I’ve been avoiding the excessive Texas heat to stay inside learning and writing about Matriarch Mary Brewster. Though we know little about her, we know a lot about where she went and what she encountered in England, Holland and Plimoth Plantation. Her biography encourages me when I feel overwhelmed by circumstances beyond my control. Most current circumstances are beyond my control.

This great – very great – grandmother of mine faced plenty of tough times beyond her control. Today I’m giving you a sample of her fictional biography. It is coming out (I hope) next March for Women’s History Month. The children in this excerpt are her actual children. She also gave birth to a stillborn child; history does not indicate if it was a male or female. The theories about how the children’s names were chosen are speculation, based on what we know about the Brewsters and the times in which they lived.

Matriarch Mary Brewster’s Children

Now that we are all safely settled together here in Plimoth, I thought I should write of our adventures so you will know where our family has come from. This planation by the sea is so unlike my growing up years in Nottinghamshire. I can hardly believe the life I have lived.

I shall start with how we choose each of your names. On a warm spring day your father and I sat on a stone wall talking. I knew I was nurturing a child within my womb. The thrill of feeling the baby kick and stretch made my heart skip. When you were born, we were thrilled to have a darling baby boy. Your father had already presumed our first child would be a boy, and as was often the case, he got what he wanted.

Jonathan Brewster

I asked your father what name he would propose, presuming he would say “William,” after himself, and his father before him. I should not have been surprised that he proposed an entirely different idea. I remember his words all these years later. He said, “I have thought much about that. A name is so important for setting the course of a child’s life. What do you think about Jonathan? Was another Jonathon not the brave son of King Saul? Was he not the most loyal friend to mighty King David?”

I loved it. That is how you are named Jonathon. We welcomed you with such grateful hearts in August 1593.

Some Patience Required

Patience, we chose your name for it required great patience of us as we waited for you. For six long years I thought perhaps Jonathan would be our only child. Month after agonizing month passed with new evidence the time for another baby had not yet come. But then, in the oddest way that life sometimes does unfold, the waiting was over. We were barely into the promise of a new century when we rejoiced to bring you into our little family. So, we chose for you the name that recorded what was required of us to wait for you – Patience.

The Fear of the Lord

Fear – though some assume we chose your name for the circumstances of our lives at the time of your birth – that was not the case. Our circumstances were certainly fraught with many concerns by 1605. Your father’s faith led him and many others to realize there was need for much mending in the fabric of the Church. They sought a truer path by separating from what they believed could not be purified.

The fear of the Lord compelled your father and others to defy those blinded by power. When it came time to provide a name for you, it was natural to select Fear. You became a living reminder that within our community, our lives revolved around the fear of the Lord.

Finding Love in a New Land

Dear Love, by the time the Lord blessed my womb with another child we lived far away from the harm that drove us out of England. In 1609 we settled into the most pleasant city of Leyden, where we were surrounded by friends as dear to us as our own family. All who had need of anything were soon enough aided by others in our fellowship. Though we knew hardships, we never lacked for care and companionship.

When we first arrived in Leyden we had to bury one precious tiny soul. The poor babe never drew a single breath. I thought perhaps three children should be my allotment. I’ve never forgotten about Baby William. His tiny corpse lies buried in Leyden. His spirit lives deep within my heart.

Glad and grateful was I for the three I had. Yet, what joy I had when I experienced the familiar signs that another baby was growing safely within my aging womb. We were so surrounded by love that we decided to give you a name that would capture the essence of our fellowship of Separatists.

A Season of Decisions

My dearest Wrestling, you shall always remind us that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be His name. As wonderful as our congregation had become, we had our challenges. Some grew restless and weary of the hardships living as guests in a place so different from home. There was constant talk about this strange new place across the great ocean. More than a few among our fellowship began to dream of seeing it for themselves.

I thought my childbearing years were over. Then much as the Lord surprised Sarah with a child well beyond her fertile years, I was delighted to learn we would soon add one more child to our family. I was 47 years old! I can well imagine how Sarah must have felt when at her advanced age she learned she would bear Abraham a child from her own womb. By the time you were born, the men seriously wrestled with the notion of leaving to establish a new settlement across the sea. It was only natural we should name you Wrestling.

Matriarch Mary Brewster

The biography I am preparing will be fictional, based on what we know about the life of Elder William Brewster and others at Plimoth Plantation, and what we know about the lot of women in the sixteenth and seventeenth century.  The woman in the photo with this post is Emma J. Brewster, the Great x 9 granddaughter of Mary Brewster and my great grandmother.

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The history of what happened following that famous voyage nearly four-hundred years ago, assigns only a minor part to Massasoit Ousamequin. However, without his leadership and intervention, more famous people such as William Bradford, Myles Standish, William Brewster, John Carver, and Edward Winslow might not have lived long enough to make the history books at all.

Well-known and Respected Leader

Ousamequin, meaning Yellow Feather, was born near what is modern Bristol, Rhode Island in 1581. His people were one of many smaller communities loosely connected as the Wampanoag community. The Pokanoket people occupied modern eastern Rhode Island, through modern Connecticut, Massachusetts and into modern Maine. He was a well-known and respected leader among other Native leaders. The title Massasoit roughly translates as the Sachem (Leader) of the Sachems, or Great Leader. When Massasoit Ousamequin learned more Europeans were exploring along the coast, he decided he needed to meet these hairy-faced strangers for himself. He’d encountered other Europeans. Ships had been coming from Europe for nearly a century before the Mayflower arrived.

The past decade had been horrendous for his people. War parties from the north and northwest had swept through in raids from 1607 to 1615. But by far Massasoit Ousamequin’s greatest enemy proved to be the invisible epidemic that left three of every four people dead. He and his warriors could fight human enemies, but they had no defense against this invisible, and previously unknown, great sickness.

Bring in an Interpreter

In May 1619 the Massasoit and his brother, Quadequina, met Englishman Captain Thomas Dermer. Dermer was accompanied by Tisquantum, from the Patuxet village where the English would soon get to work on their first buildings. When Dermer took Tisquantum back to Patuxet, they found the village deserted, as a result of plague. Tisquantum was spared the plague because an earlier English Captain Hunt had kidnapped him several years before the plague came through. Captain Hunt took Tisquantum and a couple dozen other Natives to Spain to be sold into slavery. A few Catholic friars bought his freedom.

Tisquantum somehow ended up in England, living with merchant Thomas Slaney. Slaney was engaged in Transatlantic trade with North American Natives. Once Tisquantum could speak fairly good English, Slaney sent him back to North America with Captain Dermer, to serve as an interpreter. He was with Dermer when Massasoit Ousamequin met their party. The Massasoit came with fifty warriors to make sure no one kidnapped any more of his people. Tisquantum assured the Great Leader this particular Englishman only wanted to trade.

Seize the Opportunity

Ousamequin quickly saw the advantages of having a Native around who could speak English should he meet any more English wandering around the area. A year and a half after his encounter with Dermer, Ousamequin heard that more English were anchored in Cape Cod Bay and exploring the area. His runners told him this time they came with women, children, and building supplies. For six months Natives watched the English settlers and sent reports to Massasoit Ousamequin. The English saw evidence of their presence, and even caught occasional glimpses of Natives. However, their efforts to make direct contact failed every time they tried.

Meet the New Neighbors

In March of 1621, when it was clear the English intended to establish their village on the site of the abandoned Patuxet village, Massasoit Ousamequin decided it was time to act. First Samoset walked into the English village and greeted them, in English, with “Welcome, Englishmen.” Samoset soon returned with Tisquantum; whose English was better than his.

Tisquantum announced that Massasoit Ousamequin wanted to meet with them. Edward Winslow went with the Natives the Great Leader had sent to escort an Englishman to meet him. Winslow took a few knives and a copper jewel chain as a gift. Speaking through Tisquantum as the interpreter, he assured Massasoit Ousamequin that his group wanted only peace and trading. Winslow told the Great Leader their English Great Leader, King James, saluted him with love and peace and considered him an ally. Winslow then stayed with Ousamequin’s brother, and the Massasoit went to the brook separating his people from the English.

Crossing Over to a New World

The Great leader came down the hill where he was greeted by Captain Myles Standish as the settlers’ military leader, and William Brewster as their spiritual leader. They went into one of the new houses and for the rest of the afternoon worked out the details of a treaty. The treaty basically assured that each group would do the other no harm and would come to the other’s aid should that be necessary.

For the remainder of his life, Massasoit Ousamequin and is people lived peacefully with the new settlers. Several of the Pilgrim leaders became friends with Ousamequin. Edward Winslow visited the Great Leader often and is even credited with bringing him back to health when he became desperately ill. Winslow described the Great Leader as “A very lusty man, in his best years, an able body, grave of countenance, and spare of speech.

A few years later Emmanuel Altham described him as “a proper a man as ever was seen in this country, and very courageous.”

After the treaty-making day, Massasoit invited some of the settlers to visit him. Standish and Isaac Allerton went and were greeted with gifts of ground nuts and tobacco. Standish and Allerton presented Massasoit with a kettle of peas.

Changes in Leadership

Both parties honored the treaty until Ousamequin died in 1661. By then thousands of additional English settlers had arrived, coming on ship after ship. All were eager to remake the area to resemble the England they’d left behind in their quest to establish religious colonies or lucrative trading posts. New England’s landscape filled with fledgling places like Boston and the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Ousamequin had two sons, Wamsutta, who the English renamed Alexander; and Metacomet, who the English renamed Philip. The Great Leader died, along with many of the original founders of Plymouth Plantation. Tensions escalated between the groups. The Natives wanted their homeland to remain as they’d known it for centuries. The newcomers wanted more and more land to accommodate their growing colonies. Things finally erupted in a bloody battle that, in terms of the percentage of the population killed, caused more casualties than the Civil War would nearly two hundred years later. The war is recorded in history as King Philip’s War. It started in June, 1675. When it ended in April 1678 the chances of the Natives and the English living together peacefully as neighbors were gone.

Today there are an estimated 35 million descendants of those first hundred starving, desperate settlers that Massasoit Ousamequin and his people befriended. There are an estimated 12,000 Pokanoket Native descendants today, with about a third of them still living in the Cape Cod area.

Last Monday was Columbus Day. There is a movement gaining traction to re-name it as Indigenous People Day. What do you think? Perhaps it’s time for us to teach the whole story of what happened at the start of what is now the United States of America.

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In 1619 the Separatists decided to take their chances on establishing a colony of their own in the New World. It took months of planning to prepare for such an adventure. Part of those plans included hiring young Standish as their military advisor and protector. Most of the Separatists were farmers in rural England before emigrating to Holland. In their new country they took whatever jobs they could find, mostly in the various fabric industries. They needed someone with military experience to protect them from pirates on the open sea and then Spanish, French, and Dutch settlers once they reached land again. And of course, they worried about trouble from the Natives. They offered the job to Captain Myles Standish and he accepted.

Standish’ Early Years

Standish was born sometime in the 1580’s, possibly 1584, though more recent research indicates it may have been a few years later. He was likely born in Lancashire, England where he was heir apparent for a great estate of lands, indicating he came from wealth.

He began his life-long military career as a young boy as a drummer. He was probably already stationed in the Netherlands at the time of the 1609 truce between Netherlands and Spain. That year the Separatists group from Scrooby, England relocated from Amsterdam to Leiden. In  1618 Standish married Rose, whose last name is unknown. He and his young bride sailed with the other hundred passengers on the Mayflower in 1620.

In Search of Home

The ship anchored off the coast of Provincetown November 11. Captain Standish signed the Mayflower Compact along with all the other men on board, then took charge of their first exploration of the Cape Cod terrain in search of a suitable place to establish their settlement. They brought a shallop from Europe, which they had taken apart to store on the Mayflower. Two days after anchoring, they dragged it ashore and began reassembling it.

Meanwhile Captain Standish led a group of sixteen men, dressed in protective corselets and armed with muskets and swords, on a second expedition to further explore the area. They spotted a half dozen Natives and a dog, but were never able to catch up with them, though they trailed them for ten miles.

They did find a stash of three dozen buried ears of corn and a source of fresh water. They drank the water and took the corn for seed and food. They came upon other mounds they suspected might contain buried corn. However, these turned out to be graves. Most likely the Natives observed them taking the corn and digging into Native graves.

Finding Home – and Challenges

Finding no suitable place to establish their settlement, Captain Standish and Mayflower Captain Christopher Jones led another exploration party of around thirty men. This time they sailed along the coast in the reassembled shallop and the ship’s long boat. They still didn’t find a suitable place to start building their new community. However, they did find a shallow grave containing bows and arrows. They also found a skull with blond hair still attached, a sailor’s canvas cassock and breeches, and a European knife.

On December 6 Captain Standish, two ship crewmen, and fifteen others set out again in search of the best place to settle. Standish led the group as they sailed around the coast line of the Cape. They observed several Natives cleaning a large fish on shore, but the low tide prevented them getting close. The camped on the shore that night. Early the next morning they were attacked by Nauset Natives who showered with them arrows and loud whoops and hollers. It is likely these Natives were retaliating after seeing them take their stash of corn and digging in their grave sites.

Standish and two others got off a couple of shots before the Natives receded out of sight. On this trip they finally found a good place to establish their new home: Plymouth. Plymouth was site of an abandoned Native village. All the former residents either died or left following the plague that swept through the area a couple of years earlier.

The Mayflower sailed the short distance across the Cape Cod bay and dropped anchor a mile off the coast from Plymouth. The passengers continued living on board as men began putting up their first building. The women stayed busy nursing the many people who became critically ill due to a combination of their poor diets, hard work, and severe cold winter weather. Miles wife Rose was among the many who died the first winter.

Standish’ Later Years

Two years later a young woman named Barbara arrived on the Anne. She and Standish married in 1624. Given that it was highly unusual for a woman to travel unaccompanied, it is likely she and Myles knew each other back in Leiden and that she came after learning his first wife had died. They raised seven children together.

Captain Standish led the settlers through several skirmishes with the Natives. In the spring of 1621, the English settlers and the Wampanoag leaders made a treaty that they would come to each other’s defense. As a result, a few Wampanoag warned the Plymouth settlers other Natives were after them. Standish led a group of men to kill them. Though it was assumed the killing was necessary to protect their lives, Pastor John Robinson admonished the act via a letter sent to Governor William Bradford when learned of the incident.

In the early 1640’s, as a result of the same 1621 treaty, it fell to Captain Standish to assist Wampanoag Sachem Woosemaquin. A Narragansett leader named Miantonomo, led an attack against Woosemaquin and stole many of his goods. Standish took a group of men to demand the Narragansett’s return everything they’d stolen – or else. Miantonomo returned every item taken, down to a wooden dish.

Captain Standish served the Plymouth Plantation as their military leader and in various civic and administrative roles for many years. He served as their treasurer in 1644; again 1646 – 1649; and again from 1651 – 1655. He even served as acting Governor briefly in 1653. Though he moved his family to Duxbury, he remained an active and significant member of the Plymouth community. He died October 3, 1656 and is buried in the Myles Standish Burial Ground in Duxbury, MA.

Information for this blog comes in part from The Mayflower and Her Passengers, by Caleb Johnson, Mayflower History web site, and Mayflower.americanancestors.org. You may enjoy reading Pilgrim and Native Peace Talks or Mayflower Governor John Carver.

Thank you for taking time to read about this early New England military leader. I hope you found it interesting and inspiring. Please take a minute to forward this to a friend. If you got this from a friend, you can sign up for your very own free subscription at HowWiseThen. I’m currently giving tips for recognizing and coping with dementia in memory and honor of my older brother who passed away recently after struggling with dementia issues for several years.

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When he was around twelve, he began walking eight miles each way to a church in Babworth. Richard Clyfton, the pastor, supported the “Brownist” movement, so named for a pastor who sought to reform  Christian communities to more resemble those of the first century. English clergy and their congregants who sympathized with this thinking, formed an illegal underground movement, dubbed the “Separatists,” for their growing desire and determination to separate completely from the Established Church of England.

Childlike Faith

Bradford’s family did not approve of his involvement in this movement, but he continued to meet with them anyway. Initially he went to Babworth with a friend. When his friend grew weary of the weekly trek and dropped out, Bradford continued on his own. He was around eighteen when he officially joined the Separatist congregation.

Richard Clyfton served as a surrogate father to Bradford. He and William Brewster first met at Clyfton’s Babworth congregation. Eventually Clyfton led an underground group of Separatists in Scrooby, where Brewster lived and served as the Bailiff at Scrooby Manor. The Manor was the property of the Church of England’s Archbishop Sandys, so it was inevitable the day would come when they could no longer meet there. In 1608 Bradford, Clyfton, Brewster and his family, and a total of around a hundred others, slipped out England illegally and sailed to Holland.

Bradford and Brewster became close friends, even though Brewster was more than twenty years older than Bradford. Bradford lived with the Brewsters when the community first moved to Holland. On December 10,1613 Bradford married Dorothy May in a civil service in Amsterdam. He was twenty-three; she was sixteen. Bradford learned the trade of silk weaving. That work, combined with an inheritance he received from his deceased father’s estate, provided support for the couple. Their son, John, was born while they lived in Leiden.

Adventure and Loss

In 1620 Bradford and Dorothy sailed on the Mayflower, leaving their young son behind in Holland with friends. The Mayflower sailed later than expected, nearly capsized mid-ocean, and arrived at the start of a brutal winter several hundred miles north of their destination. The ship dropped anchor in Provincetown Harbor November 11, 1620. It remained anchored there for weeks while teams of men sailed their small shallop along the coast or marched inland through snow and rain searching for the best place to establish their new settlement.

Bradford was on one of these expeditions when Dorothy died. The deck was slippery. They ship was anchored; but still moving back and forth and up and down. She fell overboard and her bulky, woolen winter clothing made it impossible for her to swim long enough to be rescued. She drowned December 7.

Re-Elected Governor 30 Times

Bradford later wrote volumes about the group’s adventures, but never mentioned Dorothy’s death. Perhaps it was too painful for him. Like most of the passengers, he fell quite ill from the rigors of the trip, lack of adequate nourishment, and extreme weather. He eventually recovered, but for a while it was not clear he would. Though he survived the first winter, Governor John Carver did not. When Carver died in the spring of 1621, the community elected Bradford as their Governor. He was thirty-years old. They re-elected him thirty times – all but five times – until 1656. He became gravely ill again the winter of 1656/57 and died May 9, 1657 at the age of 68.

In 1623 he remarried the widow Alice Carpenter Southworth, who joined the fledgling settlement in 1623. They knew each other from earlier years together in Holland. They celebrated their union with a feast attended by the Wampanoag Nation’s Sachem Massasoit and many other Natives. The Native guests brought turkeys and deer to the celebration. He and Alice had three children: William, Mercy, Joseph. They all lived to adulthood and married. Among their descendants are Noah Webster, Julia Child, and Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist.

Shaping the Future

As Governor, Bradford functioned as chief magistrate, high judge, and treasurer. He presided over the General Court deliberations, the Plantation’s legislation. Bradford corresponded with their investors back in England and communicated with their neighbors, including the Wampanoag.

In 1636 he helped draft Plymouth Plantation’s legal code. Under his influence, Plymouth never became a Bible commonwealth like their larger and more influential neighbor, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, established in 1630 by a group of Puritans. A Bible commonwealth is a theocratic system in which laws are based on the Bible and the right to vote is restricted to church members.

Of Plymouth Plantation

Plymouth Plantation remained fairly tolerant. For example, they did not restrict civic privileges to church members. Though most of the colonists were Separatists or Congregationalists, others lived among them without being pressured to conform to the majority’s religious convictions.

In 1630, Bradford began writing about what he and the others had experienced. He continued writing his recollections until 1651. Most of what we know about the Plymouth Colony comes from his writing. His work is available today in both Elizabethan and modern English as Of Plymouth Plantation. Bradford’s writings are required reading in some history courses and are readily available from numerous sources. His is the only account of Plymouth Plantation written by a Mayflower passenger.

Some of Bradford’s letters and other correspondence have survived to the present day. His 1592 edition of the Geneva Bible and a chair belonging to him are currently on display at Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth.

If you’d like to read Bradford’s account of Plymouth Plantation for yourself, you can order a copy if it here.

Thank you for taking time to read the remarkable William Bradford. I hope you found this inspiring. If so, please forward this to a friend. If you got this from a friend, you can have your very own free subscription by signing up at up at HowWiseThen. I’m currently giving tips on recognizing and coping with dementia in memory and honor of my older brother who passed away recently after struggling with dementia issues for several years.

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