The Ten Tribes of David Stiles
Since I know those people so well, I'm disappointed that I do not know our ancestors that preceded them. Wouldn't you like to have met the very first Stiles' that came to America? Have you ever wondered why they took a trip across the Atlantic Ocean in a flimsy little boat so long ago? Imagine, they came over in a sailing ship - a "bark" which only had two masts, a tall bunch of square sails, and only depended on the wind to get here. Keep in mind that this is the same ocean that ate up the huge, "unsinkable" Titanic 300 years later!
Let's you and I take a journey together. Let's travel back in time 400 years and see what makes those ancestors of our's tick.
We'll land our time capsule in a small rural community named Milbrooke in Bedfordshire, England. Millbrooke is in an idyllic setting. It is surrounded with woods broken up with small meadows in which white sheep graze on green pastures. The land is gently rolling and the air of the place is relaxed and tranquil. The main street winds around the base of an incline and on either side of the street are quaint English cottages with thatch roofs peaked at a very sharp angle. The road winds through the town then goes up the incline at the top of which is a very old church. The church is very tall even without it's steeple, and the steeple is as tall again as the church itself. The church is narrow and inside it is very plain. There is a simple alter in front which makes up the entire content of the church. The only color comes from the few windows which contain stained glass. That stained glass forms the crest of the Duke of Bedford's family. Not much light enters the church. Outside the church is it's "God's acre", where the residents of the village are buried when their life on earth ends. On another hill, overlooking the church and the village is the very impressive manor and manor grounds of the nobleman that oversees all the residents of the area, the Duke of Bedford.
On the day we take this up, our ancestor, John Stiles, is being christened in the little church on top of the hill in Milbrooke. His mother and father, Thomas and Maria, and his older brother, Francis, along with two other Stiles families, who live in the neighborhood, have brought little John into the church for his christening. The date is December 25, 1595. Naturally the church is an Anglican Church and the head of the church is England's Queen Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen. It's Anglican because it is the only legal church in which one can worship in the entire country. As far as we can tell, though, the Stiles family is quite content to worship in their church, because the difficulties with the church is the problem of politicians and noblemen, and just not their problem. They know what is going on though because it's all the gossip. Everybody is worried about Spain. Spain has become extremely powerful - look at all the colonies it has settled in the Americas! And, it is a Catholic country with the backing of the Pope. The Vatican is wealthy and the Pope would like to get rid of the Church of England. Englishmen don't recognize him as the head of the church and the Pope believes that without his being head of the church, all Englishmen are infidels. It is his purpose to gather his flock into the fold of the church. The Englishmen in Milbrooke can't imagine that anyone should be more powerful than Her Royal Highness, the Virgin Queen, but if those Papists get into power, they think that the Pope is even higher than she is! Everyone in the village know that she wouldn't have been born in the position in which she came into the world, if God had not decided that she should be there. Therefore, she was Queen only by Divine Right, and not even a Pope could be superior to her. They also know that Ireland is Catholic and, if the Pope has half a chance, he would talk Ireland and Spain into ganging up against England so he could usurp the Queen's authority and he would even go so far as to convert England's people and he would let Spain's Monarch rule over England.
The Pope has even gone so far as to having said that since her father, King Henry VIII, had divorced his previous wife to marry her mother, Anne Boleyn, that Queen Elizabeth was a "bastard" and a bastard did not have the ability to become the Queen. All the villagers, including the members of the Stiles family, remember how much trouble the King had. They, along with all other intelligent Englishmen, expected their King to produce heirs. It was his responsibility. After all, what would happen to the country if the king should die and there was no one to take his place? In their opinion, it was not King Henry's fault that he happened to marry barren women. It was his duty to divorce them and remarry until he had produced an heir, and if the Pope thought that was wrong, in the opinion of everyone in the village, the Pope just wanted Spain to take them over. So the villagers loved and respected their Queen and had no qualms whatsoever about her heritage or of being members of her church.
Thomas, baby John's father, was extremely happy to be the father of this baby boy. He and Maria already had two children: a boy and a girl and now another boy. Since England was under the feudal system, the duke of Bedford owned the whole of the town and Thomas, Maria and their children lived there and worked for him. But Thomas was no ordinary serf. He was a carpenter and any skilled person, such as a carpenter, was a little higher up the social ladder than ordinary folk. The more sons he had and could bring into his craft, the more work he would be able to do. With enough sons he could even work on estates other than the Duke's. And the Duke would let him keep part of the money he earned. He considered himself a lucky man. Maria was a good wife. She bore children well and kept his cottage, which was one of the larger ones in the village, neat and clean. She raised a lovely vegetable garden and even had flowers growing around the cottage which he wouldn't let any of the men know pleased him as well as it did. Baby John would grow up in a happy home.
As John became old enough, he was given chores to do. He carried in fire wood for his mother and helped his father by picking up scraps of lumber and wood shavings to be carried home and used as kindling. But mostly, he played with his brothers and sisters and the other village children. Their favorite game was called "Colonist". You see, any time the children were around the adults, they listened to the conversations the adults were having about what was going on in England.
What the adults were keeping up with was the adventures of Sir Walter Raleigh. He was the sweetheart of the Queen and they had heard that she was going to send him to the Americas to see if he could find some gold and silver for England's treasury and to see if he could find a place for England to begin to colonize. Spain was spreading out. She had hundreds of colonies all over the New World. John's mother and dad were very interest in the charter that Queen Elizabeth had given Sir Walter Raleigh to establish a colony in the part of America that he named "Virginia", after his "Virgin" Queen. He had sent a group of colonists there to set up a community, but they were unable to do so and returned to England. The people in the village decided that they had gone at the wrong time of year. If they had settled the colony in early spring, maybe they would have been able to plant crops and put back some stores for winter. They looked forward to the next attempt. It was all the talk of the town! Then he sent another group who settled on an island of the coast of the mainland of Virginia. The villagers waited and waited to hear how they were faring. There was much speculation, and when they heard that the entire colony had disappeared, they were shocked and worried.
This made John and his friend's Colonist game even more exciting. What had happened to the colonists? Did a storm blow them all away? Were they eaten by the natives? Was there magic or witchcraft at work? Why did they disappear when the Spanish colonists survived? While the villagers talked, the children played at being colonists. They pretended that there were ugly savages behind the trees and the boys bragged about how they wouldn't be scared of any nasty savages. It was a good life. They were loved by their parents, they were comfortable in their village, there was food to eat and people to play with. They heard a lot about a playwright who was making a big name for himself among the city folks. His name was Shakespeare, but what do kids care about someone like that? It was more fun playing colonist.
Little John grew up in his village listening to talk such as this, and as he listened, he began to learn how to be a carpenter like his father and like his big brother, Henry. His immediate family grew rapidly until their little cottage on the street contained a whole passel of kids. John had not only Henry, but Frances, Christopher, and Thomas to work with their father at the carpenter's craft. And his Mom had Joanne, Marie and Elizabeth to help out at home.
And then, disaster struck. On March 24, 1603 the bells in the church began to toll. People were screaming and crying. The men in the town looked worried and the women were running through the streets crying. The town crier announced that their beloved Queen Elizabeth had died. What would happen to them? Queen Elizabeth was a scamp and a scalliwag, but she had protected them and loved them. She was a virgin, so she had no heirs. They were without a leader, and that is a scary proposition.
In only a few days, the Milbrooke community heard that, indeed, Elizabeth had protected them. She had named an heir: her nephew, the current King of Scotland. He was known as King James VI in Scotland but, because he was the first James to be King of England, when he moved to England he became James I. And then, the most exciting thing that the village had seen happened. James I, along with his royal entourage came through their community on his way to his coronation. They all had opinions about him. "He wasn't as sophisticated as Queen Elizabeth." He was a Protestant, so they could accept him without worrying about their church. He looked to be a little drunk and some in the village had heard that he stayed drunk a lot of the time. He was also fat! He ate too much. He tried to pretend that he was extremely well educated and would rather be a scholar than a king, but some of the community had been around truly well educated people and they didn't think that he sounded like the scholars. He had a terrible, rough Scottish accent. The worse thing about him, though, was that he was a Scott. Everyone had an opinion. And then they heard the Elizabeth's beloved Sir Walter Raleigh was opposed to him. Not much later they heard the Sir Walter Raleigh had been condemned to die because he didn't support King James and was now housed in the Tower of London. The rumors grew and grew and distrust of their new king was on everyone's mind.
John and his friends were devastated. Sir Walter Raleigh had been their hero. When they played their colonist game, one of the kids was always Sir Walter Raleigh. That boy would swagger like Sir Water Raleigh and would pretend to twirl his moustaches. He always led them through the woods to their "colony". He was always the bravest when attacked by Indians. With Sir Walter Raleigh in the Tower, who would lead them to their colony?
King James and his politics was the talk of the town until something happened to get their minds off the king and on to something else. Several new families moved into town. A few of them were Quakers. The Quakers didn't think that anyone could be head of their church. They believed that neither the king nor the pope could decide on their person salvation. They refused to recognize either and instead they elected their leaders from inside their very own church. And then some Calvinists moved into town. They agreed with the Quakers about the leadership of the church, but they had their own theories about theology - they spent a lot of time talking about predestination. John and his brothers and sisters didn't quite know what predestination really meant and they even secretly felt that the Calvinists didn't either. Predestination was just a fancy word to throw around and impress people. The Anglicans and the Calvinists did agree on one thing. The Quakers were so uptight and straight-laced, so careful about every word they said and did- why they would not even stop at the pub for a pint when the sun was hot and they were drier than dust! They were so pure that everyone started calling the "Puritans". but only behind their back!
By this time, John's big brother, Henry, had learned to be the family clown. He was the one who got all the lickin's from Thomas, because he was the oldest and should be the most responsible, but he could not keep from getting himself into trouble. His latest game was to pretend that he was a Quaker. He would fold his hand, roll his eyes up to the heavens, clear his throat and say things like, "Verily, I say, ye are going to HELL!". The kids loved it, but Henry's problem was, he could never learn to be sneaky enough to perform his Quaker imitations when an adult was nowhere around. Poor Henry always got caught!
King James, the would-be scholar, thought that everyone should be educated and he thought that a good place to learn to read would be the Bible. Up until now, the only Bible available was written in Latin, and most of his subjects couldn't even read English, much less Latin. He decided that one of his goals would be to translate the Bible into English. The talk in the village was all about the King James Version of the Bible which, to the chagrin of John and his friends, was to be the main textbook of the new school the Duke was forming for the village children. Henry didn't have to go, since he was old enough to be working full time as a carpenter. John was almost as old as Henry, and in his mind, why should he have to hang around with all those "little kids"? His parents were adamant, though, and off to school he went. School wasn't so bad though, because there was this cute little village girl named Rachel who was also in his school. Everyone thought that the Duke was ridiculous because he insisted that both boys and girls should attend school. The villagers thought it was a waste of time to educate girls, but John was glad. He grumbled about going to school each morning, to the chagrin of his mother. He sure didn't want anybody to know that he had a crush on Rachel!
In 1607, when John was 12 years old, the most amazing thing happened. A colony was established and was thriving in Jamestown in the Virginia Colony in America. All the boys in town tried to talk their parents into moving to the colony. they just knew that the colonists were going to find gold and silver and send it back like the Spaniards had done. They quit worrying about the natives behind trees and got a case of "gold fever". The boys thought the adults were out of their minds. Who cared about Puritans and Calvinists, AnaBaptists or Papists when there was colonizing to be done? And, why wouldn't their parents take them off the New World?
Someone was worrying. King James was worrying. The colonists reported back to him that there was no gold in North America. In fact, all they had to send to his coffers was timber and a new plant they had learned to cultivate, tobacco. It was interesting, because you could smoke it, or you could snort it up your nose. It went well with brandy and manly living! Thomas had even bought some tobacco and took up pipe smoking. Francis talked Henry into swiping his Dad's tobacco and pipe and the five brothers slipped out into the woods to try their hand at smoking. Since Thomas was the youngest, he went first. He choked. The boys beat him on his back, then he started throwing up. After much discussion, the four older brothers decided that Thomas was going to die and they panicked. They carried Thomas home and poor ol' Henry got a lickin'. Francis, John and Christopher put on their innocent faces and stayed out of trouble, and Thomas recovered.
But King James couldn't snort enough or smoke enough or drink enough to avoid the religious problem. King James was worried to death about the Catholics. He believed in the Divine Right of kings to be absolute ruler of everything, including the souls of his subjects. He was probably more concerned with his authority than he was in religion, and the Pope was always there- always trying to usurp his authority. The Pope was sending in his missionaries and his priest and the king had to keep a whole troop busy hunting them down and killing them. The Pope would have loved to get his Inquisitors into England, and heaven only knows, what they had done in France and in Spain. The Pope wanted to be ruler of England! Then on the other hand, there were the pesky Protestants. They thought they were masters of their own fate. Not only did they not want a Pope as head of their church, they didn't even want a king. Off with their heads, too! And after he had given them their own Bible, how could they treat him this way?
Thomas and Maria had become quit afraid of all this religious fury. They heard that the King had found that private families were allowing Catholic priests to hold Mass in their homes. The King was killing both the priests and the families who had hosted them. Thomas and Maria knew of innocent families who had enemies who had accused them of holding Catholic Masses, and those families, unable to prove their innocence, were punished as severely as the individuals who had hosted the Masses. They wondered about their neighbors and worried that some may hold a grudge against them.
When Thomas and Maria discovered that their younger children were no longer playing Colonist and had taken up a new game - a game called "Kill the Catholics", they were really disturbed. What violence their children were exposed to. They worried about how it was affecting their children and longed for the "good ol' days" when Elizabeth was their Queen. By this time, John was neither worried about politics and religion, nor was he particularly concerned with being a colonist. He was in love! All he could think of was Rachel. Rachel's father, though, was making things difficult. He wanted John to be a full fledged carpenter and able to support himself and a family before he would allow John to court his daughter. Thomas was delighted! Henry was already a good carpenter and Francis worked hard to improve his skills. Francis had already made some money doing carpentry work and he showed a lot of ambition. John, on the other hand, had to be nagged and pushed. Rachel gave him a reason to work and Thomas could see improvement in his work every day.
Back in Milbrooke, the Stiles family was growing up, but life went on pretty much as usual. The King had ordered the church to take a roll call every Sunday and was taxing people who did not attend church. Of course, this didn't affect the Stiles family. They always went to church- and to the correct church, the Church of England. it was a bit fun to see the Quakers and the Calvinists squirm. They didn't have any money. What were they going to do when the king taxed them? The talk of the town was about the new colony established in America, the Plymouth community. A group of Quakers had become tired of the persecution they were receiving and had decided to just leave. They wanted the freedom to worship as they saw fit without interference from the King, and their colony was based on that freedom. Since their colony was established because of their religion, they saw their move to America as a pilgrimage and called themselves the Pilgrims. Another group, calling themselves the Massachusetts Bay Colony petitioned the king and was granted a charter to establish their colony in what would become Salem, Massachusetts.
The young kids in the village didn't play at Colonist like the older ones had done. It wasn't as glamorous when it became a religious enterprise. When you play at evading savages and hunting gold, the game is fun. Dressing up like a Puritan and talking about freedom of religion tends to take away the romance!
Even in Milbrooke, boys grow up and parents get old and die. When John was 19 he lost both his father and his mother. Two of his brothers, Henry and Francis had moved to London where they had established themselves as Master Carpenters and Citizens of London. Francis had really excelled. He had established himself so well in the Carpenter's Guild that he could own his own business and could even be in charge of a group of carpenters. His efforts awarded him the title of "Mr." In the early 1600's that was quite an honor.
Unfortunately that honor did little to bring home enough money to support his family. Henry didn't have it so tough since he was a bachelor, but Francis had married. Times were getting pretty rough in London. King James died in 1625 and was succeeded by his son, Charles I. Charles was either an ineffective ruler, or England had changed so much that it was just difficult to rule. An industrial revolution had taken place. Thousands of workers were employed in factories that made fabric or smelted iron or hundreds of other industries. Agriculture as the most important business had given way to industry. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer. England's Parliament had always been made up of the nobility who managed large estates, just like Milbrooke's Duke of Bedford.
Now the Duke who had always been there for his village and had always looked after the villagers did not have enough money to support his estates which included Milbrooke. The Feudal system was gone. Many of Milbrooke's villagers were forced to move to London and try to go to work in the factories. No longer were there people to tend the sheep and the meadows grew up in brush. The church had very few people in attendance each Sunday and many of the cottages had thatch blown away and weeds growing where flowers and vegetables had flourished. John, though, soon thought that even though the farmers in his village were suffering, he was at last free from having to work for the Duke. He assumed that he would continue to do as much work as he was accustomed to doing and would receive all the money, not just what the Duke allowed him to have. At long last, he felt he was able to propose to his beloved Rachel. Rachel's father had softened and gave his consent.
In spite of the problems in England and in the village, John and Rachel married in the very church John had been christened in earlier.
The nobility, like the Duke of Bedford had always controlled the economy in England. They were the moneyed people and they made up the Parliament under the Feudal System. Now business leaders, commoners without the blue blood had the money - even more money than the royal treasury. They paid very little wages and had thousands of people working in their sweatshops. When you have a large number of extremely poor people living in a city without a means to control sanitation, you have a problem with disease. The plague broke out in London and King Charles had to contend with thousands of people dying. He was fighting with the Parliament, and in fact, he dismissed the Parliament and ruled England as absolute ruler without Parliament have any say in his actions. Any rights that citizens had had up until then were taken away. Then a major depression occurred. No one had money. The first people to suffer in a depression are the farmers, then the people who are involved in construction - such as carpenters. What little money people have they spend on food, not on building new homes.
John and Christopher and little Thomas were not faring well in Milbrooke either, although it was better for them than for their brothers. Thomas had become a husbandman and wasn't involved in the family business, but even he was having trouble making ends meet. John and Rachel already had two children. No one in the family knew what to do. People were frantic. Every day they heard of a friend or an acquaintance that had either committed suicide or had just walked away from their wife and children and were not heard from again. They hated King Charles, and blamed him for their troubles. It had been a long time since they had played at being colonists - in fact, with the living conditions being what they were, it had been a long time since they had played at anything!
Then the most amazing thing happened. Francis was visiting with an acquaintance of his, a Lord Saltenstall, for whom he had done some carpentry work. Lord Saltenstall told Francis that he and a group of his friends were trying to move their money out of England before they lost it all. They had been granted a charter from King Charles for Connecticut, a large piece of land in New England in America. They were looking for carpenters to build them a town to which they would send colonists to form a new colony. Francis couldn't believe his good luck. Here was their boyhood dream. And, here was an opportunity to get out of England's troubles. He couldn't wait to contact his brothers. The brothers were all enthused, all that is, except Christopher. He decided to stay home and run his father's business. All they had to do was gather up their equipment and convince their wives to climb on that silly little sail boat with little children and risk their lives crossing the Atlantic to face heaven knows what in that wild and forsaken country. John had it particularly hard. Rachel was worried about two little toddlers, plus the fact that she was pregnant again. Morning sickness is bad enough without compounding it with sea sickness! Sure, she had played colonist as a child, but she had put away childhood games. She was a woman, and a mother!
Then one evening her best friend came running into Rachel's house. She was crying so hard she was almost hysterical. After calming her friend down enough to talk with her, Rachel discovered that her friend's husband had just left her. He just went. He couldn't find enough money or food and he couldn't face coming in the front door one more time and seeing the look on his little children's faces when he just could not provide for them. So, he walked away.
This made up Rachel's mind. Her John was a good, steady solid man. He was no scalawag like his brother Henry, who was always in trouble. He wasn't as ambitious as his brother Francis, but Rachel thought to herself, "he is the best of the brood. I trust him to do the best he can for me and our children, and I know that he has our best interests at heart. This isn't a silly childhood game. I love him so much that I promised him that for him I would climb the highest mountain or cross the widest sea. So, here's my chance!"
As soon as John got out of the house the next morning, she pulled out her trunks and by the time he got home for dinner she was done with her packing. She had even remembered to pull seed pods of her vegetables, herbs and flowers for starts in the New World. She hadn't forgotten the Lost Colonists and the suspicion that they had frozen to death, so she had packed several fleeces so she could spin wool to make warm clothes. In fact, when John walked through the door, she was just plain excited and couldn't wait to get involved in their adventure!
It wasn't that easy, though. Thomas was too young, and John had never tried to apply for his appointment as Master Carpenter. He had not seen fit to do so, since he had never intended to leave Milbrooke. Master carpenters and their apprentices were what the man wanted. Joanne, John's sister, had never married and they couldn't easily leave her behind. They had to prove their birth and the fact that they had remained loyal to England by being active members of the Church of England. The latter was not difficult. It didn't take the rector long to give them documentation of their birth records and church attendance. The former was more difficult. It would take years to be certified as a Master Carpenter. Francis came up the solution. He decided that he and Henry would make John and Thomas their apprentices. Thomas did not complain, but John balked. John could not imagine allowing himself to be indentured to his younger brother! Become his younger brother's slave for years? His dignity would not allow it. This time it was Rachel who had to talk John into signing the papers that would enslave him to his younger brother!
While the members of the Stiles family were gathering the things they were taking to their new home and complying with all the government rules and regulations, Lord Saltenstall was busy also. He obtained a sailing ship, the "Christian of London" and a captain, John White, Master, who along with his crew were to sail the ship to Connecticut.
He filled the ship with carpenter's tools, oxen to haul the timbers, horses, cows to sustain the families, hogs, chickens, ducks and several head of sheep. He had to include enough feed for all the livestock and enough fresh water for the men and animals. There had to be enough food for the crew and for the 27 passengers which included 22 adult males, 3 adult females and 2 children, and there had to be enough to last for three months, the anticipated time to sail from London and reach America.
Making the decision to embark on this adventure was easy compared to actually leaving. Rachel and Joanne had never been away from Milbrooke. John and Thomas had visited their brothers in London on several different occasions, but were terrified of the city each time. The city was frightening. People raced through the streets in any kind of horse drawn conveyance imaginable. A person could get run down easily. There were so many houses and so many streets. There were pickpockets and beggars. But the worse thing was the stench! Thousands of houses burning wood and coal with which to heat and cook, all producing smoke which made a suffocating haze. Factories dying fabric and others tanning leather produced awful odors. If a horse happened to die on the street, the owners left him to rot and smell. And, worse of all, both horse and man used the streets as latrines. You had to be very careful where you walked, but as you walked you didn't dare look down to see what you were stepping into, because you had to look up and see which window a maid may be using to dump the household's chamber pots. Through this nasty city ran a nasty polluted river.
John and Thomas had always agreed that their brothers had to be out of their minds to live there, and yet, what were they thinking? They were planning to go, not just a 100 miles or so to London, but thousands of miles to a place they knew nothing about.
Joanne and Rachel looked at their village and the people, family and friends, that had been their whole life. They knew that they would never see this village or these people again. There was a flurry of good-by parties. Tears were shed and memories were shared, and finally, the time had come to go.
Other colonists had gone to America in ships that were basically passenger ships, in fact, in just 12 years, between the years of 1629 and 1641, about 20,000 people emigrated to the New World. Keep in mind, that the Stiles family were not just colonists. They went before the colonists to build the towns - the houses. churches, schools and meeting halls that would assure the colonists a place to live. I rather imagine that the Saltenstall group saw themselves as creating a situation in America so that they would become the Feudal lords here, much as the Duke of Bedford had been to Millbrooke. So, our group was not going on a passenger ship with what luxuries those ship may have had, they were actually going on a cargo ship. Their fellow passengers would be livestock.
On March 16, 1634, our forefather, John, with Rachel, his wife, their children and the other members of the entourage took their first steps up a gangplank from the dock in London and onto the deck of the Christian. As it slowly pulled out of the harbor they watched what had been their whole life recede from view. They didn't know if a storm would capsize their ship, or if one of King Charles' enemies would attack. They had, of course, heard of sea monsters and pirates. What courage they must have had to be able to place one foot in front of the other and force themselves to step onto that ship!
Can you imagine the voyage? To look in every direction and see nothing but water? To hear nothing but the sounds of water slapping on the hull? To be dependant on a few bed sheets attached to a telephone pole to propel you? To never see land for three long months?
Rachel worried about running out of food and water. She missed Millbrooke and her friends. She wondered what had possessed her to agree to this venture? Surely things in England were not as bad as she had thought. She might lose her children. If they ran out of water, her children would die before she did. She would be left with the responsibility of having to throw their precious bodies over the edge of the boat. Why had she left? What a terrible mother she must be.
Joanne remembered how upset she had been when her beau had left with his family to work in a factory in London. She didn't share this with anyone, but the only reason she had come along was she had imagined his face when he came back to Millbrooke and found her gone. She was going to show him! How could she have made a mistake like that? He wasn't so important. Now she was going to die out of some stupid revenge thing! And her sisters, how could she live without Elizabeth and Marie. She loved her brothers, but sisters are always closer. She wouldn't be there when they had babies. She may never have a baby of her own. There were probably no men, just Wild Indians in America! Why had she left?
John looked at Rachel and her swollen belly. He wondered why he had had the audacity to make this trip. He had taken a vow to protect her, and now at her most vulnerable, he had put her on this stupid ship and they may never ever see land again. Why had he left?
Usually Henry could be counted on to make some jokes and lighten everyone's mood, but he just sat and stared at the horizon.
Francis wondered about the Ship Master's ability to calculate his destination. Francis was a carpenter and he knew the importance of proper measurements. He was aware that the longitude problem had never been solved. If the ship were blown just a little off course, they could wander around in the Atlantic Ocean until all their provisions were used up - or they could reach land somewhere other than their destination. He decided not to share this information with the others. But, he worried. He was the one responsible for all these lives on the ship. He felt that he had made a terrible mistake. Why had they left?
Only Thomas and the children stayed happy and excited.
They all tried to keep themselves busy. They fed and watered the animals and kept the cows milked. The women tried to sew sturdy clothes for the family. They rationed food and prepared meals. The men sharpened their tools and tried to make plans, but no matter how busy they attempted to make themselves, the emptiness was always there. These people had spent their lives surrounded by rolling hills and forests. Now they could see the horizon in every direction. And in every direction they looked, all they could see was water.
Finally one day one of the children saw a sea gull. He was so excited. The Ship's Master explained to his passengers that land was not too far away because the gulls never fly too far from land. Everyone started watching the skies. Finally they saw more gulls, and the then sky teeming with them, but no land appeared. After what seemed an eternity, the sailor in the crow's nest announced that he had sighted land. What rejoicing! Everyone leaned over the rail and watched and watched the horizon. It took almost a half day until they could see what the man in the crow's nest had seen. Beautiful, beautiful land. Their new home and their great adventure. it didn't take long until they were aware that the ship's master was exactly where he was supposed to be. They were entering the Boston Harbor and the date was June 16. They had arrived exactly three months to the day from when they set sail in London.
Everyone was anxious to get off the ship. To walk on land was a treat, however they found immediately that their bodies had adjusted to the roll and pitch of the ship and they could hardly stand on ground, much less walk. The children thought it was great fun to waddle along, but poor pregnant Rachel almost had to be carried.
While the ship's master gather some supplies, including fresh water (you can't imagine how water tastes after having been stored in barrels for three months), the Stiles party looked around the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They were very much aware of the memories of Henry making fun of the Quakers. In Milbrooke, they had been the majority and the Quakers were the minority. Here the tables were turned. They were very, very much aware also, that the Quakers were "looking down their noses" at their group. The Quakers did not approve of this group of Anglicans, loyal to the king and members of his church!
Even though it was nice to walk on God's earth, to be able to take their first bath in three months, and to eat some fresh vegetables, they were anxious to get out of the Quaker hot bed and on to their own colony. After 10 days, the piled back onto the Christian.
Their ship sailed back out into the Atlantic, then turned south and around Cape Cod and Nantucket, then turned due west into Long Island Sound. They watched carefully for the mouth of the Connecticut River. As soon as it was spotted, their very good Ship's Master maneuvered the Christian into the mouth of the river and proceeded north against the current up the river and finally they were at their new home. The unsettled land on the west side of the Connecticut River was exactly the site that Lord Saltenstall sent them to build his town of Windsor in the Connecticut colony.
After having spent three months of relative inactivity, their bodies had become soft. It was hard work unloading the cargo. They had to build folds for the sheep and pens for the livestock. They didn't want the fowl to fly away into the vast wilderness that stretched in every direction they could see, so they had to clip their wings before they were allowed to be loosened from the pens that had held them since they left Millbrooke. The horses and oxen weren't as much help as they should have been because they, like thier human counterparts, were wobbly on land. They had not had the advantage of the ten days adjustment in Boston. A few colonists from the Plymouth Colony had heard of the Saltonstall party and they rode in to lend a hand. The women pitched a tent and prepared a meal. After dinner everyone sat around and discussed their good fortune. What a beautiful new home they had found! There was no Duke of Bedford watching their every move from his manor on the hill. There was none of the filth and stench of London. Francis, ever the business man, bragged about the potential of this new land. The men explained how they would lay out their town. Rachel was excited because they had arrived when they did. June was not too late to plant her seeds. She could have fresh vegetables for the remainder of the summer and plenty of pumpkins, squash, potatoes and cabbage to store for winter. And meat practicall teemed here. They had all seen deer and squirrels that were just asking to be brought into her cooking pot!
They were so tired from the day's work and so comfortable in their New World, that falling asleep on pallets on the ground was no trouble at all. They were wakened at first light by the sound of horses. It sounded like an enemy coming into camp! They quickly pulled on clothes and stepped outside to see what was causing the disturbance.
The sight they saw consisted of a large entourage of Quaker men. For all their pacifism, they were armed with pitchforks, cudgels, axes - every king of weapon Quaker farmers could amass. Their leader announced, "We have come to set up a town here. You are trespassing on Massachusetts Bay Colony land.
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