USA > Massachusetts > The story of western Massachusetts, Volume I > Part 10
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In one short century the natives of America had passed from the stone age to the iron age; a step that in the Old World had
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required thousands upon thousands of years. Brass and copper kettles replaced stone and pottery cooking pots. Arrows were tipped with sheet metal instead of clumsy stone points, thus greatly increas- ing distance and accuracy. Woolen blankets were adopted for clothing in place of skins. Stone axes and knives were discarded in favor of those of steel. Clam shells fastened to wooden handles were no longer used for hoes.
In the same period the entire coast had been viewed by com- petent and experienced explorers. Considerable penetration into the interior had been effected. Informative maps were at hand for all who wished.
The stage was set for the opening scene of the next act.
CHAPTER IX
The Great Migration
A COMMON fallacy not justified by the evidence is the idea that the establishment of Plymouth by the Pilgrims was wholly a religious movement. That the leaders were godly people is unquestioned, yet while there were saints amongst them, there were also sinners. There were even sinners in saint's clothing. The Rev. John Lyford, who had seduced the betrothed of a close friend, was ousted from the colony. In great sadness, they executed for murder, John Billington, a Mayflower passenger. Governor Bradford said that his was "one of the profanest families amongst us", and he pondered as to how such people had intruded themselves into the company. Sir Christopher Gardiner, leaving two wives in the old country, lived openly in New England with a "comely young woman whom he called his cousin, but whome, it was suspected, was his concubine, after the Italian manner." New England provided asylum for many a man who had deserted his wife and family.
Christmas was not recognized as a holiday by the Puritans, and of that day in 1622, Governor Bradford tells us that "on the day called Christmas, the governor called the people out to work as usual, but most of the new-comers excused themselves, saying it went against their conscience to work on that day. So the governor told them that if it was a matter of conscience, he would spare them. So he led the rest away and left them but when they came home at noon from their work he found them in the street at play, openly; some pitching the bar and some at stool-ball and such like sports. So he took away their implements and told them that it was against his conscience that they should play while others worked. If they made the keeping of Christmas a matter of devotion, let them keep to their houses, but there should be no gaming nor revelling in the street. Since which time nothing of the sort has been attempted, at least openly".
They were very human people, the majority of whom had been tenant farmers, small town shopkeepers and the like, craving land and a home of their own. Again we are reminded of John Smith's assertion that he was not so naive as to believe that any motive other than lust for richies would "ever erect there a commonwealth or draw company from their ease at home, to stay in New England".
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We have a subconscious picture of the Pilgrims in Holland, on some appointed day, dropping their cares to stroll down to the sea and boarding a ship to sail away to America with thoughts only of God. But life was not as casual as all that. Even the elect sub- sisted on bread and none amongst them had the ability to multiply loaves and fishes. Nor were ships to be had at the wave of a wand.
Provision for the details of their voyage was long in the making and eventually they were financed by a group of merchant adven- turers of London. These were experienced, hard-bitten private bankers who had for years adventured or ventured their money on trading expeditions and who knew all the answers. A group of seventy of these money-lenders advanced an average of £100 each, or a total of £7,000, the equivalent of $35,000. Reduced to modern values as repre- sented by the purchasing power of the dollar, this would today equal at least $150,000, or $1,500 for each one of the Mayflower passengers. For collateral the adventurers took, not a mortgage, but actual title to the land grant in America and they also dictated the activities, urging them to establish a communistic state. By 1633 the Pilgrims had repaid every penny of their indebtedness and it must be con- ceded that any industry, then or now, which in thirteen years can retire its entire capital stock, leaving its plant and resources free and clear, must be an ably managed one.
On a November day in 1620 the Mayflower, "after long beating at sea, fell in with that land called Cape Cod, which when certainly known, the passengers were not a little joyful". Continuing on for half a day towards their original destination in the vicinity of the Delaware, they were terrified by the "roaring breakers" of the Nantucket shoals, the modern "graveyard of the Atlantic" and turned back to the present Provincetown Harbor, on Cape Cod where they found safe anchorage.
Governor Bradford recorded that "Cape Cod was thus first named by Captain Gosnold in 1602 and after, by Captain Smith, was called Cape James. The point which first showed those dangerous shoals to us we called Point Care and Tucker's Terror, but the French and Dutch call it Malabar". At that early date, only from the maps themselves, could Bradford have known of Malabar.
That the Pilgrims, in advance of their sailing, had a complete knowledge of at least Champlain's and Smith's maps seems unde- niable. One is justified in feeling confident that such valuable material would have been a part of the equipment of the Merchant Adven- turers. As early as 1613 Champlain's charts could have been bought at the print shop of Jean Berjon at the Sign of the Flying Horse in Paris. John Smith's Description of New England, with its map, was published in 1616 and was on sale at Robert Clarke's in Chancery Lane, over against Lincoln's Inn, in London. At three points in his Journal, Governor Bradford expresses great familiarity with Smith's map. Smith had offered his personal services to the Pilgrims, which they declined, to save expense, saying that his books and maps were cheaper teachers than himself. It is evident that during that trying
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period when the Pilgrims sought a location for a permanent settle- ment, those charts must have been of priceless value to them.
In 1629 King Charles I granted to William Pynchon, of Spring- field, England, and twenty-five other gentlemen adventurers, the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company. As contrasted with the professional merchant adventurers who financed the Plymouth project these gentlemen adventurers were mere amateurs, venturing their
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own capital on a private enterprise. The result showed their lack of experience, for in a suit for an accounting, brought in 1635 against Thomas Goffe, the treasurer, the testimony shows that the speculators lost their entire investment.
The charter confirmed title to the land previously granted, which was a strip some fifty miles wide, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, that is, fifty miles by three thousand miles, or approximately 150,000 square miles, comprising some 96,000,000 acres, an average of nearly four million acres for each one of the twenty-six adven- turers. That at least some of them had visions of a division on such a basis seems evident. In 1718 Sarah Watts, of London, a descendant of Deputy Governor Thomas Goffe, made an unavailing claim on the General Court for one twenty-sixth of the Province. In 1734 her son
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renewed the claim and his arguments were so convincing that the Court was glad to settle for one thousand acres of Province lands.
The Massachusetts Bay Company was a joint-stock corporation and was just as purely an industrial concern as is General Motors. In all the ten thousand words of the charter there is but one reference to the church or religion; just a short paragraph admonishing the prospective settlers to so conduct themselves that the natives would be inspired to embrace Christianity.
The organization included a president and a vice president ; called a governor and a deputy governor. There was a secretary, a treasurer and a board of directors; called assistants. They held stockholders' and directors' meetings; called courts and general courts. As evidence of their investment, counterparts of modern stock certificates were issued to the investors. William Pynchon's was preserved for years, but during the Massachusetts Tercentenary Celebration in 1930 it was removed from a public exhibit and never recovered. Fortunately, however, a photograph of it remains.
Out of all this, there has survived and come down to us the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, with its Governor, Secretary, Treas- urer and General Court.
William Pynchon, who founded Springfield, Massachusetts, was born about 1590 in Springfield, Essex, England. He was a grandson of John Pynchon who married a wealthy heiress, daughter of Sir John Empson, one of the ministers of Henry VII, and they had three sons. John, the eldest son, inherited the family property at Spring- field, and resided there after he had received his bachelor's degree at New College, Oxford. He married Frances Brett and had two sons and six daughters, the eldest being the William Pynchon who came to America. John the father died in 1610, before the son had reached his majority, but, shortly after coming of age, William inherited the Springfield property and married Anna Andrews of a Northampton- shire family. From this union there came,-
John, born about 1626. On October 30, 1645 he married Amy Willys of Hartford, and died at Springfield, January 17, 1703, aged 77. His wife died January 9, 1699.
Ann, before coming to Springfield, married, presumably at Rox- bury, her step-brother Henry Smith. Shortly after her father's permanent return to England in 1652, she joined him and died there.
Mary, married at Springfield, November 20, 1640, Elizur Holyoke of Lynn, son of her father's "ancient friend". She died at Springfield, October 26, 1657.
Margaret, married at Springfield, October 31, 1644, Captain William Davis, a Boston apothecary and died July 3, 1653.
In April, 1630, members of the Massachusetts Bay Company, with their associates and servants, perhaps seven hundred in all, set sail for America in the eleven ships known to history as the Winthrop
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Fleet. On the ship Ambrose was William Pynchon, one of the Assistants, with his wife, three daughters and his four year old son. Another helpful book, titled New England's Plantation was then just off the press and was for sale at the sign of the Blue Bible in Green Arbor, in London. Therein was the suggestion that "whoever desires to know as much as has yet been discovered, are advised to buy Captain John Smith's book, The Description of New England."
A seventeenth century sea voyage was a fearful undertaking for carefully nurtured women and children and unaccustomed men. Ships were slow, unseaworthy, leaky, ill-founded and pestilential. Voyages were long and dangerous, sea provisions of bad quality, and the scurvy, their immediate resultant, was as deadly as the plague. Upon the ship's ballast was laid a brick floor on which was built the galley. Here the food was cooked, over wood fires, much as in the great fireplaces of colonial houses, each passenger or his servant cooking their individual food. There was no other warmth save such as was supplied by cumbersome clothing and blankets. The seas were infested with pirates and England being then at war with Spain, the waters swarmed with enemy cruisers.
Of personal comforts and conveniences there were few. Each passenger supplied his own bedding: a coarse canvas sack filled with straw and laid upon the floor, the covering of coarse rugs. They car- ried "juice of lemons, well put up to prevent or cure the scurvy and burnt wine or sallet oil for such as are sea sick." Each passenger was required to supply for his personal use on the voyage, "a store of fresh provisions, meal, eggs, put up in salt or ground malt, butter, oat meal, peas and fruits and a large strong chest or two, well locked to keep these provisions in. Two or three skillets of several sizes, a large frying pan, a small stewing pan and a case to boil a pudding in,-a store of linen for use at sea, and sack to bestow amongst the sailors, some drinking vessels and pewter and other vessels, and for physic, a pound of Dr. Wright's electuarium lenitium, and his direc- tions for using it,-a gallon of scurvy grass to drink a little of five or six mornings together, with some saltpeter dissolved in it and a little grated or sliced nutmeg." It was also necessary to have on shipboard, a milch cow "which must be well mealed and milked by the way."
For their trading with the natives they required "trucking cloths, toys, copper, tools, knives, mirrors and such like".
For their life in the new country it was necessary to provide a thousand and one things, such as "linen, woolen, bedding, a store of coarse rugs, brass, pewter, leather bottles, drinking horns, axes of several sorts, augers, great and small, mill stones with bracings ready cast, soap, a store of beef suet, meal, well cleansed from bran, sugar, fruit, pepper, ginger, vinegar, onions, garlic, alum, aloes, con- serve of red roses, pitch, tar, tallow, oiled skins, both sheep and calf, strong paper and linseed oil for windows, strongest welt shoes and stockings, shoemaker's thread, hob nails, guns, powder, flints, bird shot and bird lime."
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John Winthrop the younger did not come to New England with his father but remained for a time in England to dispose of the ancestral estate, and to secure many necessities for the new life. On later ships he forwarded, amongst other things, pear trees, three hundred apple trees and scions of the codling apple. This would imply a thought of grafting the apple to some native tree. With the Winthrop Fleet had gone sixty horses and two hundred and forty cows, but young Winthrop shipped goats, rabbits, hens and turkeys.
Painters and writers delight in picturing early New England Thanksgiving celebrations that almost invariably include bedecked Indians bringing wild turkeys to the feast, when the birds probably came from the barnyard. The turkey was first found in southern Mexico and was taken to Spain in 1519. From there it went to France and Italy and reached England in the reign of Henry VIII. Long before Puritan days it was a common barnyard fowl in England. The bird still shows its Mexican ancestry in its white tipped tail and rump feathers which are quite unlike the chestnut colored tips of the wild turkey native to the Eastern Seaboard.
The fleet sailed from Southampton on March 29, 1630, but was detained by capricious winds and forced to anchor off Yarmouth until April 8th, when the voyage was resumed. Stiff gales soon sent the passengers below, but on April 12th "there was less wind and the people began to grow well again. The children and others that were sick and lay groaning in the cabins were fetched out and having stretched a rope from the steerage to the mainmast, they were made to stand, some on one side and some on the other and sway it up and down, till they were warm and by this means they soon grew well and merry. The captain set the children and young men to some harmless exercises which seamen are very active in and did the people much good though they would sometimes play the wags with them."
On April 23d "about eleven of the clock, the captain of the Arbella sent his skiff and fetched aboard the masters of two ships and Mr. Pynchon, and they dined together in the round house, for the Lady Arbella and the gentlewomen dined in the great cabin."
"At sea, such an extraordinary storm encountered the fleet, con- tinuing ten days, that of two hundred cattle that were so tossed and bruised that three score and ten died. Many of the people fell sick and after ten weeks they arrived in New England."
On the seventieth day out land was sighted. On the seventy- second day "there came the smell off the shore like the smell of a garden". On Saturday, June 12th, the seventy-sixth day, they came to anchor in the harbor of Salem where was an advance guard of their own people, "about three-hundred, whereof two-hundred were settled at Nehumkek, called Salem and the rest planted themselves at Massachusetts Bay, beginning to build a town there called Charles- town."
"They found the colony in a sad and unexpected condition, about eighty of them being dead the winter before and many of the living
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ill and weak." Captain Endicott went out to greet the fleet, and Governor Winthrop and other assistants "and some other gentlemen and some of the women returned with them to Nehumkek, where they supped with good venison pasty and good beer and at night returned to the ship, but some of the women stayed behind. In the meantime, most of the people went ashore upon the land of Cape Ann, which lay very near and gathered store of fine strawberries."
For a few days they tarried there, recovering from the effects of their long voyage, and on June 17th "went to Massachusetts Bay to find a place for their sitting down". At Charlestown "the multi- tude set up cottages, booths and tents about the Town Hill. Many arrived sick with the scurvy, which also increased much after arrival, for want of houses and by reason of wet lodging in their cottages. Other distempers also prevailed and although the people were gen- erally very loving and pitiful, yet the sickness did so prevail that the whole were not able to tend the sick. Many died and were buried about the Town Hill."
Here William Pynchon's wife Anna, succumbing to the rigors of the voyage, found her home in a nameless grave, and with his children he settled at Dorchester.
The sufferings of the Pilgrims at Plymouth were quite similar to those of the Puritans who came to Boston ten years later. Modern science has shown that their ills were caused by scurvy, brought on by the long sea voyages and consequent lack of succulent vegetables with their vitamin C content.
Whatever knowledge the Pilgrims may have had as to the cause of their trouble, the Puritans at Boston most certainly recognized both its source and its remedy. Though it was not until 1636 that John Woodhall, master in surgery, published his Surgeon's Mate or Military and Domestic Medicine, in which he called attention to the virtues of lemon juice, yet even prior to that time, it was apparent that some knowledge was had of the remedy. Governor Winthrop's wife planned to come to Boston a year later than did her husband and profiting by his own experience, he stressed that she provide "juyce of lemons" for her voyage.
In 1795 citrus juices, as a preventative of scurvy were made a required element of diet in the British navy, and so universal did the custom become that navy men were nicknamed "lime juicers" or "limeys".
On Governor Winthrop's arrival in New England in June, 1630, he ordered that Captain Pierce return immediately to England with the ship Lyon, for lemons. It was a long and cruel wait as that ship did not return to Boston until January 9, 1631. In the meantime, recorded Winthrop, "the people were much afflicted with the scurvy and many died, but when this ship came and brought juice of lemons, many speedily recovered".
Had they but realized it, those people had at their very doors, an adequate remedy for their sore condition, for the cranberry, which
Hassocky Marsh at Springfield
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then grew so bounteously about them had an equal vitamin C content with the lemon. The berry is noticeably firm when ripe, and when protected by snow remains on the vine all winter, so that it was available to both groups of settlers in those harrowing days. Colonel James Smith, who was captured by the French and Indians at Fort Duquesne in 1755 and lived for four years with the Indians in Ohio and Michigan, said that "cranberries, which grew in swamps were gathered by the Indians when the swamps were frozen. These berries were about as large as rifle bullets, of a bright red color and of agreeable flavor, though rather too sour of themselves, but when mixed with sugar, had a very agreeable taste". Obviously, maple sugar is here referred to.
Though the small, or European cranberry is indigenous to northern England, it is doubtful if it was known to those people from the more southerly parts of that country, who came to New England in the early days. Here, however, it was known and used by the Indians, though, obviously without knowledge as to the reason for its value. Moreover, the English berry was much smaller and far less attractive in color than that of New England, so that its kinship would not have been readily apparent. Further evidence that it was not common in England is shown by the account books of John Hull, the mint-master and maker of the Pine Tree shillings. He was also a merchant in Boston and (circa 1675) made several shipments of cranberries to London. Ten barrels were sent as a gift to King Charles II. Thus early did the English come to appreciate cranberries.
That in early days the berry was unknown to those English people is indicated by the act of William Pynchon, who, in 1636, acquired from the Indians, the territory which became Springfield. In the written conveyance for those lands, the natives reserved to their own use "a kind of pease", which they called sasachiminesh. Though Pynchon called them "a kind of pease", showing his lack of familiarity with them, their identity is evident. Moreover, Pyn- chon's observation was in the summer, when they were immature and green in color, so that their likeness to peas was then more apparent.
To the philologist, there is no doubt as to the meaning of the Indian word. Sasa is a reduplicative form of see, sour. Chi is big; min, berry; esh, plural ending, showing the literal meaning to be "very sour big berries". That the berry was the cranberry is evi- denced by Roger Williams, who in 1643, gave sasemineash as the Narraganset word for cranberries. That is quite similar to Pynchon's form of the word, except that it lacks the adjective chi and so means merely "very sour berries". Williams said that the cranberry was a "sharp cooling fruit growing in fresh waters all the winter, excel- lent in conserve against fevers".
Thus, it would appear, that with a better knowledge of the natural resources of their adopted country, the worst horrors of their early days might have been spared to those pioneers.
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The value of the vitamin C content of the cranberry was un- doubtedly recognized by the Indians, though in an unscientific and unthinking way. Through thousands of years of experimenting and selecting, the natives had learned just what natural resources were of value, as did the birds and the beasts. It was a generally accepted fact that any red berry had its virtues while any blue one was ques- tioned. Much of the brawn and health of the Indians was quite possibly due to the cranberry. For forty years, and until the Spring- field Indians forsook the region after the close of King Philip's War, they were loyally upheld by the settlers in their insistence that they "be not wronged in their pease".
From the Massachusetts Indian, Chickataubut, Pynchon bought a great tract of land in that part of Dorchester which later became Quincy. From the Neponset River on the north, it extended southerly to Mount Wollaston and easterly to the sea by Squantum. His house was built on the south side of the river, near its mouth. There the country gentleman became the merchant and trader, with his own ships, exchanging with both English and Indians up and down the coast, goods which he imported from England, for corn and furs. In the great storm of October, 1631, one of his vessels, "coming from Sagadahock, was cast away at Cape Ann, but the men and chief goods saved and the boat recovered". Not only was he occupied with the numberless exactions of his new life, but in addition there were many matters left unfinished in his old home. Hardly had he landed, when in July, 1630, he arranged to have the Governor's son, John Winthrop, Jr., who was still in England, to "call at Mr. Richard Andrews in Bowe Lane for £20, and pay it to Mr. Andrews at the Mermaid in Cheapside",-the Mermaid Tavern of song and story; the haunt of Raleigh,-of Shakespeare and of Beaumont.
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