The Ships Manifest of the Mary Gold threw up quite a number of interesting leads that I have spent some time investigating using the amazing amount of Ancestor Tracing tools and websites readily available on the internet. From early on, I was looking for some real human interest characters on whom I could draw to illustrate and develop the themes that would run through the ‘From Old England to New England’ project.
Obviously, there was the Party Leader – The Rev Joseph Hull – who before he had sailed for America had already “ruffled a few feathers” among his ecclesiastical contemporaries. It would have been easy to make him a principle character in our story, especially as his personal life also seemed to have been quite turbulent! On the Manifest List it records him as being 40 years old and setting sail with seven teenage children, aged between three and fifteen, and a newlywed wife of 25 years of age. (it seems he had divorced the children’s mother only a year before he set off on this adventure – a real Jacobean midlife crisis ?)
A largish number of the pioneers were recorded as coming from Batcombe in Somerset, a well-established rural wool and weaving community in the early sixteen hundreds. These included Musachiell Bernard a clothier aged 24 years, his wife Mary aged 28, and their two young sons. Timothy Tabor a Tailor aged 35 years, his wife Jane also 35 years of age and their two daughters aged 5 and 8 years of age. And the much wealthier Read party, William aged 28 a Tailor, his wife Susan aged 29, their two daughters 3 and 1 years. In this party were also their servants, Richard Adams aged 29, his wife Mary aged 26 and their 1 year old daughter. In all it seems there were 17 people that came from Batcombe or the surrounding area that sailed together from Weymouth Harbour in March 1635.
Batcombe had been settled since pre-roman times and for almost 600 years had been a Manor attached to Glastonbury Abbey since its grant to Abbot Dunston in the late 900's. This part of Somerset was known for its sheep runs and wool production and, by the 14th century, the wool industry was well established. The farming origins of the village of Batcombe are still evident in the archaeological remains of the strip lynchets and the number of farms dotted along the length of the village. Rather than relying solely on the wool-trade, the advantages of its location - the availability of flowing water and the proximity of deposits of Fuller’s Earth (a fine and strongly absorbent clay used to absorb lanolin and impurities from wool) - meant that Batcombe almost certainly had a small cottage industry of spinning and weaving cloth, with the process of fulling taking place at nearby mills in the valley.
I am part way through composing the musical piece that will define this part of our story. It will be voiced by one of those Batcombe residents that decided their future lay in a new land.
The chorus goes …..
“So we drive the sheep to the higher grounds, clean out the rivers as the rains come down and we treat the wool as the wheels at the Mills go round.”
Life in those times would indeed have been a series of “wheels” that would go round and round, year after year, and the thought of a new start would have been very tempting – especially to energetic young families.
The manifest list also contained the intriguing Dorset based party headed by one Angell Hollard. In the Manifest Angell is entered as being aged 21 years, Katharine his wife aged 22 years, their servant George Land aged 22 years and Sarah Land aged 18 years – described on the manifest list as his ‘kinswoman’ (so probably his sister?)
I have given Angell Hollard and his party its own Blog Page, as the more I researched into them the more I came to appreciate that there was a fascinating Story here on which to build a driving narrative.
