Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/156

 136

��77^1? Family Immigration to New England.

��homes, in the truest sense, — they brought them with them. Their household goods and hearthstone gods were all snugly stowed beneath the decks of the historic ship, and the multitude of Mayflower relics, now held in precious regard in public and private collections, but testify to the immense inventory of that one little ship of almost fabulous carrying capacity. To the compact signed in Plymouth har- bor, in 1620, John Carv^/ signs eight persons, whom he represents; Edward Winslow, five ; William Brewster, six ; William MuUins, five ; William White, five ; Stephen Hopkins, Edward Fuller, and John Turner, each, eight ; John Chilton, three, — one of whom, his daughter Mary, was the first woman, as tradition says, to jump from the boat upon Plymouth Rock. In the Wey- mouth Company, under the leadership of the Reverend Joseph Hull, who set sail from Old Weymouth, England, on the twentieth of March, 1635, ^^*^ landed at Wessaguscus, — now Weymouth, Mas- sachusetts, — there were one hundred and five persons, divided into twenty- one families. Among these were John Whitmarsh, his wife Alice, and four children ; Robert Lovell, husbandman, with his good wife Elizabeth and chil- dren, two of whom, Ellen and James, were year-old twins ; Edward Poole and family ; Henry Kingman, Thomas Holbrook, Richard Porter, and jiot least of all, Zachary Bicknell, his wife Agnes, their son John, and servant John Kitchen.

Families these, — all on board, — households, treasures, all worldly estates, and best of all the rich sym- pathies and supports of united, trust- ing hearts, daring to face the perils of an ocean -passage of forty-six days' duration, and the new, strange life in

��the wilds of America, that they might prove their faith in each other, in their principles, and in God. " He setteth the solitary in families," says the Psalmist ; and the truth was never better illustrated than in the isolated and weary life of our ancestry, two and a half centuries ago.

To the Pilgrim and the Puritan, wife, children, house, home, family, church, were the most precious possessions. Nothing human could divorce ties which nature had so strongly woven. And whenever we think of our honored ancestry, it is not as individual adven- turers ; but we see the good-man, the good-wife, and their children, as the representatives of the great body of those, who with them planted homes, families, society, civilization, in the Western World. They came together, or if alone, to pioneer the way for wife and children or sweetheart by the next ship, and they came to stay, as witness the names of the old families of Plymouth, Weymouth, Salem, Boston, Dorchester, in the leading circles of wealth and social position in all of these old towns. " Behold," says Dr. Bushnell, " the Mayflower, rounding now the southern cape of England, filled with husbands and wives and children ; families of righteous men, under covenant with God and each other to lay some good foundation for religion, engaged both to make and keep their own laws, expecting to supply their own wants and bear their own burdens, assisted by none but the God in whom they trust 1 Here are the hands of industry ! the germs of liberty ! the dear pledges of order ! and the sacred beginnings of a home ! " Of such, only, could Mrs. Hemans's inspired hymn have been written : —>-

�� �