Master Fancher's Light Unto Our Path - Illuminating the Mysteries of John Faunce and Stephen Hopkins

By Patrick A. Fancher

Master Fancher’s Light unto Our Path, is a story of tragedy and triumph, as a young English lad faces his father’s death at the tender age of six. Unable to provide for himself, he spends time in houses of refuge until signing as servant to a master in the Colony of Virginia. Upon working out his servitude, the young man returns to England where through an apprenticeship with the Merchant Taylor’s he learns the craft of weaving, before returning to Virginia as a landowner.
After brief triumphs, tragedies continue as William and his wife sell their land in Virginia, and go meandering through New England. There they resort to a transient lifestyle highlighted by years of hardships and humiliations. “Wm Fancy owned it as his sin his oft drinking…" William’s lack of vision toward success, possibly magnified by his lifelong trend of non-channeled self-sufficiency plus his drinking, could have led to Katherine’s humiliating propositions as she worked as a handmaid.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312795334

Book preview

Master Fancher's Light Unto Our Path - Illuminating the Mysteries of John Faunce and Stephen Hopkins

Master Fancher’s Light unto Our Path

Illuminating the Mysteries of John Faunce and Stephen Hopkins

Patrick A. Fancher

Copyright © 2014, Patrick A. Fancher

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-312-79533-4

Dedicated To:

Christopher Patrick Fancher and Layton Stark Fancher

Introduction

Of the brave men, women, and children who left all the familiarities of their homes and the surroundings of their communities back in England to take the great adventure to the colonies of North America, most came as dissidents, separatists, servants, fugitives, or as the poor.  Such men as William Penn, who was a voyager on the Merchant’s Hope with Richard Fanshaw, and Thomas Hooker, who is credited with the founding of Hartford, were great examples of men in search of religious freedom.  William Bradford, John Wiinthrop, and many others left England bringing their agendas and hopes for a better way of life to America.  The inheritance policies of England allowing for the eldest son to become the father’s heir forced young boys into becoming servants where young men came to the colonies with the promise of becoming landowners after they had served out their seven year contracts to their masters.  Georgia and Barbados served as rehabilitation locations for prisoners.

When seeking the details, it becomes painfully obvious that those leaving, and in some cases fleeing England for the colonies were often people of the less fortunate populace.  For the most part, there was little incentive for members of the aristocracy of England to make the voyage across the Atlantic with intentions of remaining.  Logic begs the question, as to why they should leave Mother England, and a life already so rewarding to go to a brutal new land where carving out a new life would require monumental and laborious tasks.  Usually, they came as speculators seeking ways to add to their already abundant fortunes, and upon satisfying their curiosity, and weighing the possibilities of their adventures, they returned back to the good life from which they had come. 

On the other hand the immigrants who were arriving with agendas, in time brought many names to the forefront as they became etched within the history books, leaving easy access to their past, because the significance of their actions were magnified to a level of superior historical relevance.  Many of those revered names in history were earned by religious leaders.  Out from a class of great orators came great political leaders, who paved the way for a new way of life in America based on a government of democracy.  Still others became great military leaders without which, there could not have been this magnificent country displayed as a city on a hill, with its light serving as a beacon to draw others to its shores. 

The names of great men of past American History fill the pages with their relevant stories, but there are those whose names rest beyond the historical surface under the upper crust of what unintentionally hides the core of what gives a great society its foundation of strength.  Those men, women, and children resting beneath the more visible upper layer were seldom thought of as the binding fabric of the new country’s lifeblood.  They were the workers whose daily tasks often went unappreciated.  Yet their labors were responsible for the exports valuable in keeping the economies of the colonies afloat.  Their efforts in the fields, put food on the table, and provided strength and sustenance to those who would be leaders.  They worked through the well documented starving times of the settlements as the gentlemen slept.  Some of the unheralded survived, while others did not, but the more blessed and determined of this core group sustained themselves and proceeded to weave the continuity of a diverse people together.  Whereas the interlacing’s of those diversities went on to produce a fabric which seemed to become a garment unlikely to ever be rent.        .

Though coming from an ancient English family who actually loaned money to the kingdom’s monarchs, one such name, who had to rise from below the surface was William Fanshaw.  William was hidden in obscurity under aliases, and improper transcriptions of his name due in part to the early death of his father, and being left in a world where no one saw to it that he attended school.  As a result, William had to sign on as a servant to a master of the colonies, and work off his approximate seven year contract before he could marry and establish himself as a landowner in Virginia. 

Most likely William’s deficit in social training led to his selling of his land, and his and Katherine’s subsequent meanderings in New England and Long Island.  There the couple met and faced unimaginable, as well as humiliating hardships in their wanderings before finally giving in to conformity.  The pair, in transient fashion transgressed the lands from New Plymouth to Hartford, and on to New Haven, and Southold before finally adhering as clay to the Potter’s Hand.  Their lives finally began to prosper in Brookhaven, Long Island, New York, for it was in Brookhaven where they became prosperous land owners, and regenerated many descendants to present day America.

Pat Fancher

12/3/14

Chapter One

Reflections

I Remember

I remember:

Ripples spreading over the water, as I skipped a rock across the pond.

I remember:

The woodpecker’s rhythmic dips in flight, as it crossed the clearing and went beyond.

I remember:

The smell of smoke as it meandered up the chimney and out, before drifting down low.

I remember:

The warmth of the fire, as it cast shadowy flickers from the burning wood’s red glow.

I remember:

A mellow feeling which huddled around me as I sat near day’s end and watched the sun sinking.

I remember:

The early evening fog settling into the valley, end even now it sets my mind to thinking.

I remember:

At reunions the fish would be cooking over an open fire in an old black wash pot.

I remember:

Aunts and Uncles and many cousins would gather to visit; almost all were there; they seldom forgot.

I remember:

Mother would sing the old religious hymn, Come Home, Come Home, Its Supper Time.

I remember:

Thinking as she sang that I would never forget the beauty of that old time rhyme.

I remember

Those great days and simple pleasures, but now they leave our thoughts with a lingering haunt.

I regret:

Those pleasures have been replaced by a generation, which attaches their contentment to the words I want. 1.

Here I stand planted in the middle of this metaphorical path which time has so mercifully allowed me to travel. From this point in the path, I look ahead with hope because, I know whom I have believed in, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto Him until that day.  Nevertheless, I look more than just to the future.  It would be unreasonable to think one might toss aside countless episodes of life gone by for the sake of pressing on toward the mark.  In such case, the Polaroid’s of old would have to remain upon the shelf and serve no other purpose other than collecting dust.  That would be a real tragedy!  Especially when one considers the time honored complaint which has been passed down through the ages by those who keep the house.  I’m very sure that more than once many have heard in a rather loud proclamation, highlighted with a few four letter expletives, Dusting is such a detestable bore!!!  Those words alone are enough to send any domesticator running to the shelf to pick up those Polaroid’s. 

The camera serves a wonderful purpose!  Just the other day, as I looked through some old photo albums with my aunt, we came across some family photos which