Seventeenth-century women had few choices or rights. Most went from the homes of their fathers to the homes of their husbands. Pity the woman who had neither looking after her. I have somewhere in my family genealogy files the will of my great-great-grandfather. He left a double portion to his first-born son and split the rest among his other sons, leaving nothing to my great-grandmother and her sister. He assumed, as did most men in that era that his daughters would have husbands to provide for them. It was also assumed a first-born son would look after younger siblings should they need assistance.

Husbands of the Mayflower

My great-great-grandfather wrote that will a couple hundred years after the Mayflower voyage, but things hadn’t changed all that much in the way society was structured. Men decided. Women, for the most part, complied. The $5 theological term for this is ‘Complementarianism.’ It means, according to some interpretations of scripture, God ordains men to be overseers of women and children, with rigid roles assigned to each.

I’ve heard presentations from Biblical scholars with a working knowledge of both the culture and languages of the first-century church. The English word “submit” in scripture is translated from Latin, which was originally translated from Greek. It has a double meaning. One meaning relates to military rank. Subordinates are expected to follow orders from superiors with no questions asked. But another meaning, and I highly suspect the understanding among first-century Christians, has more to do with team work. It’s more like a couple dancing or rowing a canoe. Those activities require mutual cooperation, working together to make it around the dance floor or across the lake.

Our Mayflower people no doubt had a more hierarchical understanding of family life. Should a woman have any property or assets of her own, perhaps an inheritance from her father or income from her labors, those became her husband’s property upon marriage.

To Go or Not to Go

When it came time to decide who was going on the Mayflower voyage, it was up to the husbands to decide what was best for their families. Some brought their wives with them. Some brought their children or left some behind in the care of family or friends. Others left their wives behind, fearing the little woman would be too frail to endure the rigors of the adventure.

All the wives aboard the Mayflower had husbands who essentially said, “Pack. You’re going.” Three of those women were well into pregnancies.

The Survivors

Elizabeth Hopkins should get two medals of honor. She was one of the four alive a year after the Mayflower arrived and she was one of the three women to deliver a baby on the ship. She traveled with Stephen Hopkins, his children from a previous marriage (Constance and Giles), and her own daughter, Damaris. Stephen’s first wife, Mary, died while Stephen was on an expedition with others to go to the new Jamestown colony. He and others got shipwrecked, built a new ship from the wreckage, and eventually made it to Jamestown. While there, he learned his wife Mary had died. Elizabeth was born circa 1585 in England and married Stephen on 19 February 1617/18 (depending on which calendar system you use). As the Mayflower made its way across the broad expanse of the Atlantic she went into labor and delivered a son they named Oceanus. The child survived his birth but did not live more than a couple of years beyond that.

Susanna White has bragging rights for surviving, delivering a baby while on board, and being the first bride in the new Plimoth Plantation settlement. She married William White circa 1614 in Amsterdam, where the future Pilgrims lived in exile from 1608 to 1620. She traveled with William and their son, Resolved. Her son Peregrine was born while the ship was anchored off the shore of modern Provincetown. He lived to adulthood, married, and has numerous descendants. William died the first winter, as did Elizabeth Winslow. Edward Winslow and Susanna married on 12 May 1621. They had four children who lived and another who died young. Susanna lived to at least 1654.

Eleanor Billington, one of the four still alive a year later and the only one of the four who didn’t start the journey with the Separatists coming from Leiden in Holland. She sailed with her husband John and sons John and Francis. The Billington family has the dubious reputation of being the troublemakers in the community. Francis, probably a teenager on the voyage, nearly caused a fire when he shot off his father’s gun and sent sparks into a nearby gun barrel. Once off the ship, he wandered off, climbed a tree, and spotted a body of water. The pond is still known as Billington’s Sea four centuries later. Her husband was executed for murder. Later, she was sentenced to sit in the stock and suffer a whipping for slander against John Doane. After John died, Eleanor married Gregory Armstrong circa 1638. Her death date is not known, but she was still alive as of 1642.

Mary Brewster was the fourth woman to survive and likely the oldest or certainly among the oldest women on the ship. Genealogists have not yet confirmed her maiden name. She married William in Scrooby, England, circa 1591. She and William had five children and at least one recorded stillborn baby. She sailed with Elder William Brewster, who was designated the community’s spiritual leader once they left Holland. Their pastor, John Robinson, stayed behind with the rest of the Separatist community in Leiden. They brought their two younger sons, Love and Wrestling, with them. They left behind Jonathan, by then a young adult, and their two daughters Patience and Fear. Mary was among the few who didn’t become gravely ill during the first brutal winter. She stayed busy nursing others back to health and comforting those whose parents, children, or spouses died during those first perilous months.

Mary assumed responsibility for two of William’s orphaned young cousins when they lived in Leiden. Those children did not sail with them. On the ship, she assumed responsibility for two of the four abandoned More children foisted on the passengers at the last minute. Once Mr. More realized the children were not his biological children but rather the result of his wife’s long-standing affair with a neighbor, he paid to have them shipped off on the Mayflower.

Mary lived to be reunited with Jonathan and her daughters and see them all married. She also met a couple of her grandchildren before she died in April 1627 at an estimated age of 58 long years.

To Be Continued

I’ll have more about the other fourteen Mayflower wives next week. Meanwhile, Mary Brewster’s Love Life: Matriarch of the Mayflower delves into their stories in much more detail. It is a historical account of what Mary and the other wives may have experienced. It is a fictional diary. If she left an actual diary behind, I’ve never read anything about it. The book is a combination of her fictional diary, and her account of her amazing life told to one of her daughters once they were reunited two years after Mary left them behind with friends in Leiden.

Most of my books are available wherever you get your books, including libraries. I share a portion of profits with various non-profits.

Mary Brewster’s Love Life: Paperback, hardback and Ebook. Bookshop.org
Mayflower Chronicles: Paper, audio, Ebook. Bookshop.org
Asunder: Paper. HowWiseThen.com
A Ready Hope: Paper, Ebook. Rowman & Littlefield
40 Day Journey with Kathleen Norris: Paper. Augsburg Fortress
God in the Raging Waters. Paper. Amazon.com 
Married & Mobile. Paper. HowWiseThen.com

The post Mayflower Wives appeared first on How Wise Then.

In 1972 Browne established an academic Department of Popular Culture at the university. He was also the founding editor of the Journal of Popular Culture, the Journal of American Culture, and the Popular Press (a university-based press) which has published hundreds of books about popular culture. The library’s collection is the most comprehensive archive of its kind in the United States.

Not Your Typical Library

The Browne Popular Culture collection includes research materials on popular fiction, popular entertainment, and the graphic arts. Though the collection does not circulate, the staff is available and eager to help visitors explore and find items of interest to them. Many of the items in the collection are included in the library catalog where you can find such categories as Rock & Roll, counterculture, peace and protest, and British popular culture from 1950 through 1975.

Also available at the Browne Library are vintage paperbacks, film and television collections, and a literature index. It has thousands of works related to all sorts of popular entertainment, with materials documenting mass media in the form of television, motion pictures, and radio.

From Comics to Romance

Love comics? Here you’ll find one of the largest comic collections in the country. If you lean more toward romance you’ll be pleased to know this library is the official repository for the Romance Writers of America’s papers. The collection includes graphic novels, tens of thousands of book covers, trading cards, and posters. The counter-culture section has 250 radical, anti-establishment titles from 1950 until 1989. As if that wasn’t enough to keep a visitor browsing for hours, information about cookery and cookbooks is also part of the collection, along with advertising images for movies, cosmetics, mail-order catalogs, and magazine ads.

Voice of Democracy

Browne believed, “Popular culture is the voice of democracy, democracy speaking and acting, the seedbed in which democracy grows. It is the everyday world around us, the mass media, entertainment, and diversions. It is our heroes, icons, rituals, everyday actions, psychology, and religion—our total life picture. It is the way of living we inherit, practice, and modify as we please, and how we do it. It is the dreams we dream while asleep.”

He admitted Popular Culture is a poorly understood academic specialty in which “Scarcely any two persons agree on what Popular Culture really is. Some scholars believe pop culture is what people do when they are not working. Some use terms such as ‘High-Brow’ and ‘Low-Brow,’ omitting terms such as ‘Folk-Cult’ or ‘Folk-Brow.’”

Embracing Society

For Browne, “the working definition of ‘PC’ is those elements of life which are not primarily intellectual. “PC” embraces all levels of our society except Elite culture.  The interests of the Center include the study of most of the aspects of life that impinge daily on all of us. The voice and the music of the people, the movements, sometimes glacial, of its past, present, and future. PC provides a kind of audio-video profile of a nation.”

Detroit native Bill Randle (March 14, 1923 – July 9, 2004) saw the collection’s potential and made one of the earliest and largest contributions in 1968. An academic at heart with 3 master’s degrees, a law degree, and a doctorate in American studies, Randle worked as a pioneering disc jockey. He DJ’d at several radio stations, including WERE in Cleveland, Ohio. Time Magazine named him the top DJ in America in 1955. He introduced Elvis Presley to a national television audience on January 28, 1956, the first DJ to do so.

Overcoming Resistance

Before retiring in 1992, Browne published Against Academia: The History of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association and the Popular Culture Movement. He maintained that despite the enormity of success he’d experienced establishing the field of study of popular culture, he’d faced academic opponents who railed against it. However, after twenty years the Popular movement was firmly established. His work earned him the opportunity to serve as a consultant to the Smithsonian Institute on Popular Culture.

Today, over half a century later, the Browne Popular Culture Library he formed has over 250,000 items and continues to grow.  Some of that expansion is due to the efforts of Nancy Down, librarian at the Browne Collection until her recent retirement at the end of June 2023. She spent 27 of her 34 years with Bowling Green overseeing the Browne collection, first as cataloguer, then acting director. The Popular Culture Library gave her the opportunity to put her Ph. D. in English and her library degree from the University of Indiana to good use.

Librarian Nancy Down

For 27 of her 34 years with Bowling Green Librarian Nancy Down tended to this unique library, first as cataloguer, then acting director, and finally as director. She retired at the end of June 2023,  She gave her Ph.D. in English and library degree from the University of Indiana a good workout tracking the eclectic items in the collection.

“I became interested in growing the collection and seeing how far it would go. It is really different than any other library with items ranging from mysteries to Star Trek. I was especially fascinated with how cataloging fiction expanded from just the author’s name and book title to a great variety of genre classifications. Now there are dozens of genres for fiction and some cross categories such as romance and science fiction.

“It’s been fascinating to be part of a library system that has been chronicling the changing scene in America around diversity issues. One of the more unusual items in the collection is a book that translated a Shakespeare play into Klingon.  We also have a large collection of three-dimensional items and movie scripts. It’s been exciting to see how big the popular culture phenomenon has become. Other libraries also collect popular culture items but tend to specialize in one area such as science fiction or cartoons. This library is more of a generalist collection.”

Thank you for taking the time to read about this unique library. You might also enjoy what I wrote about my  Library tour or the importance of community libraries. Share this with a friend or sign up for your own free subscription at HowWiseThen. I will not sell your information. I look forward to introducing you to more libraries this fall, along with more details about the life of Pilgrim Mary Brewster.

Mary Brewster’s Love Life and Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures: available wherever books are sold. Bookshop.org/Mayflower; Mary Brewster
Amazon.com/Mary Brewster’s Love Life
Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles
BarnesandNoble.com/w/mayflower-chronicles
BarnesandNoble/MaryBrewster
Autographed copies are available on my website.

The post Popular Culture Library appeared first on How Wise Then.

St. Wilfrid, Scrooby, England

Photo by Luke Anderson

A note on the St. Wilfrid website reads: “The church has a strong connection with the Pilgrim Fathers (and Mothers!) being the church where William Brewster was expelled from before his journey to the New World with his fellow Separatists.”

Photo from my 2017 Research Trip

This is perhaps where William and Mary Brewster were married and their first three children were baptized. In their day, it was called St. James and is a very short walk away from Scrooby Manor, where they lived before fleeing to Holland in 1608.

Numerous gravestones in the cemetery outside bear the name “Brewster.” The ones who sailed on the Mayflower are buried in Massachusetts. Elder William Brewster has a plaque in his honor that reads:

Photo by Luke Anderson

“St. Wilrid’s church, Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, England, where William  Brewster was baptized (c. 1566). He became a Separatist and was the Elder and Spiritual Leader of the Pilgrims in Plymouth, New England, until his death in 1643-44. The General Society of Mayflower Descendants (U.S.A., 1897) Waldo Morgan Allen – Governor General on their first Pilgrimage – 152, by Planes – to the Netherlands and England September 22 – October 6, 1955 – 335 years after the sailing of the Mayflower”

Scrooby Manor

Photo from my 2017 Research Trip

When William Brewster first began exploring the Separatist movement in England, he and Mary lived at Scrooby Manor. He was the bailiff and postmaster, as his father had been before him. The first three Brewster children were born while they lived here. When the pastor of a nearby Church of England was removed from his pulpit for challenging the edicts of King James, the Brewsters hosted illegal worship services at the Manor. That was what ultimately forced them to flee to the Netherlands for security in 1608. They started their pilgrimage to Plymouth, MA, from Leiden in 1620.

Leave, or Else

William Brewster, along with several other Separatist leaders from the Scrooby area, spent a few nights in jail in the Boston, England, Guildhouse. A group of about a hundred tried to leave England in the fall of 1607. The shipmaster they hired betrayed them for the cash awards given to those who turned in non-conformists.

Boston England Guildhouse

The women and children were free to walk all the way back across northern England without their husbands to wait and wonder what would happen to them. They’d already given away or sold most of their things and were dependent on the sympathy and charity of friends and neighbors. The men were released after a short stint in jail. They returned to plan their second escape effort. That one succeeded. They arrived in Amsterdam over the summer of 1608, leaving in smaller groups to avoid undue attention from others seeking awards for turning them in.

A Time to Rest

Today, St. Pieterskerk in Leiden is no longer a church, but rather a combination tribute to its part in the Pilgrim story and a venue for concerts and lectures. Murals, plaques, and displays in and around the church tell the story of how this church helped newly arrived English refugees settle into the community. Though the Separatists did not worship here, their highly esteemed and beloved leader, Pastor John Robinson, is buried here. An alley connects the back of the church to the home where the Brewster family lived.

Thank you for taking a few moments of your time to read along today. If you like what you’ve read, please share this with a friend. Or, if you’d like to join this growing online community, head over to HowWiseThen to sign up for your FREE subscription. I won’t sell your information. You decide if you prefer a monthly newsletter or weekly articles about whatever is swirling around in my mind that week. I’m often as surprised as you are by what I decide to write about.

Mary Brewster’s Love Life and Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures: available wherever books are sold. Bookshop.org/Mayflower; Mary Brewster
Amazon.com/Mary Brewster’s Love Life
Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles
BarnesandNoble.com/w/mayflower-chronicles
BarnesandNoble/MaryBrewster Autographed copies available at my website.

The post The Brewster Trail appeared first on How Wise Then.

A 17th-century wife had essentially only two choices. She could go along with her husband’s plans willingly or begrudgingly. Mary Brewster chose love over resentment, though her husband’s commitment to take this enormous risk put her and their children in danger on several occasions. It meant leaving a relatively secure and comfortable life in tranquil rural northern England to join the ranks of the desperate refugees, fleeing for safety across the North Sea.

Counting the Cost

Thinking the worst of her troubles were behind her, she settled into a new daily routine along the canals of the beautiful Leiden, just south of Amsterdam. All went well for a while. Her family grew by two additional sons. She was surrounded by women who made daily chores pleasant as they did them together. William occupied himself with reading and teaching English to international students at the new Leiden University. Their faith community grew and thrived under the capable leadership of Pastor John Robinson.

Then William started a publishing business. He decided to veer away from his original intent to translate various religious-themed books into English. Instead, he ventured into something much more bold and ultimately life-threatening. He not only published and illegally smuggled into England books critical of King James. Mary became essentially a single mother whose husband stayed out of sight and out of her reach as he spent a year dodging the king’s men, determined to find him and return him to England to face the consequences.

Excerpt from Mary Brewster’s Love Live

William managed to avoid capture. The Separatists found financial backing for their trip. After two failed efforts to leave, the Mayflower at last set sail in September 1620. After months away from land, they finally heard two wonderful words. Enjoy this excerpt from Mary’s story about that moment:

Then I heard a sailor from high up on the mast call out two of the most glorious words I ever heard. “Land Ho! Land on the horizon! Land Ho!” 

“Land!” A spontaneous cry of delight erupted everywhere, all over the ship. A chorus of cheers and laughter sounded out as we repeated land again and again. It was as sweet a sound as I ever heard. The younger folks even grabbed one another with hooked elbows and began dancing! It was a sight I shall never forget. I had not sufficiently appreciated what a blessing it is to have solid ground beneath me. I was oddly surprised that the sailors seemed as thrilled to sight land as we landlubbers were. I suppose the near sinking of the ship from the broken beam in that massive storm had them all wanting a respite from the ocean. 

Many of us were already on the upper deck, preparing for what bit of dignity we could offer the Button boy. His corpse was already wrapped in a sheet and at rest on the board, balanced on the edge of the rail. Master Jones insisted it was his place to say something over the body before releasing it to the sea. 

In all the commotion and excitement, someone, whether on purpose or not, pushed the recently departed Button lad over the rail to his final resting place. When I heard about it, I was stunned. Such a sad life for the little boy, to die so far away from family and so close to our destination. He should have had a proper burial. But what was done was done. William quietly offered a prayer of commendation for the dead once Master Jones turned to tend to other matters. He did not want to incur any more of the crusty man’s wrath. 

We continued slowly sailing toward the coast. 

I strained to see land for myself, but all I saw was darkness gradually pushing the last of the daylight over the horizon, out of sight. Waves slapped against the ship, and the sound made my eyelids grow heavy. By the time the first stars peeked through the clouds, my longing for sleep overcame my eagerness to see land. 

That night, we all went to sleep dreaming of waking up to the sight of a coastline. 

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Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures: available wherever books are sold.
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Autographed copies are available from my website.

The companion story told from the perspective of one of the four women to survive the first winter will be available soon in print and eBook.

The post Mary Brewster’s Love Life appeared first on How Wise Then.

”The Mayflower set sail for the New World from England in September 1620 with nineteen women among the 102 passengers. The passengers consisted of two groups. The smaller group were Separatists, English subjects who’d been living in Holland as religious refugees since 1608. The others were English residents added to the passenger list by the Merchant Adventurers. This group financed the trip and insisted that the additional passengers be included to increase the chances that the new settlement would survive and make them a good return on their investment.

An Increase in the Passenger List

All nineteen women survived the trans-Atlantic journey, including three women who were pregnant. The first woman to deliver her baby was Elizabeth Hopkins. She and her husband Stephen named their new son Oceanus since he was born somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. They traveled with three other children, two born to Stephen’s late wife, Mary, and one previously born to Elizabeth. Once they established themselves in Plimoth Plantation, they had five more children.

Mary Allerton delivered her stillborn baby while living on the anchored ship off the coast of Provincetown. She died a few days later, leaving behind three young children and her husband, Isaac.

Susanna White also delivered her son while still living on the anchored ship. She and her husband, William, named their baby Peregrine. They also had a five-year-old son, Resolved. William was among the many who died the first winter, leaving her a widow in a strange new place with a newborn and a young child.

Loss and Resolve

Her marriage to Edward Winslow on May 12, 1621, was the first marriage in the Plimoth Colony. Edward’s young wife, Elizabeth, had died in March, another victim of deprivations and the harsh first winter. An extended period of time to grieve was a luxury these desperate people could ill afford. Both the Whites and the Winslows were among the Separatists emigrating from Leiden. The couple had four children: Edward, John, Josiah, and Elizabeth, in addition to an unnamed child who died young.

Katherine Carver, another of the Separatists, was one of five women still alive when winter finally gave way to spring. She and her husband, John, married while living among other Separatists in Leiden. John Carver served as the group’s first governor until his death in April, from what was presumed to be heat stroke. Katherine died a few weeks later, perhaps from a broken heart at the prospect of going on without her husband and without any children needing her attention or offering her comfort.

Four Surviving Pilgrim Women

After Katherine died, only Susanna White, Elizabeth Hopkins, Mary Brewster, and Eleanor Billington still lived. Mary was married to Elder William Brewster, the designated spiritual leader of the emigrated Leiden community. They sailed with their young sons, Love and Wrestling. Their older children, Jonathan, Patience, and Fear, arrived at the settlement on later ships. Mary, being one of the older passengers on the Mayflower, often provided a home for orphaned children and young adults on their own. She was also one of a handful of pilgrims well enough to tend to the sick, nursing future Governor William Bradford back to health.

Eleanor Billington and her husband, John Billington, traveled with their young sons, John and Francis. They were part of the English residents foisted on the Leiden community by the Merchant Adventurers. The family caused much trouble in the colony from time to time. John was executed for murder in 1630. Six years later, Eleanor was sentenced to sit in the stocks. However, during that first winter, she pitched in to care for the many sick among both the Strangers and Separatists.

Read More in a New Historical Fiction Biography

More of the stories of those sturdy surviving Pilgrim Women are told through the historical fiction biography Mary Brewster’s Love Life: The Matriarch of the Mayflower. It will soon be available in print and eBooks wherever books are sold.

Parts of this article are based on information found in Mayflower History, Pilgrim Hall, and Women History Blog.

Thank you for joining our growing online community. If you appreciated this post, share it with one or more of your friends. Or, sign up for your own FREE subscription.

Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures: available wherever books are sold.
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Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles-Tale-Two-Cultures/
BarnesandNoble.com/w/mayflower-chronicles-kathryn-haueisen/
Autographed copies are available from my website.

The companion story told from the perspective of one of the four women to survive the first winter will be available soon in print and eBook.

The post Those Sturdy Surviving Pilgrim Women appeared first on How Wise Then.

As I do this, I’m also thinking about the Pilgrims who were doing this back in November and December of 1620. However, they were searching for a home from the confines of the Mayflower, not the comfort of a guest room. After 66 grueling days cramped together in a small, stinky ship, they finally anchored off the coast of modern Provincetown. Their search for a home was far from finished.

Land, land Everywhere

Several challenges confronted them. Many were sick from the absence of adequate, decent food and the presence of cold, wet, weather and inadequate shelter. Then there was shipmaster Christopher Jones and his surly crew. They wanted these pesky passengers off the Mayflower asap so they could return to merry old England, their home. Searching for the best location to build their new settlement was limited to what they could explore on foot until they reassembled their shallop. They’d taken it apart to fit in the storage space available on the Mayflower. It took two weeks to reassemble.

Captain Myles Standish led the first team of sixteen men on a chilly march along the northern “arm” of Cape Cod. Wearing armor and carrying weapons, they explored along the coastline but found no place they deemed suitable to establish the new settlement. They did find a grave, a European-style cast iron kettle, a stash of corn, and other evidence that the area was or had been occupied. They also spotted a few Natives in the distance, who quickly disappeared. After a ten-mile hike in search of them, they gave up seeing them again.

If at First You Don’t Succeed

Exhausted, cold, and hungry, they returned to the ship to regroup. Next, twenty-four of the men set out in their reassembled shallop. This time Master Jones, and nine of his crew accompanied them with the ship’s longboat. They planned to spend two days exploring along the interior coastline.  Still, they found no place deemed suitable. However, they did experience a shower of arrows shot by Natives they could hear, but not see. For a few terrifying minutes, Natives shot arrows at them fast and furious to send a clear “go away” message. They went as far as back to the ship to organize another exploration voyage.

Meanwhile, back on the ship, Sea Master Jones’ impatience increased as the supplies of eatable food decreased. He wrote in his ship log: “Sunday, 26 November: At anchor, Cape Cod harbor. Third Sunday here. Master notified planters that they must find a permanent location and that he would keep sufficient supplies for the ship’s company and their return.”

The voyage had taken much longer than anticipated. The weather hampered finding a place to establish a settlement. The ship was their only protection from the harsh winter setting in. While Master Jones and the others were exploring, those left back on the ship were clearing six inches of snow off the deck.

Third Times the Charm

A third exploration party headed out in the shallop, determined to find a place to build a settlement. Led again by Captain Standish, the team included ten passengers and six Mayflower crew. Among them was the ship’s second mate Robert Coppin who’d been to the area on a previous voyage, and the future Governor William Bradford. 

Before they left, they went to shore to bury young Jasper More, one of four children foisted on the passengers because his mother’s husband refused to accept responsibility for the children he was certain were not actually his biological offspring.

On their third search-for-home trip, they found a lovely place across Cape Cod Bay. It was teeming with fish and other seafood, had a clear freshwater brook, and a level area between the beach and a hill. The good news of their discovery was overshadowed by the news that awaited them. Dorothy Bradford fell overboard and drowned while William Bradford was away exploring.

Making Themselves at Home

Later they learned the reason such an ideal place was available was that a couple of years earlier, a plague had wiped out everyone who lived there. The few who survived the pandemic left, leaving it deserted. Today we know this place as Plymouth. They called it Plimoth Plantation. The Natives knew it as Patuxet.

Finally, at the end of December, having started their journey from Southampton, England, in July, they were ready to build their new homes. I’m looking for my new home via the internet, studying photos and videos of available places. These brave souls established their new homes by first felling the lumber to make the planks to build the Common House and a few cottages.

Every family took in someone who traveled alone or was now orphaned or widowed due to the high death count between anchoring and the first spring. Half of them didn’t live through that first frigid winter. However, the surviving ones, through hard work, grit, and determination, carved out a community for themselves and a permanent place in history.

Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures tells more of the harrowing story of how a small group of Separatists braved the unknown to migrate twice to unfamiliar places in search of a better life. It also tells the largely overlooked story of how two cultures were forced to decide how to deal with each other.  There’s much more to the story than you learned in school. I’d love to speak to your book club or organization about this fascinating history. Contact me at HowWiseThen to make arrangements. Sign up to receive free weekly blogs and/or a monthly newsletter. Please consider sharing this article with a friend.

Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures covers the Pilgrim’s escape from England and their interactions with the Pokanoket people. Available wherever books are sold in paperback, eBook, and audio.
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Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles-Tale-Two-Cultures/
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Autographed copies are available from my website or BlueWillowBookShop.com/book/

The post Searching for Home appeared first on How Wise Then.

At that time, Leiden was a significant industrial community of around 15,000 and growing. Within 30 years after the Pilgrims left for North America, in 1650, Leiden was a city of 55,000. Leiden, also spelled Leyden, is about 10 miles northeast of the Hague, 30 miles southwest of Amsterdam, and 200 miles across the North Sea from London, England. The city is laced with nearly 17 miles of canals, second in number only to Amsterdam. Eighty-eight bridges cross the canals, many of them suitable only for pedestrians.

Immigrant Refugees

Leiden, in the 1600s, was a major industrial center for the textile industry. Many of the English Separatist refugees worked in textile mills or at home weaving for one of the mills. Children sorted and combed wool and did other textile-related menial jobs.

The Separatist immigrants came to Leiden a few decades after England had befriended the area against Spanish efforts to assimilate the region. England aided the Dutch, soundly defeating the Spanish Armada in the naval showdown of 1588. A decade earlier, the Spaniards laid siege to Leiden. For a terrifying period of several months (October 31, 1573 through March 21, 1574) the Dutch made heroic efforts to keep the Spaniards at bay. When the siege finally ended, William, the Prince of Orange, allegedly offered the people a choice. He would either exempt them from taxes for several years or establish a university. They chose the university, and the University of Leiden was established in 1574.

University of Leiden

The University provided William Brewster with a means of income. He taught English to university students through their mutual familiarity with Latin. Separatist Pastor John Robinson took classes there, making friends among the university faculty. Brewster was familiar with Leiden from his earlier trip there in 1584 as a staff assistant to William Davison, the former Secretary of State and Ambassador for Queen Elizabeth I.

The Dutch, grateful for England’s support, hosted Davison and Brewster at a variety of special events.  England befriended the Dutch in a typical European monarch game of chess, with each monarch trying to gain and maintain power and stability by absorbing neighboring nations. England wanted to secure the loyalty of the Dutch to keep Spain away from England.

Thanks to the University, Leiden became one of Europe’s most prominent scientific centers, a position is has held for over four centuries. Students from all over the world come to study there. One of them,  Dr. Jeremy Bangs, has devoted his life to researching the influence of Leiden on the American Pilgrims.  He founded the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum in a small 14th-century house near the city center. There he collects and displays manuscripts and other memorabilia germane to the Pilgrim story.

Life in Leiden

As is the case for many modern immigrants, the plight of the Scrooby area Separatist immigrants was desperate. They arrived with few resources, most unable to communicate in Dutch, and were unfamiliar with city life. They banned together, doubling up families, taking whatever menial work they could find, and banning together to worship and encourage one another.

Eventually, they were able to purchase a home with sufficient land to build a series of small homes for their members. The community was so congenial that when Brewster had another child, they named their son Love. Though life was safer in Leiden than in England, it was also hard. Children were picking up ideas and practices from their Dutch peers that bothered their parents.

William Brewster’s decision to start publishing and distributing documents critical of King James stirred the anger of the king. Though the Dutch were tolerant, they were in no position to go against the wishes of the King of England. So when King James sent his men to find and arrest Brewster, William went into hiding, and their Separatist community more seriously considered setting up their own colony in the New World.

Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Leiden made extensive plans to participate in the 2020 400th anniversary, plans which were scuttled because of the pandemic. However, forward-thinking planners put together a virtual four-hour Leiden tour with stops at places significant to the Pilgrim story.

This month is the second anniversary of the release of my historical novel about the story behind the Mayflower voyage. I’d be happy to speak to your book club or organization about this fascinating history. Contact me at HowWiseThen to make arrangements. You can sign up to receive weekly blogs and/or a monthly newsletter there as well. If you’ve enjoyed this article, share it with a friend.

Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures covers the Pilgrim’s escape from England and their interactions with the Pokanoket people. Available wherever books are sold in paperback, eBook, and audio.
Bookshop.org (Supporting local Indie Bookshops)
Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles-Tale-Two-Cultures/
BarnesandNoble.com/w/mayflower-chronicles-kathryn-haueisen/
Autographed copies are available from my website or BlueWillowBookShop.com/book/

The post Leiden appeared first on How Wise Then.

According to a Legacies of History article, the village’s population when the Pilgrims were leaving England was between 150 to 200 people. Today it has a population of less than 500. It is located on the River Ryton, near the confluence with the River Idle, in north Nottinghamshire. Sherwood Forest of Robin Hood fame is not far away. The nearest town with guest accommodations is Doncaster, about twelve miles further north along the Great North Road (today England A1).

Scrooby: Small but Significant

St. James (St. Wilfrid) – Scrooby, England

St. James (later renamed St. Wilfrid) was a congregation of the Established Church of England, formed by King Henry VIII, when the Pope denied him a divorce from his first wife. The church was in the diocese of the Archbishop of York, located a mere 50 miles or so to the north of Scrooby.

Today Scrooby Manor is a private home.

Scrooby Manor was a huge estate during Pilgrim days and also the property of the Archbishop of York. The Old North Road connected London to the south with Edinburgh to the north. Official church and royal messengers frequently traveled the route with important news and documents. Scrooby is about halfway between the two cities, making the Manor a popular rest stop.

Pilgrim Elder William Brewster and his family lived in and managed Scrooby Manor. William spent part of his childhood there when his father became the bailiff and manager of the Manor. Pilgrim Brewster assumed those duties when he returned to Scrooby from his studies at Cambridge University and his father died.

Brewster and All Saints in Babworth

Young Brewster was enthralled with the Separatist ideas discussed at Cambridge University during his brief studies there. Some of his classmates became significant leaders in the English non-conformist movement at the turn of the 17th century. Two groups of non-conformists evolved. Puritans fought to further purify the church from Roman Catholic theology and traditions. Separatists wanted to leave the Established Church to practice their faith more in line with the earliest Christian communities.

Non-conformist clergy served several Scrooby area congregations. Brewster preferred to worship at All Saints, where Separatist sympathizer Pastor Richard Clyfton preached sermons that appealed to him. Starting around 1600, Brewster walked across the lane in Scrooby from the Manor to St. James and kept walking to hear Pastor Clyfton preach seven miles away in Babworth.

All Saints is still a worshipping congregation today. In the early 1900s, their Rector, Frank Wilberforce, encouraged them to claim and celebrate the congregation’s role in the Pilgrim story. Frank Wilberforce’s great grandfather was William Wilberforce, who led the English movement to abolish slavery.

Conform or Leave

Life for non-conformists was relatively calm until Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603, and King James became monarch of England in addition to being King of Scotland. The new position included serving as head of the Established Church. He and his bishops took a dim view of both the Puritans and Separatists. The king had absolutely no interest in further reforming the Established Church. In 1604 over a thousand clergy appealed to his majesty to permit a few changes. He refused and instead ordered that any clergy who defied him should be removed from their pulpits. Richard Clyfton was one of those pastors.

All Saints is where Brewster met William Bradford, the future Governor of the Plymouth settlement. At the time, Bradford was a young man, only a few years older than William’s son Jonathan. Tensions mounted year by year as the 16th century wound down. Messengers regularly brought news to Scrooby Manor about non-conformists arrested, tortured, and executed. Some of them were friends William knew from his days at Cambridge. Separatist pastors began to lead their people to emigrate to the more tolerant Lowlands (The Netherlands).

The Separatists at Scrooby

Archbishop of York – Edwin Sandy’s

Elder William Brewster befriended Pastors Richard Clyfton and John Robinson. When Pastor Clyfton lost his position in Babworth for defying the king’s edicts, William invited the All Saints congregation to worship at the Manor. Soon a new, underground congregation formed with Clyfton as pastor, Robinson as teacher, and Brewster as the ruling Elder.

St. James, a few yards away from the Manor, remained part of the Established Church. The underground congregation met in the property owned by the Archbishop of York, one of the most influential men in England. They held secret services only a few yards from a congregation in his diocese. What could possibly go wrong with that plan? It turns out, quite a bit.

Their decision to form an underground congregation at the Manor was as dangerous as it was daring. Scrooby Manor occasionally provided rest to monarchs, bishops, and other high-ranking authorities who would readily arrest, and likely execute, anyone caught at the Scrooby underground worship services.

Leaving England

By 1607 their situation was life-threatening. Reports of heretics caught and executed became more frequent. It was time to prepare to leave England. Brewster resigned his post as bailiff at the manor, making him and his family homeless. About fifty  Separatists, led by Pastors Clyfton and Robinson, and Elder Brewster, made the arrangements to leave. Betrayed in their first attempt to leave, they returned to Scrooby, where they were dependent on the charity of sympathetic friends and neighbors.  They successfully left their beloved homeland in 1608 to live in exile in the Lowlands.

Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures covers the Pilgrim’s escape from England and their interactions with the Pokanoket people. Available wherever books are sold in paperback, eBook, and audio.
Bookshop.org (Supporting local Indie Bookshops)
Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles-Tale-Two-Cultures/
BarnesandNoble.com/w/mayflower-chronicles-kathryn-haueisen/
Autographed copies are available from my website or BlueWillowBookShop.com/book/

The post Leaving England appeared first on How Wise Then.

Eventually, Mary had at least five more children. One was either stillborn or died in early childhood. Her next two babies were daughters, born when the family still lived in England. Her two younger sons were born when the family lived in exile in Leiden. They lived there from 1609 until William, Mary, and the two younger sons joined the others on the perilous Mayflower voyage as English colonists.

My Launch into Motherhood

Daughters Carol & Karen

On October 7 – a few decades ago – I joined the ranks of motherhood when daughter Carol joined the family. A couple of years later, Karen joined us. Today both daughters are grown, each with their own three children. Though I grew up knowing we are related to William Brewster, I knew very little about Mary until I started digging into the story behind the story of the Mayflower to write Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures. As the mother of two daughters, I was stunned at what I discovered about our ancestor.

My mother was a reference librarian. She spent many hours in her early retirement years documenting our family’s connection to William and Mary Brewster. The Brewster surname in our branch of the family ends in Duncan Falls, Ohio. Several generations of Brewsters lived and died in this community a few miles southeast of Columbus. The last one to bear the Brewster last name was my great-grandmother, Emma J. Brewster, who married a Ross. Their son, George Ross, is my mother’s father and our link to the Mayflower story.

Tracing Family History

In March 2017, my brother and I, accompanied by one of my granddaughters, made a pilgrimage to England to fill out the Brewster story a bit more. The pilgrimage took us to Scrooby, England, where the Brewster family played a role in the oversight of Scrooby Manor, an important communication link between London, England, and Edinburgh, Scotland. 

I already knew that William and Mary Brewster, and the other Mayflower passengers, owed their lives to the Native Americans who first greeted the new settlers. In my research, I learned it went well for about fifty years, thanks primarily to the treaty between the two cultures initiated by Massasoit Ousa Mequin.  

Sacrificial Love

What I did not know prior to doing the research was that Mother Mary Brewster left both her daughters behind with friends in Leiden when the Mayflower sailed. My heart ached when I learned that. I cannot imagine leaving Carol and Karen behind, not knowing if I’d ever see them again. We currently live in Texas, Nebraska, and Ohio and only see one another occasionally. However, between e-mails, texts, phone calls, and zoom capabilities, we easily stay current on one another’s daily lives.

It was not so for Mother Mary Brewster. She did not know if she would ever see her daughters again. Letters were the only means of communication, and the delivery time for a letter back then was measured in months, if not years. Her daughters, Patience and Fear, did eventually come to Plimoth Plantation, so that chapter of Mary’s life had a happy ending.

From Generation to Generation

This new-to-me family history is what prompted me to write a follow-up story to Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures. This one, Mary Brewster’s Love Life: Matriarch of the Mayflower, is also historical fiction. Since history recorded so little about Mary Brewster, I’ve had to imagine how I might have reacted if faced with the choices and circumstances she encountered. The book has a tentative publication date of March 2023.

As I reflect on what I was doing that October 7 when our family welcomed Carol into the world, I am thankful for the efforts my mother made to document these connections. Historians, librarians, and genealogists use their skills to enrich our lives by helping us find our roots. Happy Birthday, Carol. Thanks, Mom, for all those hours you spent in libraries and for being the keeper of our family’s history.

Thanks for taking the time to learn a little bit about Mary Brewster. If you aren’t already receiving my monthly HowWiseThen newsletter, sign up, so you’ll be informed about the progress of Mary’s fictional biography, which is due out next spring. Register at HowWiseThen.

Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures covers the Pilgrim’s escape from England and their interactions with the Pokanoket people. Available wherever books are sold in paperback, eBook, and audio.
Bookshop.org (Supporting local Indie Bookshops)
Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles-Tale-Two-Cultures/
BarnesandNoble.com/w/mayflower-chronicles-kathryn-haueisen/
Autographed copies are available from my website or BlueWillowBookShop.com/book/

The post Mother Mary Brewster appeared first on How Wise Then.

The photo of the Deliverance is the property of Caleb Johnson and used with his permission. More details about Stephen Hopkins is available at Mayflower History and in Johnson’s book about the man, Here Shall I Die Ashore. You may also enjoy reading Pilgrim and Native Peace Talks.

Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures covers the Pilgrim’s escape from England and much more of the interaction between them and the Pokanoket people. Available wherever books are sold in paperback, eBook, and audio.
Bookshop.org (Supporting local Indie Bookshops)
Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles-Tale-Two-Cultures/
BarnesandNoble.com/w/mayflower-chronicles-kathryn-haueisen/
Autographed copies available from BlueWillowBookShop.com/book/

The post Stephen and Elizabeth Hopkins – Mayflower Survivors appeared first on How Wise Then.