Dark Secrets Of Our Pilgrim Fathers

 

Those of you who know me know I’m not at all hesitant to tell the juicy story of my Civil War ancestor, Matthew Potter, and his “encounter” with a chicken. WELL, this, sadly, was not an isolated occurrence or behavior.......... even in the Plymouth Colony among our revered Pilgrim fathers: 

The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in the Plymouth Colony, by James Deetz and Patricia Scott Deetz, 2000,  ISBN  0-7167-3830-9

The introduction begins with this: “Who really were the Pilgrims? Far from the somberly clad, stern, and righteous figures children learn about in school, many of the settlers of Plymouth actually dressed in bright colors, drank heavily, and often got into trouble.”   This book is “a surprising look at America’s founding fathers and mothers. The Times of Their Lives, presents a realistic factual account of the Plymouth colony based on contemporary archaeology, cultural research and living history. Taking little known trial transcripts, personal accounts, wills, and probate records, as well as physical artifacts such as shards and spoons unearthed from old foundations, the authors reveal what life in the 17^th century Plymouth was really like. In the process they blow the dust off the dull, wooden figures of tradition and show the Plymouth colonists as vibrant people who lived out complex and colorful lives in a world profoundly different from our own.”

Page 11: 
Although we frequently hear references to reconstructing the past, this is an impossibility simply because we do not have access to all of the complexities of life in earlier times. What we do is construct the past, and in so doing, decide what is important and what is not. Such constructions invariable reflect, to some extent, the values and biases of the time in which they were written.

Page 135-6:  This was a chapter on sex-related capital crimes.  In 1642, Thomas Granger, a 17 year old servant to Love Brewster in Duxbury, was executed for buggery (sexual relations with animals). “He was this year detected of buggery, and indicted for the same, with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey.” He was sentenced to be “hanged by the neck until his body is dead.” The poor animals were all slaughtered and buried.

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Mayflower Month: First Thankgiving Dinner

 

Think you'd want to share Thanksgiving dinner with the Pilgrims in 1627? Very likely not because the menu was not what the artists have shown us all these years.

"As the day of the harvest festival approached, four men were sent out to shoot waterfowl, returning with enough to supply the company for a week. Massasoit was invited to attend and shortly arrived..... with ninety ravenous braves! The strain on the larder was somewhat eased when some of these went out and bagged five deer. For three days, the Pilgrims and their guests gorged themselves on venison, roast duck, roast goose, clams and other shellfish, succulent eels, white bread, corn bread, leeks and watercress and other "sallet herbes" with wild plums and dried berries as dessert. All washed down with wine, made of the wild grape, both white and red, which the first Pilgrims praised as 'very sweet and strong.'" 

There was no mention of "turkies, whose speed of foot in the woods constantly amazed the Pilgrims." There were cranberries by the bushel in neighboring bogs but the Pilgrims had not yet contrived a happy use for them. "Nor was the table graced with a later and more felicitious invention, pumpkin pie." 

Q: If you choose to celebrate a "real" Thanksgiving, will you include "succulent eels" on your menu???

(Quoting from Saints and Strangers, by George F. Willison, 1945.)

Mayflower Month: Houses .... did they build log cabins?

 

Did the Pilgrims build log cabins? Nope. "Neither then nor later did the pilgrims build log cabins for the good reason that they did not know how." 

 (Believe it or not, Scandinavian immigrants arriving about 1640 to settlements along the Delaware, brought the know-how to erect log cabins.)

Most spent that winter of 1620-1621 still onboard the Mayflower (at least it was shelter). As soon as spring finally came, they began building a few small cottages of wattle and daub construction with steep thatched roofs, typically English in design. Each family was to build its own house and each family to take in one or more of the single persons. But it was not until March 21st that the last of the Pilgrims finally left the Mayflower and "came ashore with much adoe to live henceforth on ye firme and stable earth, their proper elemente." It had been eight long wintery months since the ship first sailed into Provincetown harbor. 

I've been blessed to visit Plimouth Plantation. These replica "cottages" are not someplace where you or I would want to live. They were dirt floored, tiny in area, windowless, crowded with living and with people. Yet they did survive; I am a descendant of nine passengers who were on the Mayflower, both Saints and Strangers. 

(Quoting from Saints and Strangers, by George F. Willison, 1945.)

Mayflower Month: Where to finally settle

 

It was November; it was winter. The group had been 66 days out of Plymouth and four months out of Leiden. They were in New England and obviously not Virginia. The problem was that their charter or patent was for them to settle in Virginia and nowhere else. So what to do?

"The malcontents among them had become quite defiant, openly proclaiming that when they came ashore they would use their own libertie for none had the power to command them" since they were not in Virginia. This fractional separation led to the composing of the famous Mayflower Compact. 

But they were not in Virginia and Capt. Jones was loath to attempt, in November, to sail back into the Atlantic and south to Virginia. So it was decided; here they would stay. 

And perhaps this was the best choice after all. There was no established church so they would be free of interference in their affairs. 

All this was well and good but it was cold; it was November; it was winter and they had nobody and nothing and certainly no shelter of any kind awaiting them on the shore of this New World. 

(Quoting from Saints and Strangers, by George F. Willison, 1945.)

Mayflower Month: The storms which changed history

 

Having left England for the last time in mid-September, they initially were cheered because September passed "under fair skies and with a fresh breeze blowing."

"Then suddenly, the weather changed as fierce storms came roaring out of the west. For days at a time it was impossible to carry a yard of sail, the ship drifting under bare poles with the helmsman desperately trying to hold her into the wind as she wallowed through mountainous seas which often had her lying on her beam-ends."

(Donna:  we can scarcely imagine how terrible awful it was for that dear group of 102 people crammed into a space the size of a living room.)

Finally,  November came and their course had brought them to the wrist of Cape Cod. They were glad to be sight land again, as "the Mayflower seemed to be in great danger and ye wind shrieking upon them withall." So they, with a sigh of relief, sailed into the safety of Provincetown harbor. 

But this was not Virginia..............what to do?

(Quoting from Saints and Strangers, by George F. Willison, 1945.)

Mayflower Month: The voyage and the people

 

Finally on September 6th, after two aborted starts, the Mayflower finally set out across the North Atlantic. 

"According to the usuall maner, many were afflicated with seasickness." As the ship had only the crudest of conveniences (a bucket) and no provision for even cursory washing, the air in the narrow, crowded quarters below duck must have been nauseating at best and at worst simply staggering. The North Atlantic is always cold and the passengers found it almost impossible to keep warm and dry. Except for an occasional hot dish, they lived on a monotonous and upsetting diet of hard tack, "salt horse," dried fish, cheese and beer. 

The Mayflower was packed to the gunwales for 102 passengers had been crammed on board with their goods and supplies. It is a pleasing and fanciful notion that these first Pilgrims were a homogeneous and united group, but indeed they were not. Only three of the company were from Scrooby and a third of those onboard came from Leyden, 41 to be exact. The others were "strangers" largely from London and southeastern England and were good members of the Church of England. This religious perspective/viewpoint led to "considerable irritation" among the group. 

The one thing all the passengers had on common was that they were all of the lower classes, "from the cottages and not the castles of England." There was not a drop of blue blood to be found anywhere among them in the Mayflower; they were common people............ a fact which seems to have escaped some of their descendants with their proofs of "blood" and pathetic interest in coats of arms." 

(Quoting from Saints and Strangers, by George F. Willison, 1945.)

Mayflower Month: How did they choose where to go?

 

The big question in these soon-to-be-Pilgrims was where to go? And there was much discussion around the tables in their Leiden homes.

"Some favored establishing a colony in the New World. Many violently objected, however, citing their want of funds for so ambitious a venture, the hardships of a long voyage, the dangers of perishing of starvation and disease, not to speak of the savagery of the Indians, a 'cruell, barbarous and most trecherous' people whose practice were such that a mere recitation of them caused their 'bowels to grate within them.'"

Many destinations were discussed, including Guiana or some spot along the Caribbean coast of South America. Some voted for Virginia but against this it was argued that the Anglican church was already established in the colony and they might be as harassed and persecuted there as they had been at home. But in the end, the vote was for Virginia. 

(Quoting from Saints and Strangers, by George F. Willison, 1945.)

Mayflower Month: Why did they leave Leiden?

 

WHY did the soon-to-be-Pilgrims leave Leiden for the uncertainties of a New World?

"The leaders of the group were worried, above all by the poverty in which most of the congregation lived. Many were getting on in years, and even worse, were compelled by age and situation to put their children to work..... their situation aroused an uneasy fear that within a few years they would either scatter by reason of necessity of 'sinking under their burden, or both.'" 

They wished to find a place where they might live more comfortably and still enjoy freedom of religion. They also wished to retain their identity as an English group, having no desire to be absorbed by the Dutch. They were especially fearful of the "seduction of their children by 'ye great manifold temptations of ye place.'" 

So they left Leiden.............. the story continues. 

(Quoting from Saints and Strangers, by George F. Willison, 1945.)