The Eel Catcher’S Travels: Robert Seeley 1602–1667

By Carol Seeley Scott

THE EEL CATCHERS TRAVELS by Carol Seeley Scott

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479735464

Carol Seeley Scott

Carol Seeley Scott is an eleventh-generation descendant of Robert Seeley. She graduated from Duke University and has advanced degrees from the University of North Carolina and Winthrop University. Most of her professional years as a librarian were spent in a high school, and now, retired, she is the librarian of her retirement community. Married for almost fifty-five years to H. A. Scott Jr., she has fi ve children, nine grandchildren, and two great-grands. She enjoys family, travel, writing, and research.

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CONTENTS

Author’s Note

English Seeley Family 1500s-1600s

Prologue

Huntingdon: The Young Eel Catcher

London: The Big City at Last

Puritans and Leatherworkers

A New Life Begins

The Winthrop Fleet of 1630

The Eel Catcher’s First Voyage

Watertown: The First Settlement

Wethersfield: A Traumatic Move

Indians Can’t Be Trusted

New Haven: The Happiest Years

The Second Voyage: Return to England

A Long Winter Visit

The Third Voyage: Tales of England

Huntington, LI: Captain of Militia

Long Island Landowner

A Fateful Visit

Good News, Bad News

New York: A Different Lifestyle

Requiescat in Pace

In Conclusion

Epilogue

Bibliography

Publications

Locations

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I was set on the path for this book long ago when my father, Walter J. Seeley, in the summer of 1942 sent me to the Library of Congress to see what I could find about our immigrant ancestor, Robert Seeley of the Winthrop Fleet of 1630. Years of domesticity and librarianship intervened. Some twenty years after that original search, I read with great interest the article in the July 1962 issue of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register by my uncle Ralph M. Seeley, titled The English Ancestry of Robert Seely. Although later research has proved some of this to be incorrect, it was in its time a definitive account.

After retirement, I resumed my own research through further reading about and travel to the important places in Robert’s life. I learned that the long-held belief by some that Obadiah Seeley was also a son of Robert was disproved by DNA testing sponsored by the Seeley Genealogical Society in 2005, which showed that their common ancestor lived many generations before them. I saw specific information about Robert in faraway places and found that London museums and historic homes in New England were invaluable in showing how people of those times lived and dressed.

The writing has taken a number of years to accomplish. In it, I have used all the documented information I could find, and the specific names, dates, places, and events given are all true and authenticated. Around these facts, I have woven a story of what could have happened and what might have been said. Almost all biography is part fiction, for no one was present with a tape recorder and camera to capture that single moment in time.

Jonas Weed might have been the progenitor of my mother’s Weed family. William Frothingham is the ancestor of Tom Frothingham, a new friend. Both are on the passenger list for the Winthrop Fleet. Nathaniel Foote, ancestor of new friend Ethel’s husband, also one of those passengers, was an early settler with Robert and Jonas in both Watertown and in Wethersfield, where he lived only three houses removed from Robert. Such coincidences are a part of life’s serendipity.

I have chosen to write as Nathaniel, Robert’s son, recording in the third person his own memories combined with his father’s written recollections of his eventful life in two Englands.

At the end is a listing of many of the sources used in my research.

Many thanks are due to David Halperin and the writing group at ERUUF for their criticism and encouragement. Also to historian Al Young for his careful reading and insightful comments, and to Tom Gallie, my computer guru.

Very special thanks go to my daughter Elisabeth, who has accompanied me on my travels, taken photographs for me and helped arrange them to illustrate this book, and always encouraged me to publish it. And also to my grandson Libertie (a.k.a. Evan), who was invaluable in the technological aspects of printing the book.

Enjoy reading about the adventures of this noteworthy man whose life was a mixture of both the prosperous, settled world of old England and the challenging, unsettled one of New England—a life not unlike that of many of our early ancestors.

Carol Seeley Scott

Finally! April 2011

Durham, NC

ENGLISH SEELEY FAMILY 1500S-1600S

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PROLOGUE

I, Nathaniel Seeley, son of Captain Robert Seeley, of Fairfield, in the Colony of Connecticut in the land of America, take pen in hand to write the story of my father’s life.

My father is gone now, claimed by death some two years past. At my urging, he had, some time ago, written many pages of his days as eel catcher, leatherworker, surveyor, and militia captain, but I have now the task of setting them in order and adding to them what I know. He was all of those things and, above all, a family man, but never a scribe.

I have now come to terms with my feelings about my father’s second wife, Mistress Mary Walker Seeley, though my dear wife, Mary, will always think ill of her, I fear. Indeed, she was most unlike my own mother, Mary Mason, as these pages will make clear.

My father considered himself an Englishman, possibly a New Englander, although he came to this country before his thirtieth year, and such colonists are lately being called Americans.

His story, written by both himself and me, is for his grandchildren, my sons and daughters, that they might know something of the beginnings and adventures of our family.

I begin with his early days in England.

Nathaniel Seeley

Fairfield, Connecticut

Anno Domini 1669

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The fens

HUNTINGDON:

THE YOUNG EEL CATCHER

Rob rubbed his eyes sleepily as he stood at the open door of the cottage, looking out over the fens on that morning in 1618. A faint pink line at the far horizon hinted at the rising of the sun, but the long grasses that he knew were waving in the early morning breeze were still too dark to discern. An owl hooted in the distance. It was time he was on his way.

He pushed a stray golden lock from his blue eyes—pure Saxon coloring—then strapped the eel basket over his shoulders, grabbed the oatcakes left on the table for him by his mother, and went out, closing the door quietly behind him.

Yesterday he had spent much of the daylight hours catching eels. Today he was going to sell them at the local market in Huntingdon.

Usually, his mother, Grace, took his eels to the market, but not this day. Your sister is ill again, and I feel I ought to stay at home with her. You have had success at selling before, and you will do well again, she had said the night before.

Rob was worried about Mary, for she was sick a lot with the recurring fever that so many of the fen people had. Mary was his only sister, four years older than he. Their brother Will, seven years older than Rob, was already married and with a son of his own and was living in nearby Bluntisham. There had been other siblings, but all had died. Rob, now nearly sixteen, was the last born of William and Grace Seeley’s eight children.

It was not far into the marketplace of the little village. The Seeleys lived on its edge, close to the watery fens with their plenitude of fish, fowl, and eels. Ready food and ready currency for eels were often used by the fen people to pay rent, pay debts, buy necessities. Rob did not want payment today in more eels! The family needed coins.

Rob was actually a better salesman than his mother, for he was quick, outgoing, and easy to talk to, whereas Grace was of a more retiring nature, and her children thought buyers often took advantage of her. Rob preferred selling eels to catching them.

Not that it was hard to catch them. It was just not exciting. They were so plentiful that when he stuck into the waters his eel gleeve, with its long shaft and four sharp serrated prongs that prevented the slippery things from wriggling away, it invariably came up with several of the creatures spitted on the prongs. There was no challenge, and Rob preferred challenges.

Market opened early, and eels needed to be sold early before they spoiled. The sky brightened as the sun rose out of the fens, and Rob hastened on to the center of the little town. He would have liked to go to Cambridge market, but it was far enough away that a horse or cart was necessary to get him there. Since William’s death, the Seeleys no longer owned either, and no neighbor had been going there for today’s market to give him a ride. Cambridge was bigger, a better selling place, and more exciting with the university students there. Rob sometimes went to a nearby tavern for a tankard of ale after he had sold all his eels and listened to their conversations, hearing fragments of ideas that were new to him and gave him much to think about.

One day he had heard two students who had returned from a visit to London heatedly discussing the merits of Master Shakespeare’s plays, of which each had seen two. Rob had never seen a play and was intrigued by what he heard. Another day, it was a young man’s talk about a cousin who was a Separatist and had gone to live in Leiden with other English Separatists who were now talking of moving to the New World. That made Rob ponder on the subject of religion.

Reaching the market now, he looked around and saw that there were only two other eel sellers there and with only partly filled baskets. He took a place at one of the open stalls and greeted his neighbors with a Good day!

A woman came by and paused at his stall. She bent over to smell the eels, then asked, How fresh are they?

Caught just yesterday, goodwife, and from the best part of the fens, he replied. Since you are my first customer, I will make you a special price. And he named a sum a half penny less than the