Pilgrims Going to Church, oil on canvas, 1867, by George Henry Boughton This is a common misconception, mixing the two quite different approaches to the Protestant religion. The Pilgrims were actually called Separatists. Separatists believed that the only way to live according to Biblical precepts was to leave the Church of England to worship in their own way. Separatists rejected idolatry, trappings, and all sacraments (except for baptism), along with all holidays, including Christmas. Thus confession, penance, confirmation, ordination, marriage, and last rites did not exist in their religion. Separatists viewed them as inventions of the Roman Church, had no scriptural basis, and were therefore superstitions. They had no building designated as a church. They could meet anywhere and the place would simply be called a meeting house. Separatists attempted to keep their religion apart from their government, as written in the Mayflower Compact. You could be a citizen in the Plimoth Colony but not be a Separatist (you did have to pay taxes!) This is why people who practiced other forms of religion, such as Quakers, were generally tolerated. Puritans wanted to reform the Church of England from within and kept many of the practices, including the sacraments. Idolatry – paintings, statues, etc. – could be seen in the churches they built. The Puritans’ religion and their government (of the Massachusetts Bay Colony) were intertwined. Other forms of religion were NOT tolerated, and their practitioners were persecuted. Both Puritans and Separatists shared a form of worship and self-organization called the congregational way: no prayer book other than the Bible, no formal creeds or belief statements, and the head of the church was Jesus Christ. And for both Puritans and Separatists, their members (only men) made decisions regarding their religion, such as the selection of their leaders, democratically. Thus in The Last Pilgrim, there are no formal marriage ceremonies, just gatherings to celebrate after these unions were noted in the colony’s records. There is some interesting tidbits about baptism: one of the most heated discussions at that time was whether baptism should be done by immersing the baby in water or just sprinkling water on the head! I couldn’t get into this distinction in-depth in the book, so this was part of my background rsearch. 0 0
The building of the first homes proceeded at a glacial pace – a pun because of the frequent storms with sleet, rain, or snow. Early on, a map was made of where each house would be built. Each ‘family’ was responsible for the construction of their home. Think of the women, trapped below decks on the Mayflower. They lived in cold and dank since there could’ve been no fires, and they were confined to caring for an increasing number of sick passengers in this dark and fetid environment. Most of the children stayed aboard as well, except for older boys who could help the men with chopping down trees, dressing the trunks, and helping to drag them to the building site. By the time spring rolled around, half of the passengers and half the crew had succumbed to disease, most commonly scurvy and pneumonia. The Mayflower could not return to England until 1621 because of the decimation of its crew and the bad weather. Food supplies brought on the Mayflower kept dwindling, although fish, clams, greens, venison, rabbit, and other meat would have been available. The women, as caregivers, were particularly hard-hit: only five adult women survived to the coming of spring. Thus the working backbone of the potential colony, the women who cared for the sick, prepared food, washed clothes and so much else were few in numbers and all of the older girls would have been conscripted to work with them, side by side. When the first house was built, the men who had become ill were moved there, and other men cared for them, apparently with kindness and love. But then it burned down and had to be rebuilt. How discouraged the colonists must have been, but they had a deep and abiding faith in their God which somehow saw them through. Early on, the plan for the settlement was made. Here is the map of where each family’s house would be, from Bradford. Byu spring, the term ‘family’ was loosely defined. With only five wives left, a family might consist of a group of unattached men, although some were assigned to houses along with the orphaned children. It was during this time that the colonists made first contact with the Natives of the area, when Samoset, an Abenaki sagamore, came into settlement and greeted them in English, saying “welcome”. Through Samoset, the colonists met Tisquantum (Squanto), the last of the Patuxets on whose land they were building. He served as the translator in the first meeting between the colonists and Massoit (which means sachem), the chief of the Wampanoags. More on this later. That contact meant everything to the survival of the colony because of what Squanto and the Wampanoags taught the settlers many things – how to plant corn, native plants to eat (pumpkins and squash and berries), where to find eels (which the English loved). So how did the Pilgrims build their homes? Not log cabins, as many think. The Pilgrims had never seen a log cabin. They built what they knew with the few tools they had with them – post and beam houses. Initially, the men only had axes to cut and shape beams and planks for their houses. Imagine how hard that was to do with just axes. Eventually, they had a saw pit for sawing the planks. The roofs were thatch made from natural reeds and grasses from the nearby salt marshes and often caught fire. So a bucket of water stood by the door to each house. Seven of the 32 houses existing in the winter of 1624 were burned to the ground with everything in them. What did the houses look like inside? What did the colonists eat? Coming up…. 0 0
What was it like to sail on the Mayflower in 1620? No picnic. The Mayflower actually sailed three times, the first two times with a smaller sister ship called the Speedwell. Each time the Speedwell began to take on water, the second time 300 miles from England. So the Mayflower returned to port with the Speedwell twice, before the decision was made to proceed with just the Mayflower. Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor by William Halsall (1882) The later Governor of the Plimoth Colony, William Bradford, wrote that “overmasting” strained the ship’s hull but attributed the main cause of her leaking to actions on the part of the crew. Bradford later assumed that Speedwell master Reynolds’s “cunning and deceit” (in causing what may have been man-made leaks in the ship) had been motivated by a fear of starving to death in America. In any event, the Speedwell was deemed unseaworthy and abandoned. Eleven people from the Speedwell joined the others on the Mayflower. Twenty of the Speedwell’s passengers, including Robert Cushman, who would be Mary Allerton’s father-in-law, remained in London. Isaac Allerton and his family were among the passengers on the Speedwell who transferred to the Mayflower. Thus one hundred and two passengers sailed on the Mayflower for the third and final time, leaving Plymouth on September 6, 1620. Why was sailing that late in September risky? The North Atlantic is stormy in the autumn – think of hurricane season. Many ships in the 1600s were damaged or shipwrecked by storms. Passengers sometimes fell overboard and drowned. Also, the winds blew from west to east, so the Mayflower was beating against the wind, tacking back and forth. Also, ships could be attacked and taken A harrowing scene of the the Mayflower at Sea, by Mike Haywood provided by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. over by pirates. So the ship sailed on a northern path across the Atlantic to avoid the storms. Now, imagine yourself living below deck in a dark, dank room 58’ by 28’ or 1624 square feet, with 101 other people. The ceiling (the main deck of the ship) is so low you have to stoop over to walk. That’s sixteen square feet per person, shared with chickens, maybe a pig, a disassembled 33-foot long boat called the shallop, and everyone’s worldly goods except for food stores, which were in the hold. There was no fire allowed below deck, so food was eaten cold. People partitioned off their tiny allotted spaces with curtains or furniture, and they slept on the deck. Most of the passengers wore the same clothes for the entire trip. If they were lucky they had one or two changes of clothes. Some had none. Crew galley for hot food Below deck Imagine the noise of 101 other passengers: talking, coughing, snoring, groaning. Imagine the smells from dank clothing, moldy food, sweat, and later, scurvy, and the smell of vomit from seasickness. And don’t forget the pails that served as chamber pots. You would also have other ‘passengers’ traveling with you – fleas and lice. This is my vision of hell. What would you have to eat? Hard biscuits (hardtack), beer, salted (dried) beef, salted ling or cod fish, qats, peas and some ground wheat, butter and sweet oil, mustard seed, aqua vitae, pickled food, dried fruit, and cheese. Much of this food grew moldy from the dank. The water for the children grew rancid and the children had to drink beer. Hardtack is hard. It is made months ahead from flour, salt, and water and I made some for my critique group. The only way they could eat it was to dunk it in coffee, but it is tasteless. Onboard the Mayflower it became infested with maggots, and the sailors taught the passengers to dunk their hardtack in beer and wait until the maggots floated to the top. Actually, I think those maggots might have been more nourishing. Remember, the passengers had to bring enough food to last until the women could plant and harvest a garden and the men could hunt or fish. And they had already eaten some of it during the previous two sailing with the Speedwell. Heavy storms drenched everyone and everything above and below decks, as water poured in through the hatches and gunports. So clothing and bedding and food got wet. Then one of the storms cracked one of the massive wooden beams supporting the frame of the ship. There was a spare beam aboard, but no way to hold it in place so it could be nailed in. Luckily, the Pilgrims remembered a “great screw” they had in the hold and it was used to hold the beam in place. This was a jackscrew and was assumed to be what the colonists would use to hold the beams of their house in place when they were building. But another thought is that it was designed for a printing press. The Pilgrims had printed and disseminated many religious tracts when they were in Holland and also in England. It wasn’t long before both passengers and crew suffered from scurvy, what we now know as a deficiency of vitamin C. Scurvy is a nasty disease with symptoms such as severe brittleness and massive decaying of the teeth and tooth loss, foul breath, ocular irritation, sensitivity to light, blurred vision, poor wound healing, and general weakness. A cure was not known, but the Mayflower passengers did not suffer from scurvy after their first years in the New World because of a healthy diet. Also, they may have learned from the Native Americans that pine needle tea is loaded with vitamin C. One baby was born during the journey. Elizabeth Hopkins gave birth to her first son, appropriately named Oceanus, on Mayflower. Another baby boy, Peregrine White, was born to Susanna White after Mayflower arrived at Cape Cod.Mary Allerton’s mother was also pregnant. Land was first sighted on November 20, 1620, after a voyage
I am often asked how long it took me to write The Last Pilgrim. Counting the abortive attempts with first-person and third-person voice, then trying to figure out how to get a four-year-old’s voice (I didn’t – I used her father’s voice for the first part of the book), it took about seven years. Off and on, until I found my groove. A lot of that time was spent on research, but I was lucky in that I had a timeline and a background for Mary Allerton’s life: the history of the Plimoth Colony. ********** Here are some of the various areas I had to research: 1. The Mayflower voyage and the first 2-3 years – of which there is a lot written, mainly by Bradford and an outstanding book by Nathaniel Philbrick 2. House construction – more on that later 3. Clothing – how did they make wool and linen cloth? 4. Food and food preparation 5. Native populations and their interaction with the Pilgrims – the Pilgrims made the first treaty with a Native American tribe, one which lasted 50 years 6. Farming – the Pilgrims were farmers, after all 7. Trade and trade goods – lumber, corn, sassafras, whale oil, dried fish, and furs 8. Child-rearing – did you know the Pilgrims thought children were born with a sinful nature? 9. Weather (hurricanes and earthquakes) – both Cat 5 hurricane and an earthquake hit the colony, so you have to read the book to find out about it. 10. The law and the courts 11. Indentured servants – often mistreated 12. Seventeenth-century birthing practices – I found a book written by a 17th-century midwife13. Movement and genealogy of various families 14. Livestock – there weren’t any for several years 15. Gardens – what did the Pilgrim women grow in their gardens? 16. Medical practices A dental pelican for extracting teeth. 17. Lives of other First Comers – the Bradfords, Billingtons, Winslows, Warrens, Standishes, Fullers, Aldens and more 18. Family life and customs – the Pilgrims had some amazingly modern childrearing practices 19. Religion – were the Pilgrims really Puritans? 20. Pottery and utensils – wooden, then redware, and later Dutch ware 21. Social norms 22. Witchcraft – Were there any witches in the Plimoth Colony? You have to read the book! 23. British rule – the colonies were subject to the winds and whims of the English monarchy 24. Cloth making (wool and linen) 25. Candle making –tallow, bayberry, and beeswax 26. Pipes – a collection of pipes were available for smoking at taverns; the tavern owner would break off the stem after a use, but the stems often broke on their own (the pipes were clay), so they grew shorter and shorter as they were used. 27. Beer making- the women did it, of course And a few others… I merrily researched from about 50 books and thousands of online sources, some of which I came to recognize as fanciful tales. I might start the day looking at herbs and end up reading about dishware! Next time: The voyage begins 0 0
I promised I would reveal all about how I chose Mary Allerton Cushman as the subject for my novel The Last Pilgrim. Actually, the decision was not terribly difficult. I happened to read that Mary Allerton Cushman was the oldest survivor of the First Comers, as those who had arrived on the Mayflower were called. That meant that she lived through the entire duration of the Plimoth Colony, which was subsumed into the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691. There are not many facts about her. She was the daughter of Isaac and Mary Norris Allerton, born in 1614. Isaac Allerton was the assistant to John Carver, the Separatists’ first governor, then to William Bradford. Mary Allerton married Thomas Cushman in 1635. Thomas Cushman became the Elder of the Separatist church after Elder Brewster died and someone who was central to the colony. Mary and Thomas had eight children who survived to adulthood. She died in 1699 at the age of 83. Those who died during the first winter and spring were buried on Cole’s Hill, which faces Plymouth Rock, They were buried without markers and grass sown over the graves so that the Native American tribes in the area would not know how many of their numbers had died. At the southern end of the hill stands a granite sarcophagus erected by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants in 1921. It contains skeletal remains accidentally disinterred from the hill in the 18th and 19th centuries. The first rediscovery of Pilgrim remains occurred in 1735 following a heavy rain, which washed many of the bones down the hill and into the harbor. Remains found nearby during the digging of sewer lines in 1855 and 1883 were sent to Boston to determine if they were Europeans or Native. Pronounced European by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., four skeletons were returned to Plymouth and placed in a lead-lined casket in the top of the old Hammatt Billings canopy over Plymouth Rock in 1867. The casket was retrieved when the old canopy was torn down, and it was interred in the present memorial, erected by the Society of Mayflower Descendants on May 24, 1921. The sarcophagus on Cole’s Hill Cole’s Hill Mary and Thomas were buried on Burial Hill, the hill at the top of First (later Leyden) Street. The exact date as to when this ground became used as a cemetery is not known. There are no written records of the earliest burials. The earliest grave markers were made of wood, and none exist today. The site was used as a fort from 1621 until 1676. The earliest engraved headstone marks the grave of Edward Gray, who died in 1681. There are only 7 headstones that precede 1700. Burial Hill (originally Fort Hill) Thus the exact site where Mary and Thomas were buried is not known. However, there is a 25 foot granite column, erected by Cushman descendants in 1858 that honors Robert Cushman and his sons, with a small mention of Mary on one of the plaques. Cushman Memorial Geneology: Isaac Allerton ——Mary Norris (1586-1639) ( 1587-1621) ****** Bartholomew Remember Mary —- Thomas Cushman (m. 1635) (1613-1638) (1615-1656?) (1616-1699) (1607-1691) ******* Thomas Mary Sarah Isaac Elkanah Lydia Fear Eleazar (b. 1637) (b ?) (b.1641) (b.1648) (b.1651) (b.1652) (b.1653) (b.1656) These bare facts about Mary told me that she would have been central to the development of the colony, which would form the backstory of my book. And I noted that she had survived eight childbirths, no doubt due to the skill of the colony’s midwife, Bridget Fuller. Only two of her children, Mary and Fear, predeceased her. But with so little information, I could create Mary as I saw her, which is a gift to a writer. ######## A few words about other candidates for my main character: Bridget Fuller: Bridget Fuller was the wife of the physician Samuel Fuller, who had basically taught himself medicine prior to the voyage to the New World. Shew arrived on the Anne in 1623, already with a reputation as a midwife and teacher. She figures prominently in my book. Priscilla Mullins: Priscilla was 18 when she embarked with her family on the Mayflower. The entire family except for Priscilla died the first winter. In 1622 0r 1623, she married to John Alden, the Mayflower‘s cooper, who had decided to remain at Plymouth rather than return to England with the ship. John and Priscilla lived in Plymouth until the late 1630s, when they moved north to found the neighboring town of Duxbury. John and Priscilla had ten or eleven children, most of whom lived to adulthood and married. In my book, Priscilla and Mary share a life-long friendship. Elisabeth Warren: Elizabeth Warren was the one Pilgrim woman who broke through the patriarchal conventions of 17th-century society. Nothing is known of her English background, apart from her marriage to Richard Warren, who sailed on the Mayflower without her. Warren was reunited with his wife and five daughters when the Anne arrived in 1623 but died in 1628, leaving Elizabeth a widow with 7 children (five young women, ranging from early teens to probably early twenties, and two small boys under the age of 5). She never remarried. Her name appears regularly in the records of Plymouth Colony during the long period of her widowhood, first as paying the taxes owed by all heads of household and then as executor of her husband’s estate. She also became one of the ‘purchasers’ of the colony’s debts to the Merchant Adventurers who had financed the colony, since her husband had agreed to do this before his death. In 1635, Elizabeth Warren appears in the Records of Plymouth Colony as a totally independent agent, the only Pilgrim woman to be such. When she died in 1673, this remarkable woman received the unprecedented but well–earned tribute of a eulogy in the Records of Plymouth Colony: Mistress Elizabeth Warren, an aged widow, aged above 90 years,
