not fired a shot. ‘Let me see your cartridge box,’ I ordered him. Opening it, I found several missing.”

“Missing!”

“At this I shook him still more violently and, my anger increasing, I grasped his sword. In my mind, I held the very fellow who murdered my father and all my brothers and my beloved husband, too.”

Elizabeth looked shocked. “He didn’t, did he?”

“No, no, they were all fine,” Lydia assured her. “But I didn’t know it at the time. And my imagination won over my heart that minute, and I held that sword in such a threatening manner. . . well, that redcoat’s fears overcame him, they did.”

“What did he do?”

“He fell on his knees and begged piteously for his life,” Lydia said cheerfully. “So I gave him up to some old men, who took him to the tavern. They kept him there a while, until the proper authorities exchanged him for one of our men.“

Young Elizabeth furrowed her brow, frowning with concern from a new question, one she’d only just thought of.

“What is it, dear?” Lydia asked.

“What happened to the horse?”

Lydia laughed. “Why, nothing, Miss Lizzy,” she said. “We turned the horse loose in a pasture and it ate there, content as only horses can be, until its master came for it.”

Elizabeth looked relieved. “I’m so glad,” she said, finally drifting off to sleep.

Lydia patted the young child gently. “You go to sleep now.”

Thinking: Even that horse had more trouble coming.

Widow Barnard of Watertown

David Barnard died in August 1775, four months into the war.

Lydia notified the court of his death the following March. Her brother Peter Warren (with two others) served as executor of David’s estate, from which Lydia received, “for the upholding of life”, a settlement of seven pounds, seven shillings.

Not zero, but not nearly enough to fund the retirement of a thirty-year-old childless widow.

Young widows were hardly unheard of in New England towns, especially in the middle of the rebellion. Common practice in those days was for the town selectmen to license widows to operate taverns and boardinghouses out of whatever house they happened to live in. A stratagem that allowed the poor women to earn an income. And stay off town welfare.

Lydia, like many others in her position, began taking strangers into her home.

She cannot have imagined the consequences.

From Watertown to Boxford

When the British retreated into Boston on April 19, 1775, the General Court of Massachusetts (as the legislature was called) fled the city. For the rest of 1775 and into 1776, government meetings convened at the home of Edmund Fowle in nearby Watertown.

From the Fowle residence, the provincial assembly organized the rebellion. They voted to raise a fighting force of 13,000 men from Massachusetts with plans to raise another 17,000 from elsewhere in New England. They drew plans to organize the military; companies of sixty men supplied with horses (pressed into service, not purchased) and equipment. They established a postal system with routes laid out and rates prescribed (5.5 pence for 60 miles). They planned to issue notes to fund it all.

Politicians were not the only refugees from Boston. Paul Revere took over a house near Galen Street and began engraving a set of plates for printing money. The Boston Gazette newspaper, mouthpiece of Samuel Adams, set up shop near the bridge on the north side of the river. Entire congregations of displaced Bostonians, opening their services in Watertown, sang psalms of sorrow, worried they would never see their home city again.

And for nearly a year, they didn’t. But even after the British withdrew from Boston in March 17 1776 (“Evacuation Day”), a small pox outbreak in Boston caused government business to continue in Watertown well into the summer. The Declaration of Independence was read first in the Fowle home on 17 July. That same day, the first treaty between the newly formed United States of America and another country, in this case the Mi’kmaq Nation of present-day Canada, was signed in Watertown.

Lydia had a ringside seat for all this activity, more so than one might expect, for one simple reason: these politicians needed a place to stay.

Among those boarding with Widow Barnard (mere months into her new career as a hotelier) included the Honorable Aaron Wood, a judge from Boxford, a farm town north of Boston. Mister Wood, a 55-year-old widower himself, “fell in love with his buxom hostess, married, and brought her to Boxford.”

They married in Cambridge 8 May 1776.

And Lydia moved.

Mrs. Lydia Wood of Boxford

Neither Lydia nor Aaron had children from their prior marriages, and their own marriage produced no children. Little is known about the fifteen years she spent with her second husband, nothing about their relationship, or about Lydia’s daily life as Mrs. Wood. One might assume, however, she spent most of her time managing the substantial family properties and entertaining whatever visiting dignitary Aaron happened to bring home.

Some surviving documentation illustrates Aaron’s life as a public servant. He worked in many public capacities, from town clerk to judge to state representative—he served in the General Court throughout the revolution and in the State Senate during the 1780s—and was well regarded for both his character and his civic dedication.

Notably, one of his last contributions was attending the 1788 Massachusetts convention to ratify the Constitution of the United States. He initially voted against its adoption, but when the final vote proved in favor—barely, the tally landed at 187-168 after a month of debate—the minority (including Wood) acquiesced and said they would support the new form of government as if they had voted for it from the beginning.

When Aaron died in early 1791, age 71, Lydia was 46 years old. How she fared as Aaron’s widow is unclear. According to the “History of Boxford”, Aaron’s will directed all income from his properties toward the benefit of the town, specifically for the establishment of a school. First opened in 1795, the Aaron Wood Grammar School operated until at least the 1950s. The building, which still stands today, was renovated in 2015 and currently houses the school administration offices for Boxford, Topsfield and Middleton.

Presumably Aaron left his wife a handsome sum, but even wealthy, Lydia’s life was barely half over. And a woman named Polly Spafford, also of Boxford, had died within a month of Aaron, leaving her husband Benjamin a widower, and her two young girls without a mother.

 A role that Lydia, who married Benjamin Spafford in the fall of 1792, had yet to play.

The Spafford Years

The Spafford family had lived in the area longer than anyone, ever since 1669 when Benjamin’s immigrant ancestor, John Spafford, an original Rowley settler, built a log hut on the plateau of what was then the western limit of that town.

Like most everyone his age (24), Benjamin Spafford served in the Continental Army during the revolution. Boxford companies earned renown at Bunker Hill, where they came to the defense of Connecticut troops being overwhelmed by the Regulars. In August 1775, Benjamin is listed with those serving in Gloucester in defense against any British attempt to outmaneuver the militia by sea. The following year he served at Fort Ticonderoga overlooking Lake Champlain in upstate New York. Whether he was still there during the 1777 siege of that fort is unknown.

After the war, Benjamin settled in Boxford. He married Polly Adams in 1786. They had two daughters before Polly’s untimely death: Sally Spafford, born 31 Dec 1786, and Polly Adams Spafford, born 4 Jan 1789.

The 1790 census lists the “Benjn Spafford” household with two males and four females. It’s not clear who the extra bodies were; perhaps Benajmin’s mother Eleanor lived with them along with a male farmhand. Polly died later that year.

Neither young Polly (who later went by Mary) nor Sarah (aka Sally) Spofford remembered their birth mother, who died before Polly’s second birthday. Sarah might have remembered the day she met Lydia—she was six when her father remarried—but even then Polly was barely three.

As far as Polly remembered, Lydia had always been her mother. A stepmother, perhaps even a wicked one (no records survive, so who know?), but regardless the only mother figure she ever knew.

Sarah grew up and married Phineas Barnes of Boxford and had several children. Polly Spofford married later. In 1828, nearly 30 years old, she married Nathaniel Nelson, a widower twenty years her senior with three grown children. The arrangement might have felt completely natural to Polly. If a woman with no children of her own had raised her, so could she, too, play the role of childless stepmother.

Except Nathaniel and Polly had one daughter: Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Nelson Jones

Elizabeth Nelson was not Lydia’s blood granddaughter. Given the age difference, it’s not clear they had any relationship. Also unknown is whether she went by “Miss Lizzy” or would have called Lydia “Grammie” or something else.

However, Elizabeth’s cousin, Benjamin Barnes, recalled hearing Lydia’s exploits directly from her own mouth, so while Elizabeth was much younger, it’s nice to believe she, too, listened to the stories of her step-grandmother Lydia Warren Barnard Adams Spafford.

A woman with at least one wonderful tale to tell.

Our Relation to These People

Elizabeth Nelson, who married Nathaniel Jones, was Eleanor Kimball’s grandmother and great-grandmother to her namesake: Elizabeth Nelson Kimball Tidd. 

So, Lydia Warren Barnard Wood Spafford was the (step) grandmother of Mom’s great-grandmother.

Final Note

Elizabeth Nelson grew up in New Rowley, a western village of Rowley on the border of Boxford. New Rowley incorporated as the independent town of Georgetown in 1838.

Elizabeth was born the same year as Caroline Amanda Tidd. They may have attended Georgetown’s School #5 together, along with Carrie’s slightly older brother Cyrus Tidd (our 3^rd great-grandfather). School #5 was midway between the Tidd farm and Nelson’s house on the corner of Elm and East Main.

Either way, they certainly would have known each other, and not simply because it was a small town. Carrie’s mother and Elizabeth’s grandmother were siblings, both children of Stephen and Elizabeth Mighill of New Rowley’s Mighill clan. So, Elizabeth Nelson and Carrie Tidd were 1^st cousins (once removed).

Which means Mom and Dad have some common blood way back there.

Sources

1. The History of Boxford, Sidney Perley, 1880, p350
2. Ancestry.com: Descendants of Phineas Warren describe his service on Sons of the American Revolution membership applications.
3. Versions of Lydia’s story have been recorded by the Boston Herald (see Dorman’s “She Captured A Redcoat”), Watertown’s Military History, and Daughters of the Revolution (1893). It’s possible all accounts stem from Elizabeth Nelson’s cousin, Benjamin Barnes, who may have been related to Dorman.
4. https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2010/05/lydia-barnard-she-captured-redcoat.html
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1781%E2%80%931782_Massachusetts_legislature
6. Watertown in the Revolution 1770-1781 https://content.civicplus.com/api/assets/6b605e7a-c7e4-417e-8961-0959cc1c24b5

Joseph Bartlett of Newbury 1686-1754

In the fall of 1712, 25-year-old Joseph Bartlett journeyed east through the Massachusetts wilderness to his coastal hometown of Newbury, after more than four years in captivity at the hands of the French and their Indian allies.

Here is what survives of his story.

Queen Anne’s War

For more than a decade, war had once again swept western Europe, this time over the rightful successor to the deceased King Charles II of Spain. Initially a regional conflict, the fight widened the following year when England declared war on France and Spain.

All parties hoped to keep their American colonies neutral, and might have maintained peace in the New World, had tensions between the colonies not already been at a breaking point.

In the south, French outposts in New Orleans threatened the inland trade routes of the English Carolinas.

In the north, New England settlers disputed French claims to lands beyond the Kennebec River in present day Maine. The French and Indians had raided the northern settlements of Massachusetts Colony during King William’s War in the 1690s. Bad blood with the Indians ran even deeper; a permanent distrust had persisted since the massacres of King Philip’s War in the 1670s.

The English colonists knew that, with their home countries at war, it was only a matter of time before the French and their Indian allies once again came south. Local militias rallied. Many settlers slept inside the relative safety of nearby garrison houses.

These measures proved of little value. The French, allied with native Abenaki and Caughnawaga tribes, conducted raids on many New England towns, in many cases for the sole purpose of securing captives for ransom and slave labor.

In 1703, a force of over 500 French and Wabanaki Indians raided settlements from Wells to Falmouth in present day Maine. Over 300 English settlers were killed or captured.

In 1704, a force of 300 French and Indians destroyed Deerfield Massachusetts, taking more than 100 captives overland to a French-governed settlement near Montreal. While a few adult captives were successfully ransomed, most of the children were adopted by Mohawk families and never returned.

Unable to effectively combat these raids, the English colonials mounted offensives against Port Royal, the French capital of Acadia (Nova Scotia). The first attack, an aborted attempt led by Benjamin Church, was followed in the spring of 1707 by a siege led by John March. Unfortunately for the English, a force of 1600 men failed to capture the French city.

The French were bound to retaliate.

Joseph Bartlett

In 1707, five years into the hostilities, 21-year-old Joseph Bartlett arrived from Newbury to serve in the Haverhill militia. Born in the middle of the fifteen children of Richard and Hannah Emery Bartlett, Joseph had likely worked on his father’s farm and gained valuable currier and cordwainer experience in his father’s leather shop.

It was his first and only stint as a soldier. Joseph quartered in the garrison of Captain Samuel Wainright. He can’t have been terribly happy about his assignment: Pressed into military service against his will, away from friends and family, assigned duties that had killed at least one of his predecessors, an unfortunate soul named Jonathan Johnson.

Not that Joseph likely held any pacifist ideas. France had been an enemy since before he could remember. Relations with the Indians had been poor even longer. If he craved action, Haverhill was a good place to be, in those days the front line of the conflict.

Unlike most Massachusetts towns, Haverhill lay on the north shore of the Merrimack River, leaving it particularly vulnerable to surprise raids from their French and Indian neighbors to the north. The town had been regularly attacked for thirty years, but with months and sometimes years passing in between, leaving a sense of hopeful wariness that perhaps all those troubles lay in the past.

Joseph arrived during one such period, and served in Haverhill for nine months without incident…

The Raid on Haverhill

On 29 August 1708, a band of 100 French and 30 Indians attacked. They set fire to several homes including the Wainwright garrison. As many as 40 villagers were killed or captured.

Joseph Bartlett awoke that morning at the Wainwright garrison to find an attack party lying on the ground outside the front door, their guns pointed up at the windows where he stood dressing himself. The enemy fired without hesitation.

The initial volley missed; no one inside was injured. Bartlett and his comrades returned fire. In the subsequent exchange, an enemy round penetrated the front door, killing Captain Wainright where he stood. The soldiers stationed in the inner chambers prepared to defend the house without his leadership.

Surprising everyone, Mrs. Wainwright unbarred the front door and let their attackers enter. She spoke to them kindly, waited upon them with seeming alacrity, and promised to procure for them whatever they desired.

Not knowing what to make of her behavior, the French eventually demanded money.

Instead of fetching it, Mrs. Wainright fled with her children. Realizing they were fooled, the French attacked the barred chambers held by the remaining soldiers. Joseph and the others fired from the windows (In his account, Joseph states he killed some half dozen) before the others convinced him their only option for survival was to cease resistance.

Hiding his rifle in the chimney, Joseph surrendered.

The Journey North

The French took Joseph prisoner along with two others: a soldier named Newmarsh and one of Wainright’s daughters, who had been unable to escape with her mother.

As they were driven north into the woods with other prisoners taken from other homes, a group of Haverhill men mounted a counteroffensive. Several prisoners escaped during the attack on their captors.

Joseph was not so lucky. His captors compelled him to carry a heavy pack with his hands tied behind his back, part of the time led by a cord tied about his neck. A hatchet-wielding Indian with a pistol in his girdle held the other end of the rope. A short leash.

They walked for days. Joseph lived on horse meat and wan porridge. After some hard travel northward the party reached Lake Winnnipiseoge (Winnipesaukee), probably at the tip of what is now Alton Bay. There the French and Indians parted ways.

The prisoners stayed with the Indians. While the French traveled north toward Quebec along the lake’s eastern shore, the Indians moved west through the wilderness where the towns of Gilford and Meredith now lay. Crossing the lake (possibly at present-day Weirs Beach), the Indians killed a bear swimming in the water. They towed it ashore and cooked it, a feast for the famished party.

They then continued their journey, for five days eating little other than pounded corn. The starving Indians scattered; fifteen stayed with Joseph. A day later, the corn ran out.

Arriving at a river, the Indians made canoes and traveled downstream for three days, eating nothing the whole time save for a few sour grapes and thorn plums. When they managed to kill a hawk, the one bird fed fifteen persons. The head fell to Joseph, who later wrote, “this was the largest meal I had these four days.”

They finally met up with another party of Indians and French, who provisioned them with corn and pumpkin. The Indians successfully killed several sturgeons and, feeling stronger and in better spirits, from thence proceeded to the French fort at Chamble, near Montreal. The Indians shaved Joseph’s hair from one side of his head, greased the other, and painted his face.

Captivity

At Montreal, the Governor questioned Joseph about English plans to reinvade Canada. Likely a short interview, given his low status.

The next morning they started for an Indian fort nine miles from the city. When about half way, they came to a fire, surrounded by fifteen men and thirty boys, where they held a consultation about burning Joseph. Before such discussion were concluded, the Indians who owned him marched away with the boys.

While Joseph was spared death by burning, he did not escape abuse and torture. Arriving at the Indian fort, his captors left him with three Indians. One squaw beat him with a pole. Another cut off his little finger.

The Indians danced all night. When Joseph refused to join them, they pulled him into the ring. An Indian then came to him, and, after making a long speech, gave him to an old squaw, who took him to her wigwam.

The squaw whimpered and cried, then washed and clothed Joseph. He later learned he had been given to her in lieu of her son, who had been killed by the English. The squaw treated him well, but Joseph eventually moved to another fort ten miles away. He lived on dog meat and entrails. A French priest forced him to attend Catholic services, though Joseph had no idea what was being said.

From time to time, Joseph encountered other English. In Fort Chamblee, he met a native of Wells named Littlefield. Later he met a captive Englishwoman serving in the Frenchman’s house. Then a boy named John Willet taken by Indians at Quabog. What became of this unfortunates afterwards is unknown.

Joseph’s fortunes improved somewhat the following February (1709), when he went to live with one Captain Delude, a wealthy Frenchman who, suffering from gout, was unable to walk. Joseph stayed there 15 months. He ate well, conversed with Delude’s mistress on matters of religion, and “at leisure” worked at shoe making.

The details of the final two years of Joseph’s captivity are unknown, as are the terms of his release. It’s possible his father, perhaps even the whole town of Newbury, negotiated for his release, though it’s perhaps more likely the French simply let him go, as Britain and France declared an armistice that year.

However it happened, on Oct 5 1712 Joseph started his return trip to Newbury. Traveling south from Fort Chamblee, he arrived in Albany NY on the 20^th. After a week’s rest he made east for Kinderhook, then Westfield, then Springfield. He reached Boston via Quabog and Marlborough on November 4^th, finally arriving in Newbury on November 8, 1712.

In all, he spent four years, two months, and nine days in captivity.

Later Life

Joseph was awarded twenty pounds in compensation for his captivity. He settled on a farm in the fledgling community of Amesbury Newtown and married Elizabeth Tewksbury on December 5 1717. Following Elizabeth’s untimely death, he remarried Sarah Hoyt on April 27 1721.

The Bartlett farm eventually became part of Salisbury, then Amesbury again in 1724, then part of South Hampton NH when the state border was redrawn in 1742. The area finally incorporated as the independent town of Newton NH in 1749.

Joseph became Newton’s first militia captain, and served for many years as a deacon in the local parish. He died February 1 1754, age 68. His wife Sarah lived another 34 years, finally passing away at 90 on May 28 1787. They are both buried in Newton Town Hall Cemetery.

The Bartlett home on Thornell Road, built in 1720, still stands today. The house, which appears meticulously maintained for its age, featured in this 2023 Boston Magazine article.

Descendants

Joseph and Sarah had ten children and many grandchildren. Several descendants became prominent citizens in Newton. Others served in the NH State Legislature.  

Perhaps most notably, Joseph and Sarah’s daughter Mary married Josiah Bartlett, a cousin who, while representing New Hampshire in the 1776 Continental Congress, was the second man to sign the Declaration of Independence. Josiah later became New Hampshire’s fourth elected state governor.

We descend from Sarah and Joseph’s son Richard (born 1738) through Herbert Kimball’s paternal grandmother, Eliza Peaslee.

Final Note

Sometime after his return to Newbury, Joseph visited Haverhill, where he found his rifle still hidden where he left it in the Wainwright chimney. The rifle passed down through Bartlett’s descendants for many years.

A grand-nephew, also named Richard, carried the rifle during the Revolution.

Richard removed to Warner following the war, where a group of boys (being boys) overcharged the weapon and blew it to pieces.

The rifle, painstakingly restored in the 1870s, is now on display at the NH Historical Society.

Sources

https://archive.org/details/historyofhaverhi61chas/page/226/mode/2up

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Anne%27s_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_on_Haverhill_(1708)

https://www.geni.com/people/Richard-Bartlett-III/6000000001638716016

https://www.geni.com/people/Captain-Joseph-Bartlett/6000000002964604260

https://www.bostonmagazine.com/property/2023/06/01/bartlett-house/

A Tidd Story

NOTE 15 Jan 2024: This retelling of the 1775 Battle of Lexington from the perspective of the four Tidds present is based on Frank Coburn’s 1912 narrative, which contains many errors due to the numerous accounts from British officers that were unavailable at that time. I am currently working on a revision based on original source material (American and British). Meanwhile, I will keep this version alive for any Tidds who remain unaware of this fascinating aspect of our common heritage, as I was until recent years.

THE ALARM:

BY THE SPRING OF 1775, everyone knew there would be blood.

Relations between the colonists in Massachusetts and the British Government had drowned in the wake of the Stamp Act and the Townshend Duties. The Boston Massacre. The Tea Party.

In 1774, Parliament passed the “Intolerable Acts”. The King’s Governor and Army General, Thomas Gage, dissolved the Massachusetts provincial assembly and closed Boston’s commercial port. Merchants became poor overnight. Dock workers lost jobs en masse. Beggars starved.[i]

Perhaps worst of all, the Governor banned town meetings across the colony. Forget representation in Parliament. Forget self-government in the colony. This was the loss of any voice in the simplest of local affairs.

Colonists in the towns outside of Boston, longtime yeomen loyal to the King, turned openly militant. Selectmen raised money to stockpile weapons and supplies. Preachers advocated militia enrollment in their sermons. Townspeople forced courthouses to close. A new shadow government, the Provincial Congress, met in secret and flaunted British rule.

In December 1774, colonists in Portsmouth NH raided the gunpowder stores at Fort William and Mary. The next day they returned for cannons.

More cannon and supplies disappeared from Boston and Charlestown. To the south, the “militia’s powder” was similarly carried off from forts in Newport, Providence, and New London.

In February, British Parliament declared the Massachusetts Bay colony in a state of rebellion. Governor Gage closed every port in Massachusetts. And authorized his Army Regulars to shoot suspected rebels on sight.

In March, Gage tried (but failed) to confiscate the colonials’ gunpowder store in Salem.

By April, Gage learned the colonials were storing gunpowder and supplies in Concord. Everyone knew; the depot’s existence had been reported by newspapers as far away as Philadelphia. Further, the colonists knew Gage knew. The only question was when the Regulars would march out of Boston again.

And how many would come.

Lexington, Evening of April 18^th

WILLIAM TIDD [NT1] watched the knot of men leave his house and cross the field toward Revere Street. He had hosted some of the minutemen that evening for the purpose of exercise, “to be better prepared for the town’s defense”. Now, with the sky growing dark, the crisp and cool spring afternoon turned cold.

William was thirty-eight, son of one of the original settlers of Cambridge Farms, as Lexington was originally called. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, William and his wife had only one child, a daughter. A small family gave him more time for town affairs. He served as a town selectman on top of his one-year appointment as lieutenant of Captain Parker’s “Training Band”, Lexington’s militia company.

The Training Band had met frequently of late. They practiced with live weapons and learned battle tactics from the aging veterans of the French and Indians wars, fought two decades before. Unlike other colonies, many Massachusetts militia companies had rifles (not fowling piece shotguns) capable of firing balls as well as shot. Some even had bayonets.

William watched his minutemen reach Revere Street, where they split up. Some returned to their homes. Others walked down Bedford Road toward Lexington Common, about a mile away.

William had known them his whole life. His father-in-law, Robert Munroe, who had been the standard bearer at the taking of Louisburg in 1758, was an Ensign in the Training Band. William’s younger brother, Samuel, was a Private, as were their cousins, Benjamin and John. So were several of Munroe’s sons and nephews. In fact, half the company was either a Munroe or a Smith or a Harrington. Most of the others, like William, had married into one of Lexington’s three largest clans.

More than neighbors or comrades, they were family.

——

JOHN TIDD walked with the other members [NT2] of the Training Band from their cousin’s farm down Bedford Road to Lexington Common.

John was twenty-six years old, unmarried, with only his widowed mother Dorothy to rush home to. His father Joseph had died barely 18 months before leaving a healthy inheritance. He also left a somber reminder, “From death’s arrest no age is free”, chiseled across his tombstone.

At the green they met Robert Munroe, a tavernkeeper and Orderly Sergeant in the Training Band. Munroe had troubling news: A local man, Solomon Brown[NT3] , had spotted a patrol of British officers on the road from Boston.

Patrols were not unusual, but this one rode away from Boston late in the day, at a time when most patrols headed in the opposite direction, toward home. According to Brown, the patrol had detained some travelers, interrogated some about their business while trading insults with others.

And they carried pistols hidden beneath their topcoats.

The Lexington men thought the patrol sought John Hancock and Samuel Adams, who were staying at the parsonage of Reverend Clarke on Bedford Road. Benjamin and John had passed it minutes before. Ten British officers: about the number you’d send to take two civilian prisoners, they agreed.

After discussing what to do, one of the militia ran to warn Captain Parker, who lived south of town. Munroe then asked for volunteers to guard the parsonage.

John stepped forward.[ii]

——

SAMUEL TIDD, William’s younger brother, age thirty-three, was still on the Common when the British patrol arrived. The soldiers, who by then had dropped any pretense of peaceful travelers, created a stir as they passed through town. Three or four even barged into Matthew Mead’s home and helped themselves to the family dinner of bread and baked beans.

Samuel watched the officers continue up the road toward Concord, then joined the growing crowd of minutemen[NT4]  at Buckman’s Tavern. The tap room, situated across the green from the meetinghouse, had been the site of political meetings and discussions for years. Newspapers read, town gossip shared, personal mail sent and delivered. The tavern’s proprietor, John Buckman, was a member of the Training Band.

After more discussion, Solomon Brown and two others volunteered to follow the patrol. They set off around 9 o’clock.

Sergeant Munroe, still in charge in the absence of any militia officers, kept watch at the parsonage. The British patrol had taken a different road, but possibly only as a ruse. They might be back.    

While his wife and infant daughter slept at home, Samuel couldn’t bring himself to leave Buckman’s Tavern.[iii]

He waited hours.

The scouts did not return.

——

MIDNIGHT CAME AND WENT.

John Tidd heard hooves approaching the parsonage on Bedford Road. Only one horse—not the British patrol—but that didn’t mean the rider was friendly. It might be a colonial messenger bearing news, but it could also be a British scout coming in advance of a larger threat.

The rider called out. A messenger, then—he made no attempt at stealth—but John didn’t recognize the man’s voice.

Munroe didn’t appear to know the rider either. “Quiet!” he hissed. “Lest you awaken the family. They have only just retired.”

“Noise!” the rider shot back. “You’ll have noise enough before long. The Regulars are coming out.”

The parsonage window slid up. Reverend Clarke inquired who was there.

“I would speak with Mister Hancock,” the rider called.

Hancock appeared at the window. “Come in, Revere,” he said. “We are not afraid of you.”

Munroe let him pass. Paul Revere was not a local man—not family—but the Patriot messenger had visited Hancock and Adams several times in recent days and was known to many in Lexington. They knew he hailed from Boston, the son of a French Huguenot, a silversmith and occasional dentist and, while the matter was only whispered about, a Boston Tea Party ringleader.

Revere’s news made clear the purpose of the British patrol: Eight hundred Regulars had crossed the Charles and were marching for Concord via Lexington. The patrol was one of several assigned to keep news of the coming army from reaching the militia. Revere himself had barely escaped capture on the Cambridge Road, then came by the longer route through Medford and Arlington. Alerting every house on the way.

While they were talking, another rider, William Dawes, arrived carrying the same message. Eight hundred Regulars.

The meaning was not lost on John Tidd or anyone else in the militia. Capturing Hancock and Adams would be a welcome bonus, but not the primary objective. That many troops had one purpose: to seize the militia weapon stores in Concord.

While Dawes and Revere set out for Concord together, the Lexington men hurried to rouse the town.

——

SAMUEL PRESCOTT, a young doctor riding home to Concord after an evening in Lexington, met Revere and Dawes on the road leaving town. They rode on together.

The did not make it far. The British patrol, which had set up an ambush to stop all communication with Concord, stopped all three of them.

Prescott, who knew the local pathways, escaped through a thicket, but Revere and Dawes were not so lucky. Both found themselves explaining why they were out in the middle of the night, far from their Boston homes.

They were not the first men detained by the British. Revere and Dawes found themselves in the company of Solomon Brown, Elijah Sanderson, and Jonathan Loring, the captured Lexington scouts.

——

WILLIAM TIDD [NT5] was at home when, around two o’clock in the morning, a messenger arrived with the news: British officers discovered on the road to Concord. Citizens insulted, harassed, and detained. And now a army of Regulars on the march from Boston to Lexington on their way to Concord.

More information than William needed. He rushed to the parade ground, where the full company had assembled.

Captain Parker consulted his men on what actions must be taken for the people’s safety and to be ready for whatever service might be necessary on this alarming occasion. After some discussion, they determined to send scouts eastward to confirm the accuracy of Revere’s message. They also decided to send two messengers, Benjamin Tidd and Nathan Munroe, north to rouse the Bedford militia.

Will little more to do but wait, Captain Parker dismissed the remaining members of the company with orders to assemble at the beat of a drum.

——

BENJAMIN TIDD and Nathan Munroe rode north to Bedford. Benjamin was a natural choice. Many of his in-laws lived there and his brother-in-law, Jeremiah Fitch Jr., ran a tavern.

A perfect starting place to rally a town.

Jonathan Wilson, a minuteman captain, was sitting up with his visiting brother-in-law despite the late hour. The relative, Thompson Maxwell, had been to Boston and seen suspicious movements there. Wilson and Maxwell were discussing the condition of affairs when a messenger reached his house with the news.[iv]

The captain rallied some of his minutemen to Fitch’s Tavern, where Jonathan Fitch served them a light meal.

“It is a cold breakfast, boys,” the militia captain said. “But we will give the British a hot dinner[NT6] .”

Satisfied they had accomplished their errand, Benjamin and Nathan rode on to warn Concord.

——

SAMUEL TIDD perked up in his chair next to the fire in Buckman’s Tavern. Elijah Sanderson and Solomon Brown had returned from scouting the Concord Road, where the British had detained them and also Paul Revere and William Dawes.

Had anyone made it to Concord? Nobody knew.

Others came and went. Some who had gone to confirm the British army was marching their way returned saying there was no truth to it. Exhausted, Sanderson took a chair next to Samuel by the fire and fell asleep.[v]

So did Samuel.

——

BENJAMIN TIDD and Nathan Munroe continued their alarm to Meriam’s Corner, a crossroads midway between Lexington and Concord, where they learned Doctor Prescott had already been through to alert Concord.

They galloped back to Lexington.

——

JOHN TIDD was still outside the parsonage when Paul Revere returned. After several hours of questioning, the British patrol had released him and Dawes, under orders that they abandon their plans to reach Concord. After listening to Revere’s report, Tidd’s compatriots urged Hancock and Adams to flee.

Hancock took some convincing, but Adams ultimately persuaded him their role was executive, not military. They left in a carriage driven by the minister’s son. Revere accompanied them initially, but Hancock had left behind his trunk at Buckman’s Tavern. Revere said he would take Hancock’s secretary, Mister Lowell, to fetch it.

On Revere’s way back to Lexington, they passed John and the others who, with no one left to guard at the parsonage, were walking down the road toward Lexington Common.

A drum began to beat on the other side of the trees. The call to arms.

The men broke out running.

——

WILLIAM TIDD heard the drum beat to arms while resting in the home of his brother-in-law Daniel Harrington across from Buckman’s Tavern. He fell out immediately to join the company on the green. Word spread quickly: the British were approaching.

The men quickly assembled. Men he recognized. John Tidd, his young cousin. Robert Munroe, his father-in-law. The faces of family and friends, all welcome, but so few in number.

Standing against eight hundred Regulars.

——

BENJAMIN TIDD rode up to Lexington Green with Nathan Munroe in time to hear the first alarm bell. Munroe hopped off his horse and joined their ranks. Benjamin remained on horseback. He could carry news to neighboring towns more quickly.

——

BRITISH MAJOR JOHN PITCAIRN commanded six companies of light infantry at the front of the main body of Regulars. Approaching Lexington Common, Pitcairn heard the beating of the Lexington drum. Recognizing it as a challenge, he ordered his soldiers to halt.

And load their muskets.

——

PAUL REVERE [NT7] had secured Hancock’s trunk when, looking out of the window towards Boston, he saw the King’s soldiers a little way off. They had no more time.

He and Mister Lowell quickly exited the Tavern. Their path took them along the common, where they passed through the ranks of the assembled minutemen.    

Revere heard Parker’s orders: “Let the troops pass by and don’t molest them without they begin first.”

The Training Band officers repeated the Captain’s orders, which went down in history as: “Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they want war, let it begin here.”

——

WILLIAM TIDD stood next to Captain Parker at the tiny band of men assembled on the green. So few.

The Captain said, “Every man of you who is equipped, follow me. Those of you who are not equipped, go into the meeting house and furnish yourselves for the magazine, and immediately join the company.”

He led those who stood ready to the northly end of the Common, where they formed a single line. One of them, Sylvanus Wood, stepped from the ranks long enough to count them. Thirty-eight and no more.

But still growing. Orderly Sergeant William Munroe was forming a second line from the newcomers.

——

PITCARN’S MEN marched double quick for Lexington Common, where they found over sixty men standing in armed defiance.

The Major galloped up to within six rods of Captain Parker’s foremost line, and exclaimed: “Lay down your arms, you damned rebels, and disperse!”

——

WILLIAM TIDD stepped forward. “You won’t get my gun,” he said.[vi]

Captain Parker, seeing the hopelessness of armed resistance, gave the order to disperse. Men began to walk off the field. Parker did not, however, order his men to lay down their arms.

Pitcairn shouted again, “Damn you, why don’t you lay down your arms?”

No answer came back. Each of Capt. Parker’s little band, retiring from the field, carried his gun with him.

Then one of the other mounted officers, about two rods behind Pitcairn, brandished his sword. The Regulars huzzaed in unison. The officer then pointed his pistol towards the minutemen.

And fired.

Pitcairn heard the discharge, which (some say) he mistook for enemy fire, since he had not authorized it himself.

“Fire!” he ordered.

The British hesitated.

“Fire, damn you, fire!” he repeated.

The first platoon, eight or nine men, fired, over the heads of the minutemen.

Pitcairn shouted, “God damn you, fire at them!”

The second volley flew at the heart of the Lexington line.

——

PAUL REVERE was just off the green when the first gun went off. He turned and saw the smoke of it rising just in front of the troops. He heard a great shout and saw them run a few paces.

Then the irregular firing of an advance guard.

Then whole platoons firing.

——

JOHN TIDD stood in the Lexington line next to Ebenezer and John Munroe, who remarked the first volley appeared to be little more than powder. The second volley hit John Munroe in the arm.

“I’ll give them the guts of my gun,” Munroe said.

The Munroes unloaded on the British, but with so much smoke from the initial discharge, they had little ability to aim. John Munroe retreated ten rods and reloaded. Improperly, it turned out. When he fired again, the front of his muzzle blew off.

Most of the retiring minutemen broke into run.

——

BENJAMIN TIDD, on horseback next to a Lincoln man, Joseph Abbott, saw the British officer fire the first pistol, then more shots from the regulars before any Lexington man returned fire.

By the second volley, their horses had had enough, and bolted.

Benjamin rode off to carry the news to neighboring towns.[vii]

——

MAJOR PITCAIRN and his men responded to the Munroes’ shots with unrestrained fury.

They mortally wounded Jonathan Harrington Jr, who staggered to his home on the north end of the Common, falling dead at his wife’s feet.

They shot down unarmed Asahel Porter as he fled through Buckman’s garden.

They shot the Captain’s cousin, Jonas Parker, then stuck a bayonet through him as he lay on the field trying to load his rifle.

And they shot down William’s father-in-law, Ensign Robert Munroe, in front of a barn facing the Common, within sight of his sons and daughter.

——

JOHN TIDD was among the last to depart the field. Near the edge of the green, a mounted British officer caught up and struck him down with his cutlass.

While John lay senseless from the blow, the Regulars robbed him of his musket, cartridge box and powder horn.

They left him for dead.

——

WILLIAM TIDD saw his father-in-law fall but had no time to grieve. Not with Major Pitcairn galloping after him, saber drawn. William fled from the green up the North Road.

Pitcairn shouted, “Damn you, stop, or you are a dead man!”

William ran a hundred yards before realizing he could not escape the charging officer on the road. He leapt over a pair of bars into a field.

Then turned and made his stand.

Smoke from his rifle filled the air. His ball missed the Major, but one shot was enough.

Pitcairn retreated to the main body.

——

SAMUEL TIDD, who had slept through the drum, was not alone at Buckman’s Tavern when the shooting started. Solomon Brown charged his rifle and opened fire from the tavern’s back door. He then passed through the front door and fired again.

The British retaliated, peppering the tavern with ball and shot, at which point John Buckman began yelling for them to stop using his house as a fort.

Brown moved outside, lying down behind a stone wall at the back of the barn, and opened fire again.

The British responded again. Their leaden bullets spattered against the wall, spouting little clouds of powdered stone in the air in front of the men.

——

MAJOR PITCAIRN gathered his men.

The British suffered minor casualties. One man wounded in the thigh. The Major’s own horse shot twice.

However, the killings created a frenzied pitch among Pitcairn’s men that did not subside until the main body of Regulars arrived. The officers finally managed to calm the troops and reform their lines.

With a loud huzza of victory, they marched for Concord.

Behind them, the sun peeked over the treetops onto the bloody field. Eight men dead. A dozen more wounded.

And the day had only just begun.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Author’s Note

Most of this is “factual”. The endnotes below highlight a few areas where the story required dramatic license, most notably the actions of John Tidd the night before the battle and the actions of Samuel Tidd throughout.

All dialogue comes from accounts of the day, not my imagination.

The “factual” parts are based on eyewitness accounts recorded days after the event and other accounts from decades later. Both sets of statements may suffer from narrator biases beyond the usual (e.g. self-aggrandizement).

The first written accounts, sworn affidavits made within days of the fight, had the goal of fixing blame and minimizing the risk of personal penalties. Pitcairn insisted his men didn’t fire first. The colonists claimed the opposite.

Later depositions suffered from decades of memory decay. The accounts of both William Tidd and Elijah Sanderson came in the 1820s, when both were old men. Most likely they could only recall the stories they’d told for years, not the events themselves.

What is known today is only what they wrote then. William Tidd fired his rifle at a mounted officer. John Tidd was severely wounded. Benjamin Tidd watched on horseback and rode off soon after the shooting started. And Samuel Tidd was there somewhere.

Final note: These are all cousins to my direct ancestor, Jonathan Tidd, who lived an hour’s march away in Woburn, served at Lieutenant in the militia that year, and by sunrise was already on the move. . .

Primary Sources

https://www.lexingtonminutemen.com/lt-william-tidd.html

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/49742/49742-h/49742-h.htm

http://www.lexingtonhistory.org/uploads/6/5/2/1/6521332/fuhrer_complete_report.pdf

Endnotes:

---

[i] Sources for state of rebellion:

Rebellion declared in Massachusetts (1775)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restraining_Acts_1775

[ii] John’s participation at the parsonage is unknown but plausible. His later actions are documented.

[iii] The names and number of minutemen at Buckman’s Tavern before midnight is unknown. It’s plausible Samuel Tidd was there, but not certain. Of the four Lexington Tidds in Parker’s Company, only Samuel had no documented role that morning. He might have been on the green but, like many others, might have been late to the fight. Either way, he probably fought later in the day.

[iv] Maxwell family tradition cited by Brown in History of the Town of Bedford.

[v] Of all the militia present during this eventful day, Elijah gives us the most complete picture in his 1824 deposition – Elijah Sanderson – 23 years old in 1775, a journeyman woodworker living with his older brother’s family along the main road to Concord – On the night of April 18th, Elijah became part of a small expedition of scouts (Elijah Sanderson, Solomon Brown, Jonathan Loring) who rode out to follow 9 British regulars who had passed by on horseback along the main road o The three were captured along the road between Lexington and Concord and detained by the British soldiers for several hours o In their absence, Paul Revere, 40 years old at the time, alarmed the town about British troop movements to the east, along the road to Boston (visitors to H-C will already know this). Revere was then also captured and detained along with Elijah, Solomon, and Jonathan At this point back in Lexington, Captain Parker has formed his militia on the common. After waiting and having no further word from scouts, Parker dismisses his men but tells them to stay within earshot of the call to arms (drum beat). Some retire to homes along the common, but many gather here at the tavern in this very Tap Room to await further orders o Around 2am, Elijah and his fellow captives are released and return to Lexington – Elijah joins his fellow militiamen here at the Buckman Tavern – In Elijah’s 1824 deposition he recalls the events of that day, he remembers great commotion here as many townsmen (militia) gathered by the fire and anxiously awaited further news o “I went to the [Buckman] tavern. The citizens were coming and going; some went down to find whether the British were coming; some came back, and said there was no truth in it. I went into the tavern, and, after a while, went to sleep in my chair by the fire.” – Elijah Sanderson, 17 December 1824 Deposition – Elijah was soon awoken by the drumbeat (the 2nd call to arms) on the common, without a musket (he had lent it to his brother earlier in the day) Elijah falls out of ranks and watched events unfold from the side.

– http://www.lexingtonhistory.org/uploads/6/5/2/1/6521332/bt_revised_tour_outline_8-24-12_final.pdf

[vi] Whether William Tidd said these words is unknown. However, he utters the line every year in Lexington battle reenactment.

[vii] Benjamin Tidd was never a confirmed scout or messenger, but it makes sense given he remained on horseback while the others fell in line. Here is his sworn affidavit about the day: “We Benjamin Tidd of Lexington and Joseph Abbot of Lincoln in the County of Middlesex Colony of Massachusetts Bay in New England of lawful age do testify and declare that on the morning of the nineteenth of April instant about five o’clock being on Lexington Common and mounted on horses we saw a body of regular Troops Marching up to the Lexington Company Which was then dispersing. Soon after the regulars fired first a few guns which we took to be pistols from some of the regulars who were mounted on Horses and then the said Regulars fired a volley or two before any guns were fired by the Lexington Company our Horses immediately started and we rode off and further say not. –Benjamin Tidd Lexington April 25^th 1775 Joseph Abbot Middlesex St April 25^th 1775

It’s the “and further say not” that leads me to believe he played an active role in the activities of the day.

---

 [NT1]William Tidd’s deposition, taken many years later, states the company of minutemen “frequently met for exercise, the better to be prepared for defense; that, on the evening previous to the 19th a number of the militia met at my house for the above purpose.”

 [NT2]But naturally it was surmised that the capture of Hancock and Adams was intended, so a guard of eight men, under Sergeant William Munroe, was stationed around the home of Rev. Jonas Clarke. About forty of the members of Captain Parker’s Company gathered at the Buckman Tavern after the mounted officers passed through Lexington,^[69] and it was deemed best that scouts should be sent out to follow them. Accordingly Solomon Brown, Jonathan Loring, and Elijah Sanderson volunteered to act,—and they started about 9 o’clock in the [37]evening.

 [NT3]Solomon Brown, Jonathan Loring, and Elijah Sanderson volunteered to act,—and they started about 9 o’clock in the [37]evening.^[70] As we have previously written, they were ambushed and captured at about 10 o’clock on the road towards Concord, in the town of Lincoln, by the same ones they had set out to follow.

 [NT4]Lexington lies in a northwesterly direction from Boston, at a distance of about eleven miles. At that time it was the abiding place of John Hancock and Samuel Adams who were stopping at the parsonage of Rev. Jonas Clarke. It was then supposed that one of the objects of Gen. Gage was to effect their capture, and that his other object was the destruction of military stores at Concord. Possibly the first intimation that Lexington had of the proposed hostile visit of Gage’s troops was communicated by a young man, Solomon Brown, who had been to Boston, on market business, and on his return [35]had passed a patrol of British officers. There were ten of them, it was late in the afternoon, or early evening of April 18, and they were riding away from Boston towards Lexington, which seemed out of harmony with their ordinary way of riding back to Boston at night. Mr. Brown kept somewhat near them along the road for awhile, that he might the better determine their intentions, allowing them to pass and repass him several times. Having at last satisfied himself that their mission meant more than a pleasure sortie into the country, he gained the lead once more, and when out of their sight rode rapidly to Lexington and reported his observations to Orderly Sergeant William Munroe, proprietor of Munroe’s Tavern.[65]

These ten officers riding in advance must have known that actual hostilities were at hand, for they not only detained travelers on the highway, but deliberately insulted a large number of the inhabitants along the road. Three or four of them, at least, went far beyond the behavior of military men in time of peace, for as they rode into Lexington, they stopped at the house of [36]Matthew Mead, entered and helped themselves to the prepared family supper of brown bread and baked beans. Mrs. Mead and her daughter, Rhoda, were within, and Mr. Mead and two sons were absent. This Lexington home was at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Woburn Street, where the Russell House now stands.^[66]

Quickly following Solomon Brown’s message came a written one, directed to John Hancock, sent by Elbridge Gerry, one of the Committee of Supplies, then sitting at the Black Horse Tavern in Menotomy. It was practically to the same effect, “that eight or nine officers of the King’s troops were seen, just before night, passing the road towards Lexington, in a musing, contemplative posture; and it was supposed they were out upon some evil design.”^[67]

 [NT5]William Tidd deposition: “About two o’clock on the morning of the 19th, I was notified that, the evening previous, several of the British officers had been discovered riding up and down the road leading to Concord; that they had detained and insulted the passing inhabitants; and that a body of the regulars were then on the march from Boston towards Lexington.”

 [NT6]Bedford an adjoining town to Lexington, and about fifteen miles from Boston, was alarmed on the evening of the 18th, by Nathan Munroe and Benjamin Tidd, both of Lexington, who [38]had been sent there by Captain Parker because of the suspicious actions of the British officers on their way to Concord. Munroe and Tidd aroused the town, and some of the minute-men rallied at the tavern kept by Nathan Fitch, Jr., and were there served with light refreshments. Captain Willson said:—

“It is a cold breakfast, boys, but we will give the British a hot dinner. We’ll have every dog of them before night.”^[72]

 [NT7]Revere and Lowell reached Buckman Tavern, and there learned from a man who had just come up the road that the troops were within two miles. They proceeded to a chamber for the trunk, which they secured, and looking out of the window towards Boston, saw the King’s soldiers but a little way off. They quickly made their exit from the Tavern, passed along the Common through Captain Parker’s Company, or rather a small part of it, and heard his words:—

“Let the troops pass by and don’t molest them without they begin first.”[59]

[32]

When a little farther along, “not half gun shot off,” as Revere expresses it, he heard a single gun, turned and saw the smoke of it rising just in front of the troops, heard them give a great shout, saw them run a few paces, heard irregular firing as of an advance guard, and then firing by platoons.

The American Revolution had indeed commenced.

In the beginning, there were no Tidds in Georgetown.

This 13-square-mile stretch of Massachusetts saw its first Europeans in 1639, when a few English settlers trudged inland from Ezekiel Roger’s Rowley settlement. They found low hills surrounded by meadows suitable for grazing and farming. Young Samuel Brocklebank brought cattle to these meadows in the summer. John Spofford, the first permanent settler, built a log hut there in 1669. By 1700, some twenty families had built homes in Rowley’s western reaches.

Names like Nelson and Chaplin and Mighill.

Not Tidd.

The area around Bald Pate Hill remained part of Rowley for another hundred years, first at Rowley’s 2^nd Parish and then as the village of New Rowley. During this period of diligent recordkeeping, no births, marriages, or deaths of anyone named Tidd are recorded. After the Revolution, the first two official United States Census rolls, in 1790 and 1800, show no one named Tidd living in Rowley. In fact, it’s not clear anyone named Tidd lived anywhere in Essex County.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a young man named Samuel Charles Tidd appeared in Rowley. Where did he come from? How did he come to live in the part of Rowley that became Georgetown?

Time-consuming questions without, it seems, pat answers.

Who Was Samuel Charles Tidd?

Contemporary sources, including Clara Tidd’s genealogical record of her ancestors (circa 1970?), list the parents of Samuel Charles Tidd as Samuel and Ruhamah Richardson Tidd, both of Woburn. Records show Samuel and Ruhamah married in May 1781. What is known about them:

Ruhamah was born December 15^th, 1762, the only known child of James and Hannah Richardson. Her mother Hannah’s maiden name is unknown. (Note: A different James Richardson, born the same year as Ruhamah’s father in Woburn, also married a woman named Hannah. That James and Hannah (maiden name Reed) had many children, though they had moved to Leominster in Western Massachusetts prior to 1760 and none of their children were born in Woburn.)

Samuel Tidd, the supposed father of Samuel Charles, was born December 7^th, 1759, the second son of Lt. Jonathan Tidd and his wife Serviah Baker. This Samuel was fifteen when, in 1775, his father marched to the Lexington alarm with Samuel’s older brother, Jonathan Jr. Samuel himself served in the Continental Army in 1778, stationed at Fishkill New York to help defend against the occasional British sorties from their New York City stronghold. He served again for several months in 1781 (the year of his marriage).

Their supposed son Samuel Charles was born 1 December 1784.

Samuel, the father, must have died during the 1780s, because at some point Ruhamah remarried John Wyman.

Then Ruhamah, too, passed away in 1792, age 30. Samuel Charles became an orphan at age seven. Unwanted by Wyman, Samuel Charles grew up with Tidd relatives in Woburn, possibly spending his teenage years in the home of his Aunt Martha and her husband, Dr. Josiah Converse (The 1800 census shows an extra teenage male in the Converse household). Then, as a young adult with little to inherit, Samuel Charles headed east to Essex County, where shoe manufacturing boomed in many coastside towns. He shows up in the Rowley record soon after.

That’s one possible story, anyway.

Truth be told, what happened to Samuel and Ruhamah Tidd after their 1781 marriage (for which a record exists) remains shrouded in mystery. There are no surviving death records for either of them, nor do any birth records exist for any children of the Samuel/Ruhamah marriage.

This includes Samuel Charles, for whom no birth record survives (as far as I can find), not in Woburn nor in any other Massachusetts town. His supposed birth date, 1 Dec 1784, is known only from the inscription on his tombstone.

In fact, Samuel (son of Lt. Jonathan Tidd) disappears completely from all known records after he was paid in 1784 (late) for his 1781 military service. The when and how of his death are unknown. Perhaps he died near home and records were lost. Perhaps he went west with many others of his generation, settling in Ohio or elsewhere, and was never heard from again. Perhaps Ruhamah went with him and came home when he died.

The Richardson family history, available online from Yale University, says Ruhamah married John Wyman, but provides no date. It makes no mention of her first marriage to Samuel Tidd. Meanwhile Woburn has no records of the Wyman marriage (though 1790 US Census Records show John Wyman lived in Woburn with two boys and two women/girls, so presumably he had a family).

Further complicating matters, the one surviving Woburn record that mentions Samuel and Ruhamah is the 1848 death record of a completely different Samuel Tidd, which lists Samuel and Ruhamah as his parents. This “Samuel B. Tidd” of Woburn lived from 1796-1848 with his wife Hannah and several children. He could not have been the same person as Samuel Charles Tidd of Rowley/Georgetown.

Would Samuel and Ruhamah give two of their sons the same name? Did Ruhamah not die in 1792 as the Richardson family records show? Or is the Samuel B Tidd death record, likely a copy of the original, simply wrong?

This is not the only conflicting fact in the records. Samuel Charles Tidd’s own death record states his mother’s name was Maria, not Ruhamah. Is this also a mistake? Or is it not coincidental Samuel’s oldest son Mighill gives the name Maria to his oldest daughter? Hard to say. While Maria became a common name in the 1800s, there were few Maria’s born prior to the Revolution and none in Woburn. It’s possible Maria was a nickname for the uncommon and somewhat unwieldy “Ruhamah”, or simply a variant of the more common Mary. In any case no one recording Samuel Charles’ death in 1857 would have ever met the woman, especially if she indeed died when Samuel Charles was young. “Maria” could have simply been another innocent error by an underpaid town recordkeeper.

Another possibility: Samuel Charles might have been the son of Samuel and Maria Renaux Tidd (or Teed) who lived in upstate New York. This, too, seems unlikely. That couple also seems to have had a son Samuel in 1786 (two years after Samuel Charles) who had a family of his own and lived a full life and died on the far side of the Hudson.

Any yet other anomalies exist. The death record for one of Samuel Charles’ children reports his birthplace as Reading Mass, not Woburn (The two towns border each other, so perhaps the line moved). And then there is the curious spelling of Samuel Charles’ surname, Tidds with an “s”, in the Rowley records. The only other place that shows up is in Nova Scotia, where some British Loyalists named Tidds seem to have migrated during the revolution. Supporting that theory (a little) is the remigration of some loyalists to Maine, and the fact that some records show Samuel Charles’ oldest son Mighill was born in Maine.

None of this information points to any reason for Samuel Charles to wind up in Rowley/Georgetown at a time when most young people were pushing west into Ohio or north into New Hampshire or Maine. Was he a free-spirited wanderer who settled down when he met his soul mate Ruthy? Or was he a wanted man, on the run for a horrible crime?

The simplest explanation might be the rise of shoe manufacturing in the towns north of Boston. The Tidds of Woburn were accomplished leatherworkers, which Samuel would have grown up around and likely gathered some skills he could, as a young man, take with him and find work.

Mere guesswork, without more facts.

What’s On Record

Samuel Charles Tidd first appears in Rowley history in 1807, where records of an August 3rd meeting show the town voted to set the pay for volunteer militia. The list of recipients included “Samuel C Tidd”. If the birth date on his tombstone is correct, he would have been 22 years old.

It’s possible he worked in nearby Danvers a few years later, where a “Samuel Tidd” shows up in the 1810 Federal Census. That Samuel lived with another man about his age (16 to 26), who might have been a sibling or cousin or factory coworker.

Then, on November 2 1813, Rowley records show Samuel Charles Tidds married Ruthy Mighill. Ruthy’s parents, David and Huldah Dole Mighill, had passed away the prior year. Whether Ruthy, 2^nd of four surviving children, inherited anything is unclear (Wills and deeds may exist, but I don’t have access to them) but, since they lived most of their lives across from Ruthy’s brother, she probably did.

It’s possible Samuel Charles and Ruthy moved around in the early years of their marriage. Some records show their eldest son Mighill Augustus was born in Maine in 1814. Others show their second son Luther Pierce was born in Lunenberg, a small town in western Massachusetts. Whether these are A) recording errors, or B) the boys were born on trips to visit relatives, or C) attempts to start a life somewhere outside of Rowley/Georgetown, is unknown.

They did spend at least some of this time near Ruthy’s childhood home on western Rowley, as shown by the 1816 birth of their eldest daughter Harriet Braman (note the middle name). Her birth was recorded back in the Second Parish Church of Rowley (later the First Congregational Church of Georgetown), then led by the pastor Reverend Isaac Braman.

The 1820 Census shows Samuel Charles and Ruthy back in Essex County, living in Boxford with their three small children. Samuel Charles listed his occupation as “Agriculture” not “Manufacturing”, so he seems to have been earning a living as a farmer.

During the 1820s, Samuel Charles and Ruthy had four more children: Charlotte Eliza (1821), Ruthy Mighill (1823), Charles Sumner (1824) and Cyrus (1828). All births are found only in the Rowley town records, so there is no reason to believe the family lived anywhere else.

The 1830 Census shows a “Charles C Tidd” (another recording error?) living in Rowley with one woman over forty (Ruthy) plus four boys and three girls under age 19. No occupation is recorded. However, an 1830 map of Rowley shows “S. C. Tidd” lived across the road from Ruthy’s brother, Doctor David Mighill, at the foot of Bald Pate Hill on the Boxford line.

Their youngest child, a daughter named Caroline Amanda, was born later in 1830.

Georgetown incorporated as a town in 1838, occupying what was roughly the West (Second) Parish of Rowley where Ruthy Mighill was raised and at least one of their children (Harriet Braman) was born.

The 1840 Census has Samuel Charles and Ruthy living in Georgetown (likely the same house), with six children still living at home. Four of the eight reportedly worked in “Manufacturing or Trade”, most likely shoemaking.

The 1850 Census has them still in Georgetown with five grown children still living at home. Samuel Charles’ occupation, as well as that of sons Charles and Cyrus, is listed at “Shoemaker”.

One question is where Samuel Charles worked as a shoemaker. Did he move around every few years or stay with one employer? Either is possible. Many small shoe manufacturers existed at the at time, and many town centers (Boxford, Rowley, Georgetown, Topsfield, to name a few) were easy walking distance for someone commuting off the Tidd farm on the West Rowley/Boxford line.

When he died in 1857, of lung fever, Samuel Charles occupation was listed simply as “Farmer.” He had evidently not worked in the factories for several years. Ruthy died a few weeks later of the same disease. They are buried together in Union Cemetery in Georgetown, leaving behind seven grown children (Harriet Braman died in 1843) and, by then, numerous grandchildren.

We descend from Samuel Charles (whoever he was) and Ruthy’s son Cyrus.

Adventures Among the New England Natives, Part I

What new and novel can be written about the relations between the Mayflower passengers and the native populations they encountered? How do these interactions reflect the settlers’ character, morals, and ideals? Such topics have been covered in many volumes and many more will undoubtedly be put to paper. And yet so little of their experience is broadly known, even in the heart of New England.

Most contemporary narratives fall into one of two categories. First comes the children’s tale, a “First Thanksgiving” of cooperation and friendship. Squanto helps the Pilgrims, who in return share the bounty of their autumn harvest. The second narrative, broader in scope, is the nakedly apologist adult tale of colonial aggression. The European settlers disregarded native land rights and corralled the few survivors of innumerable wars onto “reservations” of mostly worthless land. A Trail of Tears instead of Thanksgiving.

Both narratives are grounded in fact, but are viewed through historical telescopes that not only omit many contextual details required to understand both settler and native motives, but also almost two hundred years of history in between.

Zooming out a little, it becomes possible to form a clearer picture, but even then only through the fog of surviving information. For example, the documents recording the Mayflower’s first encounters with native New Englanders, now called Mourt’s Relation, undoubtedly inject the biases of their authors (Edward Winslow and William Bradford), who above all sought to describe both themselves and their new home in a favorable light to investors and future pilgrims alike.

With a grain of salt in hand, the rhetoric nevertheless remains a useful view of, if not how these individuals truly thought and acted, as the very least how they wanted others living at the time to think they did.

They referred to the native inhabitants of their New World as either “Indians” or “savages”. Neither term is inherently derogatory. By the 1600s, the term “savages” had come to mean “living in the lowest condition of development” more than its original definition of “ferocious, wild, and untamed.” In other words, they described how the natives lived, not who they were. Their respect and even admiration for native ingenuity and skill is evident in these first stories.

Also evident from Mourt’s Relation is the settlers’ practical priorities vis-à-vis the natives. They sought neither conquest nor religious conversion, but simple trade and mutual assistance. On 13 Nov 1620, the day the Mayflower passengers first landed near the tip of Cape Cod, a dozen well-armed men went ashore “to see what the land was, and what inhabitants they could meet with.”

Unfortunately, they found no inhabitants nor any habitations, only an empty neck, sandy and narrow, which they likened to the downs of Holland.

The days that followed proved equally disappointing.

The First Discovery

Two days after their first landing, Myles Standish (and, as his counselors, ancestors William Bradford and Stephen Hopkins) led a party ashore armed with muskets, swords, and corslets (body armor). After walking a mile they came upon a half-dozen men walking toward them with a dog. At first, they thought the men were the Mayflower captain and some of his men, who they knew to be ashore. They soon realized, however, the men were strangers.

The natives had no interest in making new friends that day. They ran into the wood as the Englishmen approached, whistling for their dog to follow.

Standish’s party marched after them. They traced the native footsteps through the woods, saw signs where they had stopped to watch their pursuers. Heavily armored as they were, Standish’s party never caught them and after ten miles, with dusk falling, they made camp. The group passed their first quiet but anxious night ashore.

The next day they passed creeks and ponds and stretches of wood with many fowl and deer, but neither natives nor native dwellings. Marching further south, they found a fifty-acre field with signs the natives had once planted corn. They then discovered a second field, recently harvested of corn, with stalk stubble still in the ground. Also many walnut trees full of nuts and a great store of strawberries.

They soon came upon the remains of a house, where they found a ship’s kettle brought from Europe. Whether the kettle had been left there, or traded, or stolen, they did not know. They also found, newly buried in a heap of sand, three or four bushels of corn, some yellow, some red and others mixed with blue. They loaded the European kettle with as much corn as it could carry, and took it with them, intending to compensate the natives when they found them (or so they wrote).

Not far away they found the remains of an old fort, which they determined had been built by “some Christians”. They also saw two canoes, one on each side of a river, but at that point they had been gone more than a day, longer than they agreed, the party turned around and returned to their prior night’s encampment.

It rained all night. In the morning they made for the ship, soaked and more than a little miserable. They then lost their way. Thrashing about, they came upon a tree with a sapling bent over it, and some acorns on the ground. The contraption puzzled most of them, but Stephen Hopkins, the only member of the party with experience in the New World, said it was designed to catch deer. William Bradford came up last and, not seeing it, sprung the trap, which caught his leg in a rope “as artificially made as any roper in England can make, and as like ours as can be.” The men were impressed.

By the end of the day they reached the ship. They met with the ship’s captain and others also on shore, and relayed their tale. Their newfound corn went in with the ship’s stores, to save for planting, and they were happy to have found it, as they didn’t know how else they would come by any. The author restates their desire to meet with inhabitants of that place to compensate them for the corn.

They worried, however, they would only meet natives on unfriendly terms.

The First Encounter

Weeks passed with more exploring along the Cape. They found more evidence natives had lived there but made no human contacts. Meanwhile, winter was coming. The sandy earth froze and became covered in snow. The settlers had seen enough of the bleak and barren Cape to decide they wanted to start their plantation someplace else.

 On Wednesday, December 6^th, a party of thirty-five men set out in their coastal shallop to explore the coast across the bay. It was not an easy trip. The sea spray froze on their cloaks. Some were already falling ill.

Sailing near shore the first day, they spied ten or twelve natives carving up a dead grampus (a Risso’s dolphin, or possibly an orca). The men ran away when they approached land. Searching the vicinity, the settlers found graves and abandoned dwellings. The natives had disappeared.

They made little progress the next day, and the second night made camp ashore once again. At about midnight, hearing a “great and hideous cry”, their sentinels shouted “Arm! Arm!” and, scrambling, shot off a few muskets. The noise ceased, and they concluded it was a company of wolves or foxes, as one in their company had once heard in Newfoundland.

Then, near five in the morning, they broke camp and prepared to reboard the shallop. They heard a strange cry, which they knew to be the same voices they’d heard the night before. One of their guards then came running, shouting, “They are men! Indians! Indians!” Not wolves at all.

Soon after, arrows flew at them.

The men ran to recover their arms. Captain Standish had readied his snaphance (a type of flintlock rifle) and made a shot. Another followed. The rest waited, shouting “Well! Well!” and “Be of good courage!” to each other. Tense moments.

Then one of the natives standing behind a tree, perhaps their captain, let his arrows fly. They saw him fire three, each time at a man who saw it coming and was able to duck in time. The native followed his arrows with three shots of a musket, then cried out and retreated. The other natives followed.

With no one injured in the attack, which the settlers called it their “First Encounter”. They reboarded their boats and, sailing all day, landed in what is now called Plymouth Harbor.

Liking it far better than the tip of the Cape, the settlers returned and moved the Mayflower across the bay. By late December they had begun constructing shelters for their new plantation.

No one appeared to greet them, or say they were unwelcome. No one offered assistance.

They had to wonder: Where was everyone?

Epidemics, Distrust, and a Long Hard Winter

Estimates of pre-Columbian North American populations range from 750,000 to 15 million, depending on the historian. A recent study suggests that, at their peak, a little over five million native Americans lived in what is now the continental United States when Europeans first arrived on their leaky boats. This is a relatively small number compared to the estimated sixty million Europeans (excluding Russia and the Ottoman Empire) living at that time in an area half the size.

The decline from this pre-Columbian peak was precipitous. By 1800, the native population stood closer to 600,000. By 1900, less than 250,000 remained.

What happened?

Scholars attribute most of this decline to epidemics brought from Europe. Diseases like chickenpox and measles, which for centuries had been endemic but rarely fatal across the Old World, proved deadly to Native Americans.

The tribes of New England were no exception. In the years before the Mayflower landed at Plymouth, say from 1616 to 1619, an unknown epidemic (smallpox, possibly) swept through the region, wiping out as much of 90% of the Massachusett and Pokanoket tribes. The broader Wampanoag Confederation, which included at least two dozen tribes, suffered steep losses.

The epidemic was so swift, and so complete, many villages were simply abandoned. Shock, hopelessness, and sadness over lost loved ones afflicted the survivors.

Some Europeans brought more problems than sickness. The tribe the Pilgrims first encountered were the Nausets, who a few years before had attempted to trade with an English vessel. The ship’s commander, Captain Hunt, instead kidnapped several dozen men and sold them into slavery. After that the Nausets systematically attacked every European they found.

With good reason, the Nausets thought.

The Mayflower party, knowing nothing of treachery and sickness (especially since they never planned to settle in Massachusetts in the first place), slowly realized they had landed in a ghost town. From time to time that first winter they saw fires in the distance or heard noise in the woods, and seized their muskets in alarm. Nothing ever came of it.

For months they saw no one outside their own party.

Not, it seems, for lack of effort. On January 4^th, Captain Standish took several men toward a distant fire to try to meet with the natives. They found some houses, not lately inhabited, but no one home. A few days later Francis (John?) Billington, taking another man, trudged three miles inland to investigate the lake he’d spied from the trees the week before. As with Standish’s party, they found abandoned houses, but no natives.

The only sightings that winter came in mid-February. One of the settlers spied a dozen natives marching toward the plantation and heard, in the woods, the noise of many more. He took a roundabout route to warn the others, who armed themselves, fearing the worst. The natives never appeared (though, in the rush to arms, several men dropped tools in the woods, which disappeared by the time they went back for them).

Two days later a pair of natives appeared on the top of a hill “over against” the plantation. Standish and Stephen Hopkins went to meet them, laying down their only weapon as a sign of peace, but the two native men left before they arrived. From the noise behind the hill, many more than two.

In retrospect, the absence of local contact that first winter is not surprising. The nearby Massasoit members of the Wampanoag Confederation, perhaps sixty in number, must have worried about their own ability to survive the cold and snow without risking interaction with the ill-prepared, but well-armed, latecomers.

By March the worst of the winter had passed. On the 3^rd the surviving settlers heard two hallmarks of New England springtime: chirping birds and, later in the day, great claps of thunder. On the 7^th they planted the first of their garden seeds.

Four months ashore, and still yet not a single word with a native. But with spring coming, perhaps the natives risk-reward calculus would shift, and at long last their new neighbors would be willing to engage.

To be continued. . .

Sources:

https://www.etymonline.com/word/savage

http://www.histarch.illinois.edu/plymouth/mourt1.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States#European_exploration_and_colonization

https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe/Demographics

https://moverdb.com/us-states-europe-population

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In 1628 a handful of men left the fishing village of Salem and trekked twelve miles west along the Massachusetts Bay to the point of land where the Mystic and Charles Rivers met. There they found “land full of Indians called Aberginians” and “an uncooth Wilderness full of timber” and, perhaps most surprising, “a single English pallisadoed & thatched house.”

The house was inhabited by a young English couple, the Walfords. Some said Thomas Walford was a blacksmith. Others called his wife Jane a witch. There is little evidence either was true.

Here’s what we do know about them.

A Short Stay in Weymouth

Five years earlier, in September 1623, a ship carrying supplies and men for a new English colony landing at David Thomson’s fishing settlement at Odiorne Point in present-day New Hampshire. The colony leader, a former Navy captain named Robert Gorges, son of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, held a patent to settle land to the south, specifically the ten miles of seafront north of the Charles River in present day Massachusetts.

While anchored in the Piscataqua, however, the colonists heard about the recently abandoned Wessagussett colony on the southern shore of Massachusetts Bay. Thinking his colonists could prepare better for winter if they didn’t need to build fortifications over the fall, Robert Gorges directed their ship past the patent land and into the mouth of the Fore River.

The colonists moved into the crude structures left behind by the ill-fated adventurers and promptly renamed the place Weymouth. Unlike Weston before him, who had brought only working men, Robert Gorges brought entire families to form a permanent settlement. He also brought two Anglican clergymen who would oversee the spiritual health of the region.

According to his patent granted by the Plymouth Council for New England, the new settlement was intended to be a spiritual and civic capital of the council’s New England colonies, with Robert commissioned as Governor-General over Governor Bradford in Plymouth and the governors of any future colonies.

Robert, it was said, dreamt of building himself a New World empire. 

He lasted less than a year.

After one winter in Weymouth, Robert abandoned his new colony in the spring of 1624 and returned to England. Financial struggles, possibly, or perhaps empire building simply proved to be too much work. Either way, most settlers sailed home with him. A few remained in Weymouth or Plymouth, or went south to Virginia. One of the Anglican clergymen, William Blaxton, settled on the neck that became Boston.

As for Gorges’ patent? Before he left, he assigned perhaps the most valuable part, trading rights for the area north of the Charles River, to a young man named Thomas Walford.

1624-1628: Alone with the Natives

The Walfords moved from Weymouth onto the neck between the Charles and Mystik rivers, a patch of land with fields and hills that later took on famous names like Bunker Hill and Breeds Hill. They built their house on the south slope of a hill (Breeds, possibly). They grew and gathered and caught all their food. They made clothes and tools and whatever else they needed from available materials. They learned to communicate with their new native neighbors across the Mystik.

Other than the nearby native village, the Walfords lived alone. Their closest English neighbors were Blaxton across the mouth of the Charles, Roger Conant and a few other fishermen at Salem and, within a few years, the new trading posts established by David Thomson and Samuel Maverick on islands in the Bay.

The Walfords spent four winters there alone. Their first children, Jane and Jeremiah, were likely born during those years, though no one kept records so its impossible to say for certain. And it appears little actual trading transpired.

The Puritans Arrive

Then in June 1628, a group of fifty settlers landed at Salem led by a new governor, John Endecott, who sent a dozen men west to explore the vicinity. They soon found the Walfords. Records referred to Thomas as “a Smith”, indicating he was a blacksmith by trade.

Thomas Walford appears to have been eager for English company. Serving as an interpreter, he helped the newcomers negotiate with the local native chief, a “man of good disposition” named John Sagamore, to obtain the natives’ consent for more English to occupy the hill called Mishawum on the same neck of land where resided the Walfords.

Sagamore agreed and the newcomers, including the Walfords, became the original settlers of Charlestown.

Thomas appears to have given up his legal monopoly or possibly the Puritans simply chose to ignore it. Either way, the Walfords did not last long in the new community. They were the lone Anglicans in a group of Puritans bent on building a single-minded society, and they had lived alone for years without answering to anyone. Heeding any authority would prove difficult. Bending to the Puritans proved impossible.

In less than three years, on 3 May 1631 the Massachusetts Bay General Court ordered Thomas to pay 40 shillings and depart “with his wife out of the limits of this patent before the 20th day of October next, under pain of confiscation of his goods, for his contempt of authority & confronting officers, &c.”

Two years later, on 3 September 1633, the same court ordered “that the goods of Thomas Walford shall be sequestered, & remain in the hands of Ensign William Jennison to satisfy the debts he owes in the Bay to several persons.”

It’s possibly the Walfords had left in 1631 as ordered and the court was simply slow to redistribute whatever they had abandoned. Or perhaps they stayed longer than the court-allotted time. In either case, records indicate Thomas paid the fine by killing a wolf and by 1633 had left the Puritans of Charlestown and the Massachusetts Bay Colony behind.

There is no record they ever went back.

New Hampshire: One of John Mason’s Men

The Walfords moved, with at least three small children, north to the Piscataqua River and settled on Great Island (now New Castle) within the borders of the Strawbery Banke community (now Portsmouth). They remained there the rest of their lives, first living on the “Little Harbor” (mainland) side of the settlement and later at “Sagamore Creek” on the island itself.

In all, they raised at least six children there. Possibly eight, though records conflict.

According to another colonist Henry Langstaff, Thomas Walford “lived & planted upon the great island in Portsmouth [as early as 1633] & also built at Sandy Beach (now Rye, NH) on the Little Harbour side & that he lived in that enjoyment in Capt. Neal’s time without any disturbance from the said Neal, who was an agent for Capt. John Mason.”

The original list of “Mason’s Men” includes Thomas Walford, his young son Jeremiah, and fifty other Englishmen along with twenty-two unnamed women. Also listed are eight Danes, though little is known about them. The Walfords also had at least one Italian neighbor, John Amazeen, on Great Island. Thomas Walford’s best friend might have been Henry Sherburne, one of the more educated settlers, who served in town and church matters in Portsmouth and later as a judge for many years.

Thomas himself took the Oath of Allegiance and subsequently served on the Grand Jury at Portsmouth in 1650, 1652, 1654, and 1660 as well as the Petit Jury in 1656. He also served as Selectman for Portsmouth in 1655 & 1658.

There is no record of him ever working as a blacksmith.

Since he was a Freeman, he must have been a member of the Church at Portsmouth. Attending Sunday services from the Great Island likely meant a boat ride up the Piscataqua. A cold trip in winter.

Witchcraft Accusations

While they enjoyed a relatively quiet existence on Great Island, it was not entirely devoid of drama, particularly for Jane, who has the dubious honor of being the first accused witch in New Hampshire.

Surviving records show the Walfords in court at least three times to defend Jane’s name. First in October 1648, where “Thomas Walforde & Jane his wife” sued “Nicholas Roe and Elizabeth his wife” for slander.  Elizabeth Roe had said Jane was a witch.  The jury found in favor of the Walfords.

Then in the spring of 1656, Jane was arrested and stood trial for witchcraft.  Her neighbor, Susannah Trimmings, swore in a deposition in April that she came across a woman in the woods she believed to be Jane.  The woman asked to borrow a pound of cotton.  When she refused, Susannah said she “was struck as with a clap of fire on the back, and she vanished toward the water side, in my apprehension in the shape of a cat.”  Nicholas Rowe–the same man whose wife called Jane a witch eight years earlier–testified against Jane as well, saying she “came in the evening as an apparition and put her hand on his breast so that he could not speak and he was in great pain until the next day.  By the light of the fire in the next room it appeared to be Goody Walford but she did not speak.”

The court–likely headed by Walford friend Henry Sherburne–heard testimony in June, which included evidence that, at the time of the confrontation, Jane Walford was home acting normally.  She was freed on bond pledged by her son Jeremiah and formally freed of the bond the following year. (There’s a question why Thomas didn’t post the bond, since he appeared to be quite wealthy by that time. Perhaps he was away, or his civil service created some kind of conflict. Or perhaps the couple was estranged during the period, though Thomas’s will a decade later indicates they were on good terms at his death. )

The accusations kept coming. In June 1670, by then a widow, Jane sued a doctor named Robert Couch for slander for saying she was a witch.  Couch confessed in court he did say so to one Mr. Dering and, once again, the court found in Jane’s favor.  She was awarded five pounds in damages.

Despite the consistently favorable court rulings, the witch stigma appears to have stayed with Jane, even passing to her daughters. In the 1680s daughter Hannah Walford Jones, by then “Grandma Jones”, was accused of witchcraft during what appears to have been an attempted land grab. Like her mother, Hannah proved tenacious in legal matters and successfully cleared her name. An account of the events are the subject of the 2007 book “The Devil of Great Island” by Emerson Baker.

As troubling as those times must have been, the Walford women fared better in the Strawbery Banke community than those similarly accused of witchcraft in the Puritan settlements to the south, where even those acquitted were often scorned and beaten and left to die.

Last Will

Thomas died in 1666 a wealthy man, with land and cattle and other goods. His will is remarkable in that he gave land to his daughters as well as his grandsons (his son Jeremiah predeceased him) instead of only the more traditional bedding and household items. He also stated he obtained the consent of his wife in legal matters. He signed with a mark, indicating he may have been illiterate or simply infirm in the days before his death. He left instructions, and means, for his grandson Thomas to attend school, so he must have seen value in education beyond what men of that day typically picked up through apprenticeships, perhaps from Henry Sherburne’s influence.

Jane lived on Great Island another fifteen years, never remarrying, finally passing in 1681 after living over eighty years.

We descend from the Walford’s daughter Jane through Eleanor Harriman’s paternal grandmother, Hulda Goodale, and also from their daughter Mary through Mabel Prescott’s maternal grandfather, George Grinnell.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wessagusset_Colony

https://www.geni.com/people/Thomas-Walford-II/6000000004046404591

https://www.geni.com/people/Jane-Walford/6000000004046439637

The founding of Charlestown by the Spragues, a glimpse of the beginning of the Massachusetts Bay settlement

The History and Antiquities of Boston, the Capital of Massachusetts, from its settlement in 1630 to the year 1770, Samuel Drake, 1856

http://mymaineancestry.blogspot.com/2015/03/jane-walford-accused-witch.html

http://kristinhall.org/fambly/Walford/ThomasWalford.html

https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/new-england-witchcraft-trials-it-wasnt-just-salem/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Castle,_New_Hampshire

http://www.seacoastnh.com/History/History-Matters/demystifying-witchcraft-in-portsmouth-and-salem/?start=1

“Wessagussett Colony: Ill-conceived. Ill-executed. Ill-fated.”

– Charles Francis Adams Jr., Massachusetts Historical Society

In their second spring in the New World, when most crops in Plymouth Colony had barely sprouted from in the rocky soil, a small shallop arrived carrying ten men and some letters but “no victuals nor any hope of any”. The Plymouth settlers must have groaned at the news: More hungry mouths to feed.

All in all, the settlers second winter in Plymouth passed far better than the first. They feasted with the local Wampanoag tribe in the October of 1621, what has since become known as the “First Thanksgiving”. In November they welcomed another 35 settlers arriving on the Fortune, including sons and brothers of Mayflower passengers. They then, miraculously, passed the cold snowy winter without losing a single soul.

Even though no one died, conditions remained unpleasant. The colonists huddled together for warmth in drafty thatched houses that tended to catch fire. And it would be at least another year before there was enough food to ease Governor Bradford’s strict rationing program.

Weston’s Men

The arriving shallop was a coastal cruiser from the Sparrow, a fishing vessel that landed in Maine weeks earlier, one of three ships sent from London by a a man well known to the Plymouth settlers: Thomas Weston.

Initially an agent for the Merchant Adventurers who helped organize the Plymouth settlement, Weston featured often in William Bradford’s correspondence with fellow Separatist Thomas Cushman, and not always in flattering terms. One representative comment: Weston was “quick to reap profits from the New World, and not too scrupulous about the means.”

By 1622 Weston had split from that enterprise to pursue his own fortunes. None fared well.

The Pratt Brothers

One of the shallop passengers employed by Weston was a tall and lanky “lightly colored” Londoner named Phineas Pratt. Phineas and his younger brother, Joshua, along with a company of some sixty men, were to start a new colony whose sole purpose was the profit of Weston and his partners.

To Plymouth’s relief, Pratt and the rest of Weston’s advance team soon left to scout the coast. Finding a suitable location for the new colony — the remains of the abandoned native settlement, Wessaguscus, on the Fore River thirty miles north of Plymouth — they negotiated with the natives and made an agreement to settle there.

Phineas and the others returned to Plymouth. By the end of June, Weston’s two main ships — the Swan and the Charity — arrived. Phineas and the others from the Sparrow boarded the Swan and the company moved to the new settlement.

They reached the new settlement in late July and by September the Wessagussett Clony was established. The Swan lay at anchor in the Fore. The Charity returned to London.

Trouble from the Start

Weston’s men arrived too late to grow crops and, being mostly from London, may have lacked the knowledge and means to grow much anyway. Instead they built a blockhouse and other fortifications while trading with the native Massachusett tribe for food.

Relations initially remained cordial between the two English settlements, and between the English and the Indians. Weston’s men built canoes for the Indians and helped Plymouth with their harvest. Plymouth and Wessagussett jointly traded with the natives for additional food stores.

Despite their work and bartering, Weston’s men still had insufficient food for the winter. By January 1623, they were trading with the Indians at a severe disadvantage. Some stole indiscriminately from both the nearby native village and Plymouth Plantation. Relations with their new neighbors began to deteriorate.

And the New England winter was only beginning.

Starvation Time

Hunger took an enormous toll.

As Weston’s men suffered through the winter without food, they first burned through whatever fat stores they had built up the previous summer. Their metabolisms slowed, impairing everything from kidney function to immune system. Vital organs stopped receiving nutrients. Body temperatures dropped. Hearts and lungs contracted. Muscles shrank.

The men felt chilled and weak. Most fell severely ill. They grew increasingly irritable and had difficulty concentrating, even on simple thoughts like: Get food.

Then things grew worse. Once their bodies started consuming their own muscle, including the heart muscle, they hallucinated, convulsed and spasmed.

Finally, one by one, their heart simply stopped.

Crisis

In this state of cognitive impairment, or perhaps because of it, their distrust of Massachussett tribe grew. By March, the local sachem, Pexworth, had instructed his men to move their wigwams close to the settlement. Their close presence further unsettled Weston’s men, who concluded the movements were a prelude to attack. One day a native squaw confirmed their worst fears: Pexworth would soon come with many Indians to kill all at Wessagussett, and everyone down in Plymouth, too.

In their weakened condition, with many already dead from starvation, Weston’s men feared their chances of defending themselves were slim. Someone needed to reach Plymouth with the news, and return with help.

Phineas Pratt said he would go.

Pratt Runs To Plymouth

Before Phineas could leave, Pexworth paid him a visit. “Me hear you go to Patuxet [Plymouth],” he told Phineas. “You will lose yourself. The bears and wolves will eat you. But, because I love you, I will give you my boy Nahamit, and also victuals to eat and to be merry with your friends when you arrive there.”

Phineas was suspicious. Thinking Pexworth was playing nice to cover sinister intentions, he insisted he had no plans to leave Wessagussett. Pexworth went home, but soon after came five other Indians, all carrying bows and arrows. These insisted on their friendship, they only carried weapons the way the English always carried guns, but Phineas was convinced they would kill him if he tried to leave.

The Indians kept Phineas in sight for a week. When they finally went home, Phineas told Weston’s other surviving men: “Now is the time to run to Plymouth.” There was no compass in the camp, and he was afraid to take a gun since any Indians seeing him suddenly armed would mistrust him. Some of the other settlers told him not to go at all, that the Indians would pursue and kill him.

Phineas went to the edge of the swamp and pretended to dig for nuts.

Seeing no one, he bolted.

March in New England is deep winter. Temperatures might climb into the forties during the day, but almost always drop below freezing at night. Snow and ice still covers the ground, lakes and ponds. Between Wessagussett and Plymouth were numerous rivers — none with bridges — that might be frozen, filled with ice floes, or simply freezing.

A tough trek without food, especially with someone chasing you.

Phineas ran south, alone, worried the whole time about the footprints he was leaving in the snow. It was cloudy, no sun to provide a sense of direction. He became lost.

Darkness fell.

Wolves howled.

Phineas came to a river. Shoulder deep, and cold. He crossed, emerged freezing but afraid to make a fire in the dark. He came upon a hole in the ground filled with dead wood. Desperate, he set the wood afire and warmed himself.

The night sky cleared, and he found Ursa Major to orient himself, but the next morning he found travel impossible. He stayed by his fire.

On the third day the sun shone. He set out again and by the afternoon found Plymouth Bay. Crossing a brook, he found a path. He didn’t know where the path led, perhaps to Plymouth, perhaps another way, but time was short and, without food, he ran along hoping to reach the plantation.

He came to another river (then called the James). By the time he crossed he was convinced the Indians pursued him “as a deer is pursued by wolves”. He ran down another hill and at last encountered another Englishman.

The Standish Expedition

A man named Hamdin gave Phineas some dried corn to eat and accompanied him the rest of the way to Plymouth. The settlers there had already been warned of Pexworth’s plan by Massasoit, the great sachem of the far friendlier Wampanoags.

Massasoit’s counsel to the Plymouth governor was simple: strike Pexworth first. Remove the leaders and their plot would fail.

Bradford sent Captain Myles Standish and ten other Plymouth men to Wessagussett by boat. Phineas Pratt was too weak to accompany them.

Discovering the English colony still intact, but with the Indians sharpening their weapons openly and otherwise demonstrating their willingness to fight the armed Plymouth men, Standish invited Pexworth and his lieutenants to an impromptu peace negotiation in the blockhouse. The Massachusetts leaders agreed to sit down for a meal with the Pilgrim commander. 

Historian Nathaniel Philbrick describes what happened next:

“Once they had all sat down and begun to eat, the captain signaled for the door to be shut. He turned to Pecksuot [Pexworth] and grabbed the knife from the string around his neck. Before the Indian had a chance to respond, Standish had begun stabbing him with his own weapon. The point was needle sharp, and Pecksuot’s chest was soon riddled with blood-spurting wounds.”

As Standish and Pexworth struggled, the other Indians fell at the hands of the Englishmen. It was a bloody, brawling, gruesome massacre.

Aftermath

The natives were devastated. Edward Winslow reported that, throughout the region, they “forsook their houses, running to and fro like men distracted, living in swamps and other desert places, and so brought manifold diseases amongst themselves, whereof very many are dead.” The only benefit appears to have been increased security and prominence for Massasoit’s Wampanoag tribe, Plymouth’s closest ally.

Wessagussett itself was abandoned. Some survivors moved to Plymouth, while others dispersed to fishing camps along the coast. Many caught the first boat back to England.

And where, in all of this, was Joshua Pratt, younger brother to Phineas? There is no mention of his time in Wessagussett, though it seems reasonable to assume one of the motivations for Phineas’ daring run through the woods was the safety of his younger brother.

What is known: both Joshua and Phineas stayed in Plymouth. They are listed with those receiving a one-acre land allocation later in the spring of 1623. Since most colonists granted land at that time were new arrivals from the ship Anne, some claim Joshua also came on that ship and was never at Wessagussett.

Seems unlikely, but its impossible to say for certain.

The Pratt Brothers’ Later Years

In 1630 Phineas married Mary Priest, daughter of Mayflower passenger Degory Priest, who died the first winter. Mary was born in the Netherlands around 1611 and made the Atlantic crossing aboard the Anne with her siblings, her mother, and her mother’s new husband, Godbert Godbertson.

Phineas and Mary had eight children who lived to adulthood. Phineas was a joiner by trade, a skilled woodworker who made much of the colony’s early furniture. He became a freeman in 1633, received numerous land grants, and grew hay on a plot next to Francis Billington’s.

Phineas and Mary later relocated to Charlestown, where Phineas was buried in the Olde Burying Ground. His tombstone says he lived close to ninety years.

Joshua Pratt married a woman named Bathsheba sometime before 1630. Her origins are unknown. They raised five children together. Joshua served on juries and court errands and in various public offices: constable, sealer of weights & measures, messenger, etc. He died in Plymouth in 1656.

Phineas Pratt’s Declaration

Much of what is known about the conditions at Wessagussett Colony and Phineas Pratt’s run for help come from a declaration made by Phineas himself in 1662 (reprinted in 1858) for the Massachussetts General Court.

How accurate could such a statement be, forty years later? Not very, possibly. By then William Bradford and Myles Standish were dead. So was Phineas’ brother Joshua. There were few men at all still living who could confirm or contradict his assertions.

And, since his goal for the declaration was financial, its reasonable to assume Phineas would portray himself in the best possible light, a hero facing the Big Bad natives.

How much of it is true? From the accounts of others at Plymouth, we know someone arrived from Wessagussett. We also know they confirmed his story with Massasoit, who had been approached by the Massachussett tribe to conspire against the English.

Its possible, however, that man was not Phineas. Perhaps Phineas took credit for the actions of his brother, or someone else since deceased. Perhaps he misremembered the actions of the natives, who were more worried about aggression from the English than bent on sinister acts themselves.

Phineas was, after all, likely starving to the point of hallucinations at the time.

However much his declaration is riddled with fiction, it proved to be valuable. The Mass General Court rewarded him with three hundred acres for his efforts.

The Forlorn Hope of Sixty Men

Despite his joinery skills and all the land he received, Phineas died a pauper. In 1668, when he was close to eighty, he again petitioned the Massachusetts court, saying he was the sole remainder of the forlorn hope of sixty men and, forty-five years later, in need of charity.

The colony refused to grant any a second time, but the town of Charlestown provided a “poor man’s sustenance” for the remainder of his days.

We descend from Joshua Pratt’s daughter Hannah Pratt Spooner through Mabel Prescott’s maternal grandfather, George Grinnell; and also from Joshua’s son Jonathan through Herbert Kimball’s maternal grandfather George Peabody.

Sources:

Pratt, Phineas. A Declaration of the Affairs of the English People that First Inhabited New England 1662 (reprinted 1858 in Boston by T. R. Marvin & Son)

Silverman, David J. This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving

https://www.geni.com/projects/Great-Migration-Passengers-of-the-Sparrow-1622/10994

https://www.geni.com/people/Joshua-Pratt/6000000003490621211

https://www.geni.com/people/Phineas-Pratt/6000000001325688511

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wessagusset_Colony

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Weston_(merchant_adventurer)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Pratt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massasoit

https://www.seacoastonline.com/story/news/2020/11/30/murder-natives-myles-standish-rocked-new-england-1623/6411184002/

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/01/20/463710330/what-happens-to-the-body-and-mind-when-starvation-sets-in#:~:text=When%20faced%20with%20starvation%2C%20the%20body%20fights%20back.&text=Metabolism%20slows%2C%20the%20body%20cannot,to%20vital%20organs%20and%20tissues.

“There’s a king in every crowd.”

– Russell Wilson, NFL quarterback

The Mayflower carried many families we have chosen to remember well. Admire, even. Brewster and Bradford. Standish and Alden. Howland and Hopkins.

But the Billingtons? No, not so much. They were the colony’s outspoken rebels. The scoundrels. The fringe. Who would want to claim them as their ancestors?

Okay, I admit its tempting.

Trouble From the First

John and Elinor Billington were non-Separatist Anglicans from Lincolnshire. They joined the pilgrim company late, in Southampton, and sailed aboard the Mayflower with their two sons John and Francis. Francis was fourteen years old.

Nearly everything known about them comes from references made in the writings of Governor William Bradford, who did not hold the family in high regard. The profanest among us, to use his words.

The first recorded trouble came while the Mayflower was still anchored off Cape Cod in Provincetown Harbor, when young Francis nearly blew up the ship. The incident, as recorded in Mourt’s Relation [with modern spelling]: Francis ”in his father’s absence, had got gunpowder, and had shot off a piece or two, and made squibs, and there being a fowling piece charged in his fathers cabin, shot her off in the cabin, there being a little barrel of powder half full, scattered in and about the cabin, the fire being within four feet of the bed between the decks, and many flints and iron things about the cabin, and many people about the fire, and yet by Gods mercy no harm done.”

Reckless and foolish, young Francis was. But what boy hasn’t played with fire? This is particularly true of boys like Francis, who saw his parents continually clash with the Plymouth leadership,

In 1621 John Billington was tried before the whole company for disobeying a “lawful command” of Captain Myles Standish. John was sentenced to have his neck and heels tied together, but after showing some penitence, and it being his first offence, he was forgiven.

In 1624, when the Anglican minister John Lyford was banished from Plymouth Colony, Lyford named John Billington as one of his supporters. Billington denied it, and was allowed to remain in Plymouth.

Bradford could not have been overjoyed about it. In 1625 he wrote to Robert Cushman, one of the colony organizers, saying, “Billington still rails against you, and threatens to arrest you, I know not wherefore; he is a knave, and so will live and die.”

Then in 1630, John Billington Sr. killed a man. Of the event, Bradford wrote: “He and some of his had been often punished for miscarriages before, being one of the profanest families amongst them; they came from London, and I know not what friends shuffled into their company. His fact was that he waylaid a young man, one John Newcomen, about a former quarrel and shot him with a gun, whereof he died. …[He] was arraigned, and both by grand and petty jury found guilty of willful murder, by plain and notorious evidence. And was for the same accordingly executed.”

Billington is said to be the first person executed in New England. Hung, drawn, and quartered in accordance with the practice of the day.

Francis’s older brother, John, had died sometime between 1627 and 1630, leaving him and his mother Elinor to inherit his father’s estate.

Elinor was no stranger to trouble herself. In 1636, she spent time in the stocks for slandering the preacher John Doane. She eventually remarried in 1638, dying a few years later in her early sixties.

In 1634, Francis married widow Christian Penn Eaton, when he was twenty-eight. They had the dubious honor of being the first couple punished for fornication prior to their marriage. How they were caught remains a mystery, as their first child was not born until a year after the wedding.

Christian had three children from a prior marriage, plus a stepchild. The couple went on to have nine children of their own. The brood proved to be more than they could manage, at least as far as the colony leadership was concerned, and many of the children were apprenticed to other families while still young.

It’s not clear this arrangement was completely voluntary. One child, Joseph, repeatedly ran away from his master to his parents house. Colony records suggest Francis and Christian were happy to keep him, but the powers-that-were forced them to give him up.

Much is made about their dire financial situation. Francis was sued and fined and at one point sentenced to be whipped if he didn’t pay twenty pounds. However, at other times he was able to purchase land, using what funds cannot be ascertained. He also served on committees and other organizations that attest to continued membership in colony affairs.

After nearly five decades in Plymouth, the couple moved inland to Middleborough in 1669, where they lived until their deaths in 1684. Their son Isaac claims to have supported them for the last several years of their lives.

Little more is known, which raised the question: Were the Billingtons such bad eggs?

Some seem to excuse the behavior of the family, who found themselves at odds with the colony leadership while simultaneously being completely reliant on them for survival. Others have gone so far as to say John Billington “stoutly supported individual choice and freedom of speech, raising the voice of America’s first ‘opposition’ to governing authority, undoubtedly at great personal sacrifice.” Some say he’s America’s first true patriot.

And to be fair, not all the stories recorded about the Billingtons are bad. When the company was first exploring the New England shores, John (or possibly Francis) climbed a tree high enough to see a large body of water inland. To this day, the 269 acre warm-water pond is called the Billington Sea.

And Elinor, one of only four adult women to survive the first winter (there others were Mary Brewster, Elizabeth Hopkins, and Susanna White Winslow) helped host the natives the following autumn for the first “thanksgiving” feast. She might have slandered a priest, but that was hardly the defining moment of her life.

And then we have Bradford’s inherent bias as the narrator. If the Billingtons had done anything noteworthy or redeemable, would he have dutifully recording it, or said “Yes but…” and left their good deeds out of his narrative?

True, Bradford’s view seems grounded in more than simple religious differences. While he himself was a devout Separatist seeking to establish a spiritual paradise, he worked closely over the years with many of the other Anglicans. Non-Separatists such as John Alden and Stephen Hopkins served as assistant governors and appear to have held Bradford’s high esteem. The Billingtons were an exception, not victims to some broad prejudice on the part of the governor.

In the end, what we think about the Billingtons says more about us, and our own view of current government authority, than perhaps it does about them.

They do, however, serve as a reminder that everyone’s ancestors are a mixed bag, particular when looking back so many generations.

They also show us our ancestors don’t necessarily define us. One Billington descendant, James Garfield, became the 20th US President. So, just because our forbears bucked the system doesn’t mean we should.

Even if, again, it’s sometimes tempting.

We descend from Francis and Christian Billington’s son Isaac through Herbert Kimball’s maternal grandfather George Peabody.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bradford_(governor)

https://www.geni.com/people/Francis-Billington-Mayflower-passenger/6000000002298453082

https://www.geni.com/people/John-Billington-Mayflower-passenger/6000000004368404864

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lyford

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billington_Sea

Change is the only constant.

Heraclitus of Ephesus

We know more about William Brewster than most who stepped off the Mayflower. Few were less prepared for life in the wilderness. Fewer still did more to bring them there.

By 1620, Brewster had already lived a full life. As a young man, he witnessed up close the perils of English politics. He went on to have at least three different careers in markedly different environments. He agitated for change and was persecuted for it (when they could catch him). He bore the worst of conditions, from poverty to prison, with cheerfulness and contentment.

No one was more impacted by his life than Plymouth Colony’s longtime governor, William Bradford, who met Brewster as a young teenager, followed him from England to Holland to the New World and, after Brewster’s death, wrote at length about the life of his great friend and mentor.

Early Life

Born around 1564, Brewster grew up in rural Scrooby, England. Even today, the village is tiny, with fewer than four hundred residents. Brewster’s father was postmaster and the “receiver and bailiff of the lordship, or manor, of Scrooby.” Scrooby Manor was a stop on the Great North Road from London to Scotland. Many dignitaries of the day, including Queen Elizabeth, stayed there on their travels north.

Given his father’s duties, its likely Brewster learned to read and write at a young age. When he was sixteen or seventeen years old, he matriculated at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge, in December 1580. He learned to speak Latin and Greek.

A Cambridge education at that time was almost entirely religious in nature. Religion had been a deadly topic for decades. The Peterhouse headmaster, Andrew Perne, was necessarily pragmatic. A Catholic who supported the pope and Queen Mary in the 1550’s, he subsequently paid lip service to the Church of England under Queen Elizabeth.

His counsel: Live in the religion the Queen professes. Don’t die in it.

Despite Perne’s papal loyalties, Cambridge was rapidly becoming a Puritan hotbed. Brewster may have even seen the 1584 establishment of Emmanuel College by Sir Walter Mildmay, which educated many of the Puritans who turned up in the Massachusetts Bay Colony fifty years later.

Political Service

Sometime in 1584, around age 20, Brewster left Cambridge to enter the employment of William Davison, a court official and diplomat for Queen Elizabeth. The nature of his service for Davison is ambiguous, neither menial nor diplomatic, though according to Bradford, “Davison found [Brewster] so discrete and faithful as he trusted him above all other that were about him, and only employed him in all matters of greatest trust and secrecy.”

In this capacity, Brewster spent six months in the Netherlands while Davison brokered a treaty to provide military support. Davison negotiated well; the English took control of several Low Country cities. The Queen was reportedly upset he exerted more control over Amsterdam than an envoy should have done on his own.

Davison told her, in the language of his day, Your welcome.

From 1586, Davison was a member of Parliament and colleague of Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s secretary of state (and spymaster). Davison was on the commission to try Mary, the deposed Catholic Queen of Scotland living under house arrest in England, for plotting to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. Mary, who had consented to the plot in a letter, was found guilty. It was Davison who secured Queen Elizabeth’s signature for Mary’s execution warrant.

Possibly to create deniably for herself, the Queen sent Davison separate instructions to hold the warrant unsealed. He received these instructions too late to prevent Mary’s execution. The Queen blamed Davison for her death and locked him in the Tower of London.

Brewster stayed in Davison’s service throughout his imprisonment and, according to Bradford, “doing him many faithful offices of service in the time of his troubles.” After 18 months, Davison was acquitted of evil intention and released. He stayed in Parliament but never served the Queen again.

Brewster’s services, it seems, were no longer required.

Scrooby Again

Brewster returned to Scrooby. By 1590, he had taken up his father’s former position as postmaster and was living at Scrooby Manor. Now in his late twenties, he married (little is known about Mary, his wife) and began a family. Their oldest child, Jonathan, was born in 1593.

During this time, the Church of England was in chaos. For clergy, surviving each shift in the political winds was more important than service. Ministers with nonconforming views of the moment were forced out. Ecclesiastical ranks ran thin.

Ordinary citizens were regularly confronted with impossible situations. By law, a priest was required to officiate at baptisms, marriages, and funerals. The only problem? There weren’t enough priests to go around. In many country towns and villages, months passed between services. It is no surprise the congregationalist movement started by Robert Browne and Henry Barrow, which gives autonomy to each congregation to run its own affairs, was born during this time.

The Brewsters appear to have fully adopted Brownist views during the 1590s. Their children born from 1600 onward had “Brownist” names: Patience, Fear, Love, and Wrestling. They attended the sermons of Richard Clifton in nearby Babworth. They worked to attract like-minded preachers to the area.

Also during this time, Brewster befriended a young orphan, William Bradford, who traveled by Scrooby Manor on his was to Clifton’s services. He came to stop often at Brewster’s home to borrow books and listen to tales of church reform taking place across England.

By 1605, the nonconforming views of both Clifton and another minister, John Robinson, had cost them their Anglican pulpits. Clifton, “a grave and fatherly old man, having a great white beard,” and the younger Robinson began to lead Brownist meetings hosted by the Brewsters at Scrooby Manor. Brewster was the Ruling Elder, a position in Presbyterian churches responsible for church governance and discipline.

These meetings lasted two years before the Anglican Church took notice. The High Court of Commission, the supreme ecclesiastical court in England, summoned the Scrooby Congregation leaders, including Brewster, for “disobedience in matters of religion.”

Brewster never showed up.

By the fall of 1607, he had resigned his position as baliff and postmaster. When the court sought him for non-appearance, the court officer certified he “couldn’t find Brewster or understand where he was”.

From England to Leiden

The decision to leave England was not easy. There was extensive discussion among the congregation members. Most were farmers, not merchants or tradesman who could earn a living in any of the expensive Dutch cities. As Bradford summarized those debates: Many thought leaving was “a case intolerable and a misery worse than death.”

Their alternatives, however, were limited. Wanted men in England, they eventually decided to leave. But it was also against the law to leave England without permission, and many of the separatists were stopped at the coast. A group led by Brewster was imprisoned in Boston, on the English Channel. Brewster (and six others) were held the longest. Of those, Brewster “suffered the greatest loss.”

As many feared, the separatists were ill prepared for Leiden. The guilds were off limits to foreigners. Menial work was all they could find. Laborious and toilsome work.

The kind of work Brewster had never done.

Over many painful years between 1608 and 1615, Brewster redefined himself. He became a sought-after teacher for those seeking to learn the English language. His approach, which incorporated his knowledge of Latin and his own proprietary teaching method, allowed students to learn quickly. Men from wealthy and powerful circles sought Brewster’s services to give their sons the best education possible.

The Pilgrim Press

When he wasn’t teaching English, Brewster kept busy with a printing operation he started with a partner, Thomas Brewer, in 1616. While King James controlled all printing in England, the presses in Holland were only loosely supervised.

Brewer bought the type. Brewster and his assistants (including Mayflower passengers Edward Winslow and George Soule) made the ink and laid out the type sheets. A local printer, possibly Soule’s brother, Johannes Sol, provided the press. 

Over several years, the team printed perhaps 21 books in all. Most were anti-Anglican religious tracts destined to be smuggled across the channel.

The situation reached a tipping point with their 1619 publication of “Perth Assembly”, a critique of new laws forcing the Church of Scotland into conformance with the Church of England. Brewster prepared the book, like all the others. Copies were smuggled into Scotland in wine vats. In July, a copy passed the eyes of Sir Dudley Carleton, an English envoy to the Hague, who notified Whitehall.

The English appealed to the Dutch to destroy the press and arrest the printers. Brewster’s wealthy silent partner, Thomas Brewer, was arrested in September and met with a “hard fate that ultimately overtook him.” The type was confiscated. Brewster hid.

Letters between Whitehall and The Hague show the hunt for Brewster lasted in earnest into 1620 and at some level until at least the departure of the Speedwell the following summer.

From Leiden to the New World

Brewster’s friends had been seeking financing for a venture in the New World for several years. By early 1620, plans reached fruition for the first group of separatists to leave. These first pilgrims needed a spiritual leader, but decided Robinson would make the voyage later with the main congregation. “Elder” Brewster was not an ordained minister but had become, in addition to a fugitive printer, a spiritual lieutenant to Robinson.

Brewster agreed to make the trip with Mary and their two youngest, Love and Wrestling. He was 56 years old.

Once again, Brewster’s life changed completely. Plymouth Plantation had no need for printing. Or a postmaster. Or a politician’s aide.

Despite his age and somewhat revered status, Brewster labored alongside the other pilgrims. He built his own house. He worked the fields with his hands. He went without food. Often.

And for most of the first decade, and later whenever the Church had no other minister, he taught twice every Sunday. As a teacher, he was “moving and stirring of affections; also very plain and distinct in what he taught; by which means he became more profitable to the hearers.” Bradford credited Brewster with preserving order and successfully suppressing any error or contention that arose amongst the Church members.

As for his character, Bradford wrote:

“He was wise and discreet and well spoken, having a grave and deliberate utterance, of a very cheerful spirit; very sociable and pleasant amongst his friends; of a humble and modest mind; of a peaceable disposition; undervaluing himself and his own abilities, and sometimes overvaluing others. Inoffensive and innocent in his life and conversation; which gained him the love of those without as well as those within; yet he would tell them plainly of their faults and evils, both publicly and privately; but in a such a manner as usually was well taken from him.”

As for Brewster’s dislikes, Bradford had this to say:

“None did more offend and displease him, than such as would haughtily and proudly carry and lift up themselves, being risen from nothing; and having little else in them to commend them but a few fine clothes and a little more riches than others.”

Brewster died in his sleep, age 80, “surrounded by friends who mourned, and wept over him, and ministered what help and comfort they could. And he, again, recomforted them whilst he could.” His sickness was brief. He was able to get out of bed until his last day. A few minutes before he died, he “drew his breath long, as a man falling into a sound sleep, without any pangs or gaspings, and so sweetly departed this life unto a better.”

Seems like a fine way to go.

We descend from the Brewster’s son Love through Mabel Prescott’s maternal grandfather, George Grinnell.

Sources:

Bradford, William. History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647

Dexter, Franklin B. The England and Holland of the Pilgrims p322

Johnson, Caleb. Mayflower History www.mayflowerhistory.com/brewster-william/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bradford_(governor)#Early_life

A Look Through Time http://alookthrutime.com/the-scrooby-congregation/

The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers, 1606-1623, as told by Themselves, their Friends, and their Enemies, London 1897. Edited from the original texts by Edward Arber.

Throop, Louise Walsh. Soulekindred.org Mayflower Passenger George Soule; Printer’s Devil in Leiden

“I would not wish any companion in the world but you.”

– William Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Sometime during the summer of 1620, while the Mayflower lay at anchor in Southampton harbor awaiting the repairs for its sister ship the Speedwell, the ship’s captain Christopher Jones hired an additional crewmember: John Alden. He was twenty-one years old.

Alden, who was said to have been a man of “most excellent form with a fair and ruddy complexion”, was hired on as the ship’s cooper. Whether the captain was replacing its previous cooper or adding a new position is not known but, in the age of sail, ships commonly employed coopers on long voyages to maintain the many storage containers aboard. Barrels of food, water and beer that sustained passengers and crew. Casks that held supplies and cargo of different shapes and sizes to accommodate the sloping hull (and maximize use of limited space). Buckets and other watertight vessels used for ship maintenance.

Alden’s origins are undocumented, but there are two prominent theories. The first, based on anecdotal evidence, suggests he and the ship captain were both from Harwich, the Mayflower’s home port, and knew each other and possibly were even distant relations. An alternative theory, however, contends John was from an Alden family residing in Southampton itself. If so, John could have been the son of George Alden, who is thought to have died that year but was previously listed on the tax rolls of Southampton’s Holyrood Ward along with the name of another Mayflower passenger, William Mullins.

William Mullins, a shoemaker, had hundreds of pairs of shoes and boots in the hold of the Mayflower, presumably to trade with the natives. He traveled with his wife Alice, their teenage son Joseph, and one of three children from William’s first marriage, an eighteen-year-old daughter named Priscilla. Whether the Aldens and Mullins actually knew each other prior to the voyage, much less whether is was William Mullins who introduced John Alden to the captain, is the subject of speculation.

The only thing known for certain on the subject is what was recorded years later by William Bradford, who wrote Alden “being a hopeful young man, was much desired, but left to his own liking to go or stay when he came here.” By default Alden was a member of the crew, though, and would return to England with the Mayflower after depositing the company of settlers.

Little is certain about John Alden’s activities during the voyage, nor how he contributed during those first weeks ashore in November, 1620. As part of the ship’s crew, Alden likely did not take part in the expeditions to identify a suitable location for the colony. Given his woodworking skills, however, it seems plausible he would have been called to assist the ship’s carpenter whenever he was not otherwise engaged, and in that capacity he would have likely helped with the large task of re-assembling the Mayflower’s shallop, the small sailing vessel used by the company to ferry men and supplies along the coast, which had to be broken down and stored between decks during the sea crossing.

By the time the company settled on the site that is now Plymouth, it was the end of December. The cold winter was upon them, with strong winds off the sea and frequent rain and snow. The Mayflower remained their only refuge from the elements, but almost any movement between ship and shore required wading through the freezing surf. Almost everyone had a horrific cough and many began to fall more seriously ill. At least six died before the month was out, with another seventeen during January.

One of the last fatalities in January was Rose, the wife of Myles Standish, the company’s military captain. Her death is recorded as 29 January, 1621. Thankfully they had no children. In a very short time after his wife’s death, legend has it the widower Captain Standish set his eyes on Miss Priscilla, the daughter of Mr. William Mullins.

Priscilla was much younger than Standish, but then again, Priscilla was the only single woman of marriageable age. The custom of those times was to ask the father’s permission prior to any overt act of courtship. According to some, Standish was not nearly as courageous brandishing his heart in front of women as he was brandishing arms in front of men, and he determined to send a messenger with his request to Mr. Mullins. And again for reasons unknown, Standish chose the ship’s cooper, John Alden, as the messenger.

Standish might have chosen Alden because of the cooper’s common roots with the Mullins in Southampton. Or it is possible they were simply friends. Alden signed the Mayflower Compact just after Standish, and by some reports Alden bunked with the Standishes in those first weeks ashore. By all reports they were quite different men, however. Standish was small and hot-tempered. Alden was larger and more circumspect.

However Standish came to the decision, it proved to be a mistake. He should have chosen someone else.

John Alden went and faithfully communicated the wishes of the captain to Mr. Mullins. The old gentleman did not object, as he might have done on account of the recency of Captain Standish’s bereavement. But he did say the young lady must also be consulted.

Priscilla was called into the room. John Alden arose and in a very courteous and prepossessing manner delivered his errand. Miss Mullins listened with respectful attention. At last, after a considerable pause, she fixed her eyes upon him and, with an open and pleasant countenance, she said “Prithee, John, why do you not speak for yourself?”

At which point John Alden is said to have blushed and bowed and took his leave with some haste, but “with a look which indicated more than his diffidence would permit him otherwise to express“. What he reported back to Standish is not known but soon after he is said to have renewed his visit and, later that spring, John Alden and Priscilla Mullins were married.

Or so the story goes according to Alden family oral tradition, which was written down by Timothy Alden in 1812 and later immortalized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1858 poem The Courtship of Myles Standish.

Quite possibly none of it is factually correct, and even if it is these romanticized tales omit any mention of the desperate conditions the malnourished and sickly participants would have been acting in. William Mullins died within weeks of Rose Standish, and would have been very weak during any such visit. By early April Priscilla’s stepmother and brother were also dead, leaving her an orphan on the continent (but with two siblings still in England). There was certainly more sadness and fear than any romantic tale should have.

What is known for certain, however, is that when the Mayflower left for England on April 5th, 1621, John Alden wasn’t on it. And by all accounts he and Priscilla were married by early 1622.

They became a prominent couple in the colony. John held numerous government positions, where he often dedicated time at the expense of his own fortunes. Priscilla is said to have seen to the welfare of the women in the colony, most of whom came later. Thanks in no small part to her assertiveness, they enjoyed a level of (relative) equality with men not seen in Europe until many years later.

Little is known for certain, but many believe the couple’s early romance lasted a long lifetime. John was the last surviving signer of the Mayflower Compact. Priscilla lived just as long. When decades later a venerable John Alden attended the funeral of Josiah Winslow in 1680, Priscilla was on his arm.

In all they had eleven children, all of whom lived to adulthood. One of their many descendants was Mabel’s grandfather George Grinnell.

Final note: Some historians have wondered whether Standish ever held a grudge. If he did, it does not appear to have been a lasting one. Standish was remarried by 1624 and had seven children of his own, and together with Alden founded Duxbury, the first town established outside of Plymouth.

I shall no more to sea, to sea, here shall I die ashore.

Stephano, William Shakespeare’s The Tempest

In 1609 Stephen Hopkins left his wife Mary and their three small children — Elizabeth, Constance, and baby Giles — near her family in the small English village of Hursley. For reasons that are unknown but likely a matter of simple survival, Stephen had signed a seven-year contract to serve as a minister’s clerk in the fledgling Jamestown Colony of Virginia. He was about 28 years old.

As he made his was along the coast toward Plymouth, Stephen likely had little expectation of seeing his family again. Seven years would have seemed like a lifetime. In those days adult men were frequently struck down by illness, accident, or violence; and even the best possible marketing spin by the London Company would have been insufficient to gloss over the many additional risks a Jamestown colonist would face. Drowning at sea. Starvation. Disease. The knives and arrows of the New World natives.

None of which, it turned out, proved to be any more dangerous than Stephen’s own mouth.

Stephen sailed from England aboard the Sea Venture, the newly built 300-ton flagship of a fleet of seven (plus two small pinnaces). The ship carried most of the colony supplies, the fleet’s admiral, Jamestown’s new governor Sir Thomas Gates, along with the more prestigious colonists. Stephen, who had no special status, was likely only aboard because his new master, the Oxford-educated Reverend Richard Buck, had been invited to join the gentleman elite.

Much of the voyage passed uneventfully. Fair winds, following seas, and — perhaps most fortunate — no run-ins with the Spanish. But on July 24th, with only a week or so remaining in the crossing, a hurricane struck. During the ensuing storm, the Sea Venture was separated from the rest of the fleet. Far worse, the newly constructed vessel began separating from itself, leaking in many places as she “spewed her oakum”, a condition where the sealant that held joints together had not yet sufficiently hardened. Unable to withstand the strain of the angry seas, the ship’s hold quickly flooded. All their food stores were destroyed. Without drastic measures, the ship was going to sink.

For four full days, as the wind and rain and towering waves continued unabated all around them, every man on the ship (including and perhaps especially the lowly Stephen) bailed water. One hour with a bucket followed by one hour of rest, twenty four hours a day, for four days. Without food.

It seemed to be a losing battle, but at the beginning of the fifth day the storm abated and they spotted land. The ship could not be anchored without sinking, but fortunately the crew was able to run it aground on a reef. From there they used the ship’s longboat to ferry all the passengers and the surviving livestock and cargo ashore.

Miraculously, not a single man had been lost, at least not yet. They soon realized they had not landed anywhere on the continent, but on the then uninhabited island of Bermuda. Their trip was by no means over.

In those days Bermuda was known and feared as the Isle of Devils, a place of shipwrecks and storms and enchanted spirits. The castaways found the island presented few dangers, however, but instead only pleasant weather and plentiful food and top-grade building materials. There were no natives to threaten them and, contrary to myth, they saw no evidence of supernatural beings.

Within a few short weeks Governor Gates had sent out eight men in the longboat, now fitted with a deck and sail, to reach Jamestown and organize a rescue. But as the longboat disappeared from view on September 1, some of the party must have wondered if a rescue was in their best interest. Bermuda seemed to offer the best living any of them had ever experienced. Why not simply stay?

After a few days the castaways began watching the horizon, but there was never anything there. The longboat was never seen again, and no other ships happened by. As the months passed their waning hopes would have reinforced the view that a long life on Bermuda was better than a high risk return to sea.

How broad these sentiments ran in those early months is impossible to say, but when the governor ordered the construction of two pinnaces large enough to ferry everyone to the continent, several of the men were slow to comply. A few days of banishment brought them in line, however, and throughout that autumn the governor was largely able to keep order. The other powerful men marooned with him, including the fleet admiral and the Sea Venture’s captain, are said to have supported his decisions which provided a unified front.

At first Stephen Hopkins showed no sign of his views on the matter. When the Reverend held communion on October 1, Stephen read from the psalms. He did so again on Christmas Eve. But according to the account of William Strachey, the governor’s secretary, by January Stephen Hopkins had “quietly begun to shake the foundation of our quiet safety.”

In his discussions with fellow castaways, it seems Stephen had taken to pointing out the governor had no authority over them, as they were not in Jamestown. Nor did the admiral or the captain of the Sea Venture, as they were not at sea. Therefore, Strachey narrates, Stephen argued “it was no breach of honesty, conscience, nor religion to decline from the obedience of the governor or refuse to go any further led by his authority (except it so pleased themselves), since the authority ceased when the wreck was committed, and, with it, they were all then freed from the government of any man.”

Eventually someone reported such a seditious conversation and, unsurprisingly, Governor Gates did not agree. Stephen was arrested for mutiny and stood trial, in shackles, before the whole company. Confronted with the obvious weight of the situation, Stephen begged for his life despite his foolishness, claiming his family would be lost without him. But his pleas fell on deaf ears. The court found him guilty, and condemned him to death.

Fortunately for Stephen, they didn’t execute him right away. In the interim some of the “better sort” of the company, including the Sea Venture captain and Strachey himself, had been moved enough by his fervent penitence to petition the governor for leniency. They were able, with some persistence, to successfully secure the condemned man’s pardon. (While the record doesn’t state, it seems reasonable to believe the sentence was not forgiven outright, only reduced to a severe beating.)

Stephen’s close scrape with the law seems to have taught him his lesson. There was at least one further mutiny, less than six weeks later, but Stephen was not involved. And a good thing too; the leader of that affair was executed the day of his trial.

By spring, construction of the two new boats was nearing completion and the company seemed resolved, or at least resigned, to leave the island. On May 10, 1610, after more than ten months on the Isle of Devils, the 140 survivors of the Sea Venture crowded into their two pinnaces, aptly dubbed the Deliverance and the Patience, and sailed west toward the continent.

Ten days later they arrived in Jamestown, which proved to be the very hellhole many feared it would be. Of the four hundred colonists who had weathered the hurricane and arrived as planned the prior summer, barely fifty remained. The rest had succumbed to disease, starvation, and attacks from the natives, who were facing a food shortage of their own and saw the colonists for the threat that, in their desperation, they undoubtedly were. What had happened? Surviving records are inconclusive, but multiple sources indicate severe droughts had decimated the prior year’s corn harvest, which both native and colonist (through trade) had been relying on to survive the winter.

By the time Stephen arrived in Gates company the surviving Jamestown residents were reduced to skeletons. They were either too weak or too afraid to leave the fort to hunt or gather. They had long since eaten all the livestock and, so the story goes, resorted to eating each other.

With only two weeks of food left from their trip from Bermuda, Governor Gates realized they had no choice but to abandon the colony. Their only hope was to reach the English fishing camps in Newfoundland before their supplies ran out. And so the company, cannibals included, piled back into the boats and headed out to sea.

Stephen might have made it back to England later that year if not for the sudden appearance of three ships. One carried Thomas “de la Warr” West, the colony’s new governor, sent to replace missing-presumed-dead Governor Gates. The ships also carried a year supply of food. West ordered the colonists to turn around while Gates, suddenly left with nothing to govern, sailed on to London with Strachey’s narrative of their shipwreck.

Stephen has no choice but to return to Jamestown and serve out his contract. Such rules did not apply to West, however, who disliked the place and left after a year. His replacement, Governor Thomas Dale, became famous for ruling without pity for natives or Englishmen alike. Dale executed many, with torture often included in his sentences, following a rule of law he largely wrote himself.

With such a tyrant in charge, not to mention his mutinous record, Stephen could expect no leniency for any infraction, nor any consideration for special circumstances. In 1614 a letter arrived asking he be allowed to return to England, which appears to have been denied. The request likely resulted from Mary’s death a year earlier, which left Stephen’s children in the care of relatives.

Jamestown was not a big place and, given his duties under Reverend Buck, Stephen Hopkins would have known most if not all of the colony’s residents, notably those whose stories have grown into legend. He would almost certainly have been present at the marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe, a fellow Sea Venture shipwreck survivor who was instrumental in establishing the colony’s tobacco trade. And when Rolfe and Pocahontas sailed to London in the spring of 1616 it is possible Stephen traveled with them, as his 7-year contract was fulfilled around that time.

Finally back in England, Stephen took up residence in London’s east end parish of St Mary’s Whitechapel, not far from the docks. He was now in his mid-thirties and, after his many adventures and hardships, Stephen might have felt content to settle down. His household grew quickly during that time. In 1618 he remarried Elizabeth Fisher, who was about his age and possibly a widow herself. They had a child Damaris in 1619 and by 1620 Elizabeth was expecting again. At least two of Stephen’s children with Mary, Constance and Giles, were back in his care. Rounding out the family were two young servants, Edward Doty and Edward Leicester.

At that time several Brownist separatists had traveled from Leiden, Netherlands, and were frequenting the same area of London. Their goal was to establish a joint stock company to fund a colony in the New World. When they couldn’t find enough laborers in their own ranks to make their investors happy, they began offering shares of the company plus land grants to any Londoners willing to sign up for seven years in the New World. Given Stephen’s experience, any number of common acquaintances would have pointed the pilgrims to Stephen’s door.

Why did Stephen get back on a boat? Perhaps it was the chance to own land this time. Or perhaps he had regained some thirst to be back in the New World. Or perhaps he believed his future in Old England was even less certain than it would be in New England. Whatever the reason, the offer proved too good for Stephen to refuse. When the Mayflower sailed from London in July of 1620, the entire Hopkins household was aboard. This included thirteen-year-old son Giles, a direct ancestor of Mabel Prescott’s grandmother, Lillie Elfie Shaw.

It seems plausible that, before they departed, Stephen would have had occasion to see a production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Someone would have undoubtedly told him the play was written the same year Strachey’s narrative of the Sea Venture shipwreck on Bermuda reached London, and how the play featured castaways on an island inhabited by the magical Bermooths. I wonder what Stephen’s reaction would have been to the second act, when the servant named “Stephano” gets himself into trouble for inciting mutiny.

Sources:

Here Shall I Die Ashore, Caleb Johnson

Geni.com Stephen Hopkins Mayflower Passenger

What a piece of junk!

Luke Skywalker, Star Wars

Elizabeth Ring sailed from Delfshaven, in the Netherlands, aboard the Speedwell in the summer of 1620. She was traveling with her parents, William and Mary Ring, and also her two younger siblings, Susannah and infant Andrew.  Elizabeth is believed to have been about eleven years old.

It was not her first time on a ship, although Elizabeth was likely too young to remember that first voyage. Born in Suffolk, England, she had crossed the English Channel as an infant, when her parents joined the separatist colony at Leiden. Her childhood there was likely difficult but peaceful. The city boasted forty thousand residents at that time, many from different refugee groups across Europe, and a small group of English expatriates would have been of little consequence. For years the Dutch left them largely to themselves.

Their only problem: they had little money. Back in rural Pettistree, England, William Ring might have been a farmer, even a prosperous one, but in Leiden he was a simple “say worker”, making blankets and overcoats out of coarse wool using the cheapest of looms. Elizabeth’s mother Mary likely worked as a spinster to supplement their income. The working hours were long for both of them, from dawn until dusk, six days a week, enforced at the sound of the town bell. From a young age Elizabeth would have kept busy helping her parents in their work and the upkeep of their tiny cottage and the daily care of her younger siblings.

The grueling pace of the merchant city was a common frustration for many of the separatist parents. They wanted more time to educate their children but felt forced, by tight economics, to instead put them to work. Elizabeth would have learned to read at night, by candlelight, from excerpts of the Bible, the small collection of books kept by her parents, and the religious pamphlets printed on the “Pilgrim Press” by Elder Brewster and his assistant, Edward Winslow.

By 1618 the group saw their peaceful existence could not last. War with Spain was clearly coming and the Dutch had turned to the English for help. In exchange for England’s allegiance, King James insisted on control of his expatriate subjects. His demands made the future of the Leiden separatists far less secure, and the savage natives of the lightly populated New World seemed the smaller threat. Over the next two years, the colonists made preparations to leave.

Like most of the pilgrims, the Ring family likely used canal boats to travel the thirty miles from Leiden to Delfshaven. Delfshaven, now a borough of Rotterdam, was situated twenty miles from the sea on the northern bank of the Nieuwe Maas tributary of the Rhine river. There they would have seen the Speedwell, their floating home for months to come, for the first time. It is hard to imagine what they thought.

It was not a big ship, fitted for only sixty tons of cargo compared with one hundred eighty for the Mayflower. Other oceangoing ships anchored in the port would have seemed large by comparison. Even more concerning, the Speedwell was quite old. It had been built for the Royal Navy over forty years earlier, in 1577, and put to sea for the war against Spain. Originally called the Swifture, the vessel participated in the navel battles against the Spanish Armada and the Earl of Essex’s 1595 Azores expedition. Then, in 1605, the ship was decommissioned and sold. Rechristened as the Speedwell, the ship was used for private commerce for the next fifteen years, changing hands an unknown number of times until 1620, when a Leiden separatist named Captain Blossom purchased it for the Puritan voyagers.

Elizabeth may have been oblivious to any of these seaworthiness concerns. She likely enjoyed those exciting first days aboard, peering from the gun port at the passing ships as the Speedwell navigated the waterways out of Europe’s largest port. She might have marveled at her first view of the expansive North Sea.

Once free of the European coast, the Speedwell sailed southwest into the English Channel. By the time they reached their first destination, the port of Southhampton, England, the ship was already leaking. The Mayflower, which had sailed from London that month with over sixty passengers, was there to meet them and had to wait until her smaller sister ship was declared fit for the long voyage. The repairs, which along with port fees were paid for out of the colonist’s food and stores, took two long weeks.

On August 5 the Speedwell sailed from Southampton alongside the Mayflower, en route at last to the New World, but quickly began leaking again. They were forced to put in at Dartmouth for further repairs. The problem proved to be a single loose board, about two feet long. The crew made repairs and, in a second attempt, the two ships left Dartmouth. They made it further this time, several hundred miles beyond Land’s End in Cornwall, but once again the leaking Speedwell forced them to turn back.

What caused the leaks? Then, as now, the source was a mystery. After the voyage William Bradford, the pilgrim leader and eventual governor of Plymouth Colony, wrote the seeping water was probably caused by overmasting. The crew had installed a new mast for the Atlantic voyage, one that proved too big for the ship and placed excessive strain on the hull. But Bradford also suggested a second reason: sabotage. He believed some of the crew had been willing to risk sinking the ship to abort the trip, rather than face starvation and mistreatment by the New World natives.

Regardless of the cause, by the time the two ships docked at Plymouth (where some of the group were entertained by David and Amias Thomson) it was early September. The colonists had no choice but to abandon the Speedwell. A dozen Speedwell passengers crowded onto the Mayflower. Elizabeth Ring and her family were not among them.

How these decisions were made are the subject of speculation. For the Ring family, perhaps their two months at sea, living in cramped quarters with nothing but a chamber pot bolted to the floor in one corner, were already more than enough. They returned to Leiden, where they lived nine more years. Sources report they were one of the last families in the separatist group to leave the city.

Finally, in 1629, Elizabeth once again boarded a ship bound for Plymouth Colony. Her father William Ring had passed away by then, but she traveled with her mother and siblings. This time the crossing was successful.

Soon after their arrival Elizabeth, now in her early twenties, married a prosperous colonist named Stephen Deane. Deane, a passenger on the 1621 Fortune voyage, had built and operated the colony’s only corn mill and appears to have been a respected member of the community. Elizabeth and Stephen had several children together.

When Stephen died in 1634, Elizabeth remarried Josiah Cooke. They, too, had three children together.

In 1645 the Cooke family moved to Eastham, far out on Cape Cod, where they lived for many years. Elizabeth outlived Josiah by over a decade and died a widow there in 1687. She was survived by four of her six children, most of whom still lived nearby.

We appear to descend from Elizabeth and Josiah’s youngest child, a son also named Josiah, through our great-grandfather Ralph Prescott.

As for the Speedwell, the ship was sold at auction in London soon after its aborted crossing attempt. Whether from a new mast or less fearful crew, no one can say, but the ship’s leaking problems appear to have been resolved, and its new owners enjoyed many years of productive service.

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 13^th 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

http://www.seacoastnh.com/History/History-Matters/myles-standish-speak-out-on-nhs-first-settler/?showall=1