Ancestry Magazine

I’m a writer-turned-genealogist. My research has been rewarding but frustrating. I haven’t been looking for law-breakers, but I’ve found some. I wasn’t looking for royalty, either, but it would have been nice to find a court jester. I’ve also found a lot of interesting people about whom I’d really like to know more.

When we go back ten generations on our family tree, we have more than 2,000 direct-line ancestors. I’ve uncovered brief facts about some 200 of those. I know their birthdates, when and how they came to America, and where they settled.

Many of my forebears left England with the Pilg rims that settled New England in the early 1600s. Seven direct ancestors signed the famous Compact that created the first need for lawyers in America. One historian wrote that my ancestor, Stephen Hopkins, was the reason they needed the Compact.

Not all the Puritans were pure and not all the Pilgrims were grim. The book The Truth About the Pilgrims tells us that these first immigrant ancestors had many of the same types of problems we have today. Mixed in with the devout, who sought a place to worship, were a whole lot of adventurers. They came to America to find their fortune, leave bad family situations, escape debtor’s prison, or sample the native pleasures. Mixed in with the Pilgrims and adventurers were undertakers, purchasers, planters, and patentees who came to invest and make money. That’s still what America’s all about, isn’t it?

My first Parker ancestor in America was the Reverend Thomas Parker who arrived on the Mary and John in 1634. He was a founder of Reading, Massachusetts. His is the oldest gravestone in the Wakefield cemetery. It reads, “Memento Mori Fugit Hora (Remember thou must die. Time flies). Here Lyeth within This Arched Place Ye Body of Deacon Thomas Parker who was Won of Ye Foundation of Ye Church Who Died Ye 12 August 1683. Aged About 74 Years.”

Another Reverend, Thomas Carter, got his degree at Cambridge and came to America on the Planter as a servant of George Giddings to “elude detection, no doubt by officers under orders of the Privy Council to prevent such embarkation.” Carter lived some years at Watertown but “didn’t exert his faculties until he moved to Dedham.” Surely, he must have exerted some of his faculties before then.

Some of my ancestors didn’t want to conform to the rigid Pilgrim code. Stephen Hopkins was a leader of the non-Separatists and was fined several times for allowing drinking at his house on Sundays. Hopkins had made an earlier voy age bound for Virginia. He was shipwrecked in Bermuda and almost hanged for mutiny there. Later, he brought his family to America on the Mayflower along with two servants who were identified as “duelists.” His son Oceanus was born on the Mayflower.

Twyford West, an indentured servant of Governor Winslow, was transferred (or sold?) to my ancestor Nicholas Snow. West disliked my ancestor so much that he asked the Governor to take him back–he even agreed to serve another year just to get away from Snow.

William Vassall, a controversial ancestor, was described in historical accounts as a “pronounced liberal.” Governor Winthrop called him a “man of a busy and factious spirit, always opposite to the civil government of this country and the way of our churches.” These dissident ancestors had an impact on the making of a constitution that separates the government from religion.

Kenelm Winslow, brother of Governor Edward Winslow, liked to sue people and was imprisoned twice after losing his legal battles. In those days, if you lost, you paid. He was fined for saying the leaders of the Marshfield Church “were all lyers.”

Another ancestor, Governor Thomas Prence, presided over a witch trial in 1661 and handled it “sanely and with reason.” He was known to be “gentle and kind” in his dealings with the Indians. He also presided over the court when the momentous decision was made to execute a colonist who had murdered an Indian.

A spicy story involves another ancestor. Plymouth court records note that on 2 November 1640 Francis West and his wife Margery Reaves were found guilty of “incontinency with one another before marriage.” Both were sentenced to the stocks. Francis was also sentenced to build a new pair of stocks in Duxbury within two months.

There are so many potential novels in my ancestry. Unique stories, these family mysteries, but a whole lot of literary li cense would be required to write them. It’s too bad we can’t subpoena our ancestors and make them clear up the mysteries in their histories.

Orin Parker is retired from forty years of involvement with education in the Arab World. He is the author of two novels, Burial in Beirut and Raja’oun, and has recently published “A Life Among Moslems” for the Ensign.