Bibliographical Note
The standard sources of information on early Plymouth are quickly named: William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (1952, or other edition); the items in Alexander Young (ed.), Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers (1844), most of which were printed for “Everyman’s Library” under the same title, 1910; and G. F. Willison, The Pilgrim Reader (1953). Other books which proved useful in the preparation of this one have been cited in footnotes. In addition to these, several ought to receive notice.
On John Pory there are articles in Dictionary of National Biography (by Charlotte Fell-Smith) and Dictionary of American Biography (by A. C. Gordon, Jr.). See also Leo Africanus, The History and Description of Africa, translated by John Pory, ed. and intro. by Robert Brown (1896); W. F. Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company (1932) and The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (1949); S. M. Kingsbury (ed.), Records of the Virginia Company of London (1933, 1935), III, IV; Mass. Hist. Soc., Collections, fourth series, IX, 8-47; J. H. R. Yardley, Before the Mayflower (1931).
Emmanuel Altham’s name until now has been virtually missing from the Pilgrim literature. The late Dr. Otto Fisher, of Detroit, had a file containing such information as exists on Altham and his family, compiled by Victor C. Sanborn and Oliver R. Barrett with the aid of correspondents in England. Dr. Fisher kindly let the editor of this volume use the file.
The life of Isaack de Rasieres is covered and illuminated by J. F. Jameson, “Introduction” to “Letter of Isaack de Rasieres to Samuel Blommaert, 1628 (?),” Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 (“Original Narratives of Early American History”; 1909), 98-99; and “Letter from Isaack de Rasière to the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company, September 23, 1626,” in A. J. F. van Laer (translator and editor), Documents Relating to New Netherland, 1624-1626, in the Henry E. Huntington Library (1924), 171-251, 260-276. See also A. C. Flick (editor), History of the State of New York (1933), I, II.
About New England in general and the fishing business, see also C. F. Adams, Three Episodes in Massachusetts History (1894), I; C. K. Bolton, The Real Founders of New England (1929); I. S. Proper, Monhegan the Cradle of New England (1930); Frances Rose-Troup, John White the Patriarch of Dorchester (1930) and The Massachusetts Bay Company and its Predecessors (1930); C. K. Shipton, Roger Conant of Massachusetts (1945); and William Vaughan, The Golden Fleece (London, 1626), Part III.
Footnotes
1Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, Treasurer (chief executive) of the Virginia Company of London, 1620-24.
2Thomas Jones, Captain of the Discovery, the ship in the service of the Virginia Company on which Pory was traveling. (Not to be confused with Christopher Jones, master of the Mayflower in 1620.)
3Sandys was Treasurer of the Virginia Company, 1619-20, a notable Puritan and opponent of royal absolutism, influential in granting a patent to the Pilgrims and their backers permitting them to establish a “particular plantation” in Virginia, which then extended as far north as 41°, thus including the mouth of the Hudson River. John Ferrar was Deputy to the Treasurer in 1620. Sir George Yeardley, knighted and sent out as Governor to Virginia in 1619, was the candidate of Sandys’s party.
4Christopher Jones or John Clarke, a pilot experienced in the northern route to Virginia (on which a ship sighted land at or near Cape Cod and proceeded down the coast to Chesapeake Bay).
5Provincetown, Mass.
6Gloucester or Annisquam, Mass.
7“Anna” in the manuscript.
8Englishmen tended to translate Indian customs into feudal law. Plymouth and the territory around it had been the home of a tribal group of which Squanto was the only survivor. Neighboring Indians traditionally had no rights there. The Pilgrims interpreted the claims of Massasoit, the Wampanoag chief, as feudal overlordship over southeastern Massachusetts, so the vacant parts of it which they took up logically had to be a feudal domain of some kind.
9Bermudas.
10Romans 11:16.
11William Bradford.
12Alewives.
13Town Brook.
14The whole passage reads: “Naturam expelles furca licet, tamen usque recurret, et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix.” “You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she will ever hurry back, and, ere you know it, will burst through your foolish contempt in triumph.” Horace, “Epistles, Book I, Epistle x,” Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica with English translation by H. Rushton Fairclough (Loeb Classical Library, 1932), 316, 317.
15Odoric of Pordenone (c. 1286-1331, formally beatified in the eighteenth century) was a Franciscan friar and missionary who traveled widely in the Far East. The story of his travels became popular in the fourteenth century, but fell from favor as it gained a reputation for embroidery. The phenomenon to which Pory refers occurred at a place described as “Moumoran” in the printed version with which Pory was probably familiar, that in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations (1599), II, 57.
16A stream running from the Smelt Pond to Plymouth Bay, entering it at the mouth of the Jones River, about two miles northwest of Plymouth.
17“Skeines” in the manuscript.
18High tide in tidal streams.
19“Muskles and slammes” in the manuscript.
20Virginia.
21Delicacies.
22Chief town on Terceira, one of the Azore Islands, where Pory was detained a prisoner on his way to England.
23Raspberries.
24The “musky” flavor common to the muscat grape varieties. “Muskadell” in the manuscript.
25Pory was wrong; it is north of 41°.
26“Conahassit,” an old form, in the manuscript.
27Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoag or Pocanocket Indians, who lived in the territory around present-day Bristol, R. I., which was then called Pocanocket.
28Pamet is present-day Truro, Nauset is the area from Eastham to the Denises, both on Cape Cod. Capawack is the island, Martha’s Vineyard.
29Capt. Thomas Hunt took two dozen Indians captive in 1614, some at Plymouth, some on Cape Cod, and sold several as slaves at Málaga. While Hunt’s deeds were not excusable, they were merely the worst of several such incidents. Capt. John Smith pointed out that Hunt could not be responsible for the special hostility of the Capawack Indians toward the English. Rather, their ill will may be traced to the kidnaping of Epenow and Coneconam by Capt. Harlow, in 1614 or earlier; the series of degrading experiences which Epenow underwent at the hands of English captors; his influence on his countrymen after his return to Capawack; and the somewhat mysterious friction between him and Capt. Dermer in 1620, in which the latter was mortally wounded. The Capawack Indians probably feared reprisal for this and related incidents. Capt. John Smith, Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1632), 204-205; Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes (1625), IV, 1778, 1828, 1841, 1849; James P. Baxter, Sir Ferdinando Gorges and His Province of Maine (Prince Society, 1890), I, 104n-106n; W. F. Gookin, Capawack alias Martha’s Vineyard (1947), 8-17.
30Canonicus, the Narragansett sachem.
31Netherlanders who traded around the mouth of the Hudson River before the actual founding of New Amsterdam in 1626.
32Whenever the king might come.
33“Combotant” in the manuscript.
34Squanto, the Pilgrims’ friend and sole survivor of the Patuxet natives, had been one of the Indians gathered by Sir Ferdinando to get information about New England. Gorges sent him back to America in 1618 or 1619 as guide to Capt. Dermer.
35“Monhaccke” in the manuscript. In the early seventeenth century, Iroquois Indians ranged as far east as New Hampshire.
36Hip-length coats of some protective strength.
37Eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay, where Pory had held land.
38Charts.
39Pacific Ocean. The French knew about the Great Lakes.
40Indians, quite powerful in Pory’s day, living in the lower part of the river valley of the same name.
41The letter was written at the fishing grounds off northern New England, probably Monhegan.
42In 1628 John Gibbs was master of the Marmaduke in the service of the New Plymouth Adventurers.
43Virginia Company of London.
44William Vengham. He was living and selling cured fish at Monhegan (probably by arrangement with the island’s owners) in 1624, and perhaps when Pory was in the region.
45“Tlemmish” in the manuscript.
46In 1622, the Council for New England made Sir Samuel Argall its “Admiral” with the duty of excluding unlicensed operators from the Council’s territory, North America from 40° to 48°. American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings, Apr. 1867, 66-83.
47Possibly an illusion, possibly Block Island. It appears as Cabeleaus Eyleut (?) on the “Carte Figurative” (1616), reproduced in T. A. Janvier, The Dutch Founding of New York (1903), between pages 20 and 21.
48Pory was mixed up. Boston Bay was Graaf Hendrycks Bay; Casco Bay (or sometimes the water between Cape Ann and Portsmouth, N. H.), Graaf Willem’s; Port Royal is now Annapolis Basin, Nova Scotia. The Dutch names in the text have been left in the half-translated state in which Pory wrote them. In modern Dutch, “States Hooke” would be Staten Hoek.
49Aquamachukes on the “Figurative Map” (1616), Aquauachuques on map by Vander Donck (1656), reproduced in J. Winsor (ed.), Narrative and Critical History of America (1884), IV, 433, 438.
50Weston’s rowdy crew at Wessagussett.
51Damariscove Island, off Boothbay, Me.
52Plymouth, England.
53Huckleberries.
54“Hugh” in the manuscript.
55This river is not identifiable. It may be an error in copying “Pentagoet,” the French name for the Penobscot.
56Flat, open.
57Gloucester or Annisquam.
58“Anna” in the manuscript.
59The Bona Nova was a ship often employed in the Virginia trade. Nothing further is known about Swabber and the dead man.
60Indians.
61Goods for barter.
62Indians who performed the massacre of 1622 in Virginia.
63Edward Winslow, who left Plymouth for England on the Anne, Sept. 10, 1623.
64The other ship was the Anne, of 140 tons, William Peirce, master. The Company of Adventurers for New Plymouth (sometimes called by variants of this name) was the organization of merchants who helped finance the Plymouth settlement. They “adventured” their money; the Pilgrims were “planters,” although in modern estimation they were more adventurous.
65The only passenger known to have a name similar to Jennings was John Jenny, who lived to be an important man in the Plymouth Colony. This woman may have been one in his series of wives.
66Indian name for Plymouth.
67Double his money.
68Monhegan and Damerill’s Cove (Damariscove) are islands off the coast of Maine, each with a well-protected small harbor. Pemaquid is the peninsula east of Boothbay, Me.; Sagadahoc is the extension of the Kennebec River below its junction with the Androscoggin. Anquam is Gloucester or Annisquam on Cape Ann, Mass. The Isles of Shoals are off New Hampshire.
69A fishing stage, built over rock ledges near some convenient harbor, was a scaffold or “wharf built of spruce trees, boards, and beach stones where the fish could be cleaned,” salted and cured in the sun. The fishermen raced from Europe to get the best places, so a ship already in New England waters could hope to beat them all. S. E. Morison, The Story of the “Old Colony” of New Plymouth (1956), 122. The new year began on March 25 in the Old Style dating system.
70“Alcerme” in the manuscript. Both Altham and Capt. John Smith believed that alkermes berries existed in North America. Perhaps they thought cranberries were the same things. Actually, alkermes berries are insects (species coccus ilicis) which live in the bark of the kerm oak, a tree found around the Mediterranean Sea. The pregnant females have a bright red color, and juice squeezed from them was used as a dye and a cordial, especially in times when they were still thought to be a vegetable.
71A master salter went over on the Anne, but he proved a better talker than practitioner of his business. The Pilgrims gave him a lot of help, but he made no salt. In spite of the logic of the idea, saltmaking never became important in the Plymouth Colony.
72Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.
73“Bowle alminact” in the manuscript. The term had many variants, but referred to an astringent earth found in Armenia, used as a styptic.
74Capt. Thomas Dermer made two voyages of exploration along the Atlantic coast between Monhegan and Virginia in 1619 and 1620, employed by Sir Ferdinando Gorges and others interested in developing New England. He learned much and tried to establish peace with the Indians, but in his dealings with those near Narragansett Bay (where he liberated some French mariners) and Martha’s Vineyard, he may have stirred up fear of the English. He was mortally wounded in a fight with Epenow, an Indian who had once been a captive of Sir Ferdinando and shown off as a curiosity in England. W. F. Gookin, Capawack alias Martha’s Vineyard, 14-17.
75This is not impossible with Indian corn, but exceedingly unlikely.
76Hobomok was a Wampanoag, from west of Plymouth; Squanto, the last of the Indians formerly living around Patuxet, had died in 1622.
77William Bradford married his second wife, Alice, daughter of Alexander Carpenter, widow of Edward Southworth, Aug. 14, 1623.
78Saw. “Say” is an obsolete equivalent.
79Thomas Weston, the London merchant who originally promoted the Company of Adventurers for New Plymouth in 1620. He wanted profit from the business and, when his patience wore thin with a complete settlement, sent out the private all-male colony which Altham here refers to. Without family considerations, the men were expected to stick to money-making activities like trade with the Indians and grow food for themselves in their spare time. The colony was planted at Wessagusset in present Weymouth, Mass., after sixty or so “lusty men” had lived at the charge of the Pilgrims during the summer of 1622. Weston was devoted to America as well as profit and shady deals, though, and went to Virginia and Maryland as a planter for several years before dying in England, deep in debt. C. M. Andrews, Colonial Period of American History (1934), 1, 261-265, 330-331.
80Capt. Standish and his company went to the Wessagusset settlement to warn the men of the conspiracy. After days of cautious waiting and veiled exchange of threats with some of the leading Massachusetts Indians, Standish got four of them into a room with about an equal number of his men and assassinated three, including Pecksuot and Wituwamat, whose head he took to Plymouth. In other ambuscades, with some aid by Weston’s men, the Pilgrim expeditionary force killed several others. The Wessagusset settlers, who had been reduced to great want and dependence on the Indians, abandoned their place, most going to the Maine coast to work for the fishermen and get passage back to England. The story is told most fully in Edward Winslow, “Winslow’s Relation,” in Young (ed.), Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers (“Everyman’s Library,” 1936), 313-332, or some other edition of Winslow’s Good News from New England.
81Flag.
82Adventurers and Planters were both members of the Company under the terms of the agreement made in 1620. Settlers were accounted as having put in the value of a £10 share.
83Ralph Hawtry, husband of Altham’s sister Mary.
84Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes (London, 1625), 4 vol. The books had been announced as early as 1621.
85The Leventhorpes were neighbors and close friends of the Althams. Sir Edward Altham married one of Sir John’s daughters. Sir John Fowle had married another daughter. “My brother Thomas” was the son and heir of Sir John Leventhorpe. Mary Leventhorpe was another daughter.
86Margaret Wolley at least had him in her will, proved in 1635, eight months before Altham’s death.
87Mr. Denn was rector in Latton, a man of Puritanical leanings. Stracy was a tenant of the Althams; Mr. Bland, a minister and family friend; Watson, a London gunsmith; Wells, a tenant of the Althams.
88James Sherley, goldsmith and treasurer of the Company of Adventurers.
89On this voyage, Altham went as far as the Narragansett Indians; that is, at least to western Rhode Island of today.
90Before experience showed the falsity of the idea, promoters of colonies in America thought of the settlements as glorified trading posts. This plan did work in Asia and logically ought to have in America if, as men like Altham or other Adventurers thought, profit was to be gained by trade and farming be only a spare-time adjunct.
91Not all went back. Nor was the damage so great; three or four houses burned down. The common store house and its contents were saved by means of good organization and wet cloths, although the fire started in an adjoining shed. Bradford said the blaze was started by some sailors from a ship in the service of the Council for New England. The men, who wanted a cheerful atmosphere for a carousal, built a big fire which may have gone out of control. Evidence also turned up to show that the storehouse was deliberately lit. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 136-137.
Furthermore, the town was more than restored quite soon. Captain John Smith printed a description of Plymouth in 1624 which, in addition to information about the government and economy of the settlement, reported that “At New Plymouth is about 180 persons, some cattle and goats, but many swine and poultry; thirty-two dwelling houses, whereof seven were burnt the last winter, and the value of five hundred pounds in other goods. The town is impaled about half a mile in compass. In the town upon a high mount they have a fort well built with wood, loam and stone, where is planted their ordnance; also a fair watchtower, partly framed, for the sentinel.” This passage, in original spelling, may be found in “Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles,” edition of 1624, reprinted in Edward Arber and A. G. Bradley (eds.), Travels and Works of Captain John Smith (1910), II, 782.
92Plymouth. The ship was anchored outside Plymouth harbor when the storm blew up and almost drove her on the flats called Brown’s Islands.
93Englishmen of the seventeenth century thought life barely possible without beer.
94Altham’s nephews, sons of Sir Edward.
95See notes 21, 23, 25 to preceding letter.
96Old family servants. See preceding letter.
97On the Charity.
98The troublemaker probably was one of the men drowned in the wreck of the Little James (see below). The sailors of the pinnace, however, had been discontented since early in the voyage. They believed they had signed on for privateering, to get their pay in shares of prize ships. After a near mutiny at Plymouth, Gov. Bradford helped arrange regular wages for them, and kept them on the ship for the exploration of southern New England, but they still insisted that they would not go on a fishing voyage. “A Letter of William Bradford and Isaac Allerton, 1623,” American Historical Review, VIII (1902-03), 296.
99William Peirce was to be shipmaster of the Charity on her return voyage. Edward Winslow had returned from England on that ship.
100In 1624 all goods in the general storehouse at Plymouth belonged to the Company.
101Probably they took supplies from the trading post near the mouth of the Piscataqua River (near modern Portsmouth, N. H.) kept by David Thompson. In his will, Altham left 40s. to a mistress Thomson in New England, presumably the man’s widow, as repayment of a debt she did not know of.
102At Damariscove Island, off Maine. The harbor usually gave ships good protection in rough weather.
103“A sentence written lengthways in the margin, and not completed.” J. F. Jameson, in Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, XLIV, 184n.
104’Ere.
105From Plymouth.
106Probably master of a fishing vessel from Barnstaple, Devonshire, England. “Bastable,” however, is to be found on Cape Ann on Capt. John Smith’s map of New England (1614 and later versions), and there were more or less permanent residents on Cape Ann by 1624.
107Bradford, who wrote over twenty years after the event, remembered the salvage episode as though Altham had not been involved: “... some of the fishing masters said it was a pity so fine a vessel should be lost and sent them [i.e., the Plymouth settlers] word that if they would be at the cost, they would both direct them how to weigh her and let them have their carpenters to mend her. They thanked them and sent men about it, and beaver to defray the charge, without which all had been in vain. So they got coopers to trim I know not how many tun of cask, and being made tight and fastened to her at low water, they buoyed her up; and then with many hands hauled her on shore in a convenient place where she might be wrought upon. And then hired sundry carpenters to work upon her, and other to saw plank, and at last fitted her and got her home.” Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 163.
108One of the passengers on the Mayflower, “Richard Gardiner became a seaman and died in England or at sea.” Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 447.
109La Rochelle. This meant that the ship was owned and manned by French Protestants. La Rochelle was a Huguenot stronghold under the Edict of Nantes and became the center of resistance to royal attempts to revise the privileges of Protestants. English public opinion backed the Huguenots and tended to regard the people of La Rochelle as partners in an international religious struggle. When it came to national rights over trade, however, French Protestants were to be treated as foreigners, though with more consideration than Catholics.
110Codfish “caught close to shore, landed within a couple of days, and lightly salted and cured largely in the sun.” Morison, Story of the “Old Colony” of New Plymouth, 122.
111Letter of marque.
112To seek profit in fishing.
113Dawson, surgeon on the Little James, used language such that Altham “and others durst not go to sea with [him];... such that we were constrained to dismiss him,” and replace him with a man from the Anne. “A Letter of William Bradford and Isaac Allerton, 1623,” Am. Hist. Rev., VIII, 300.
114Peirce and the Charity had gone to the fishing areas about the time of the wreck.
115Oil extracted from fat-fleshed fish by heat or pressure. Fish other than cod had little market in Europe. In later centuries, the term, “train-oil,” was given to whale oil.
116Of Gibraltar.
117Besides Robert Cushman, several of these men were probably Adventurers for New Plymouth—Thomas Brewer, William Collier, John Thornell, John Pocock.
118English opinion, including Gov. Bradford’s at this time, agreed that profit from New England would come by fishing. Many made money in this way, but the New Plymouth Company lost heavily by it.
119Mr. Pemberton, apparently a New Plymouth Adventurer and merchant, sent his ship under the sponsorship of the Dorchester Adventurers, the company founded under the inspiration of Rev. John White of Dorchester, which became the ancestor of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Pemberton probably was a close relative of another Adventurer, John Pemberton, a minister and enemy of the Leyden congregation Separatist element among the Plymouth settlers. John Pemberton received letters from John Lyford against the religious practices and government at Plymouth, and was a leader in the factional strife in the Company of Adventurers which led to its big split in 1625 after a debate over Lyford.
120At Gloucester on Cape Ann, Mass.
121Hopewell, William Peirce, master.
122Lyford and Oldham, whose letters of complaint Bradford seized in 1624, continued their machinations against the Pilgrim church and government. Lyford had repented spectacularly after his first exposure, but went back to work, still believing he had more friends in the colony than dared speak up. He called down a list of complaints from the Pemberton party among the Adventurers, but only as they withdrew from the Company. Lyford and Oldham were exiled by the colonial government, Lyford leaving after a second exposure and Oldham after a period of near insanity, on the day when Altham arrived the second time.
123The fools merely wanted to draw more capital to the sinking enterprise; the knaves had ulterior motives, probably inspired by Lyford’s suggestion that every man sent to the settlement at Plymouth be given rights as an Adventurer (by juggling the accounts) in order to outvote the Bradford regime.
124Argall, formerly associated with the Virginia Company, had become a leading member of the Council for New England. Other Council members took grants of land for themselves; Argall may have planned to, but he died on an English expedition to attack Cadiz in 1626.
125Because of the debts contracted in their name by their agents and the London merchants, the Plymouth settlers had to remain in the Company as reorganized by a minority of the Adventurers headed by James Sherley. Between July and October, 1626, Isaac Allerton, as the colony’s agent, arranged a deal to buy the interests of the remaining Adventurers (including Altham) on an installment plan. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 182-186; Bradford, “Letter Book,” Mass. Hist. Soc., Collections, 1st ser., III, 48.
126Wary, circumspect.
127Hawtry’s son-in-law, a lawyer.
128Plymouth, England.
129Blommaert was a merchant in Amsterdam and a director of the West India Company, 1622-29, 1636-42.
130The official name of the Hudson River for several years (named after Maurice, Prince of Orange). “Mauritse” in the original.
131Sandy Hook. [J. F. J.]
132Sandy Hook Bay. [J. F. J.]
133The Narrows, between Staten Island and Brooklyn.
134Long Island.
135Montauk Point.
136Wampum.
137The Siwanoys lived north of Long Island Sound, from the Bronx to Norwalk, Conn.; the Shinnecocks inhabited the east end of Long Island. “Souwenos,” in the original, is a name applied promiscuously by early Dutch cartographers.
138No doubt in the missing portion; the Pequots are apparently meant. [J. F. J.] The Pequots lived to the west of Narragansett Bay, in the eastern part of Connecticut.
139Probably the Kill van Kull and the Passaic or Hackensack River was thought to connect with the Wallkill River and Rondout Creek.
140Delaware River.
141In Holland. [J. F. J.]
142A morgen is about two acres. [J. F. J.]
143East River. The West India Company’s six farms lay east of the present Bowery, and extended from a fresh-water swamp occupying the site of the present Roosevelt and James Streets northward to Eighteenth or Twentieth Street. [J. F. J.]
144Governor’s Island.
145I.e., both Fort Amsterdam and the little island itself. Blommaert’s Vly was a low, damp depression running northeast and southwest about on the line of the present Broad Street. [J. F. J.]
146This name applies more properly to one of the Indian dialects spoken in the vicinity of Manhattan. J. G. Wilson (ed.), The Memorial History of the City of New York (1892), I, 49.
147The fish. [J. F. J.]
148Blackstone River, Upper Narragansett Bay, and Sakonnet River.
149The short cut across the base of Cape Cod, now taken by ships through the Cape Cod Canal, was used by the Plymouth settlers and the Indians, who went up Scusset creek on the north side and down the Manomet River on the southwest. The site of the trading post built on the Manomet, near Buzzard’s Bay, has been excavated and the house restored. It is in the town of Bourne and can be reached as follows: “after crossing the Bourne Bridge over the Canal [heading toward Cape Cod], turn sharp right; next, bear left at a fork and follow Shore Road to signs indicating the Post; turn right under the railroad bridge and follow a dirt road through woods to the Post.” Morison, Story of the “Old Colony” of New Plymouth, 131n.
150Narragansett Bay.
151Cape Cod, especially Monomoy Point.
152In New Netherland and western New England, especially the Connecticut valley.
153De Rasieres, however, protested to Gov. Bradford that he had not walked “so far this three or four years, wherefore I fear my feet will fail me; so I am constrained to entreat you to afford me the easiest means” to get from the Aptucxet trading post to Plymouth. So the Governor sent a boat to pick him up at Scusset. Bradford, “Letter Book,” Mass. Hist. Soc., Collections, 1st ser., III, 54.
154On an east-and-west line from the outer tip of Cape Cod.
155Plymouth Beach. [J. F. J.]
156The Gurnet and Saquish Head.
157He reverses the actual bearings; and the street first mentioned was longer, 1,150 feet. [J. F. J.]
158A double share. [J. F. J.]
159In 1626, Isaac Allerton on behalf of the Plymouth settlers, agreed to buy the interests of the remaining London Adventurers for £1800, which De Rasieres translated into guilders by a simple formula. In July 1627, though De Rasieres may not have been well informed of the event, a group of leading men in the Colony, led by Bradford, became “Undertakers” for six years to pay this debt (and about £600 in other debts owed by the Colony) by means of a monopoly on the external trade of the settlement, including all dealings with the Indians. According to the agreement, each colonist who was a Freeman of the Company (i.e., had agreed to the purchase in 1626 and acquired rights to a share in the division of lands) made an annual payment to the Undertakers of three bushels of corn or six pounds of tobacco as they might specify. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 184-188, 194-196.
Note
Sydney V. James was born in Chicago in 1929 and graduated from Harvard College in 1950. Specializing in the American colonial period as a student of Professor Samuel Eliot Morison, he worked intensively on the history of the Plymouth Colony. He was awarded the degrees of A.M. (1951) and Ph.D. (1958) in history at Harvard University. Mr. James’ thesis, written under the supervision of Oscar Handlin, has been published by the Harvard University Press as A People Among Peoples: Quaker Benevolence in Eighteenth-Century America. He has authored articles for the Bulletin of Friends Historical Association and the William and Mary Quarterly.
Mr. James is presently an Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon, having taught previously at Kent State University and Brown University. In 1950, he married Jean Wooster Middleton. They have two children: Samuel, 10, and Catherine, 7.
THREE VISITORS TO EARLY PLYMOUTH was designed and printed by The Stinehour Press of Lunenburg, Vermont for Plimoth Plantation, Plymouth, Massachusetts. The type used is Monotype Bulmer and the paper is Warren’s Olde Style.