Lives of Our Mothers

By Darlene Porter

This first book of a forthcoming trilogy introduces Susannah (Mary) Wiggin as a child. We see the pivotal events of her young life that becomes a motivation for many of her life decisions. The action takes her across the Atlantic, amid life-threatening storms and through the Great Colonial hurricane of 1635. While in Boston, she experiences the harshness of the puritanical government. Later, Mary and her family trek through the Western wilderness to establish a new colony free from religious oppression. One bright, sunny morning, Mary almost loses her toddler to a fearsome Pequot warrior. That interaction carries over into the second book. This debut volume ends with Reverend Hookers company symbolically breaking away from the Puritan rules by singing hymns of thanksgiving as the group crests the valley of their promised land, Hartford, Connecticut. The series creates a panorama of how women lived, loved, and lost in the seventeenth century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543434064

Darlene Porter

Days searching the halls and files of the Family History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Salt Lake City; data from rare books in several different state libraries; information sourced from genealogical societies (some run by blue haired little old ladies in church basements) and, lastly, diligent study from the internet: compilation from all these origins is the content of this book. This study of genealogy brought one ancestor to the author’s attention. She tells multi-faceted, true tales of real women’s lives during an era obscured by the curtain of far distant time. Darlene Porter’s education at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, resulted in the degree of Bachelor’s of Science, Nursing, and a minor in history. The author spent 33 years working as an RN. She currently lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains with her husband and two fuzzy little dogs.

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Copyright © 2017 by Darlene Porter.

Library of Congress Control Number:         2017910394

ISBN:               Hardcover               978-1-5434-3408-8

                         Softcover                  978-1-5434-3407-1

                         eBook                       978-1-5434-3406-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

NIV

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. [Biblica]

Rev. date: 07/12/2017

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CONTENTS

Illustrations

Preface

Chapter 1     The Great Comet Of 1618

Chapter 2     Panic From The Pulpit

Chapter 3     Beasts Of Contagion

Chapter 4     All Aboard

Chapter 5     A Friend Makes Himself Known

Chapter 6     Drama On Deck

Chapter 7     It Is Not Up To Us To Decide When To Bring New Life Into The World

Chapter 8     Death At Sea

Chapter 9     Boston

Chapter 10   Puritan Politics

Chapter 11   Meeting Anne Hutchinson

Chapter 12   A Good And Kind Jesus Leads One To A Better Life

Chapter 13   A Pastor Who Leads Without Bullying

Chapter 14   The Great Colonial Hurricane Of 1635

Chapter 15   Thacher’s Woe

Chapter 16   How People Will Talk

Chapter 17   Settlement Plans

Chapter 18   Campfire Stories Shared By Adventurer Stephen Hart

Chapter 19   Laughing With Goodie Lyman

Chapter 20   Flintlocks Through Indian Territory

Chapter 21   Goose Wars

Chapter 22   Acoomemeck, Niptuc Fort

Chapter 23   A Great Council

Chapter 24   Missing Children And An Out-Of-Place Pequot Warrior

Chapter 25   A Storm-Wrought Injury

Chapter 26   Prickly Englishmen

Chapter 27   There At Last

Acknowledgments

Appendix

Glossary

Bibliography

Illustration Credits

ILLUSTRATIONS

1.   St. Mary’s of Boxford, showing part of the bell tower wherein the children observed the comet.

2.   Great Comet of 1618 from Augsburger, Wunderzeichenbuch,Folio

3.   King James I of England, painting by John de Critz the Elder.

4.   Pulpit within Anglican church, photographed by Basher Eyre.

5.   City streets amid the Black Death, the Great Plague of London in 1665—the last major outbreak of the bubonic plague in England.

6.   Three-masted vessel from early 1600s.

7.   Portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria by Anthonis van Dyck, painted in 1633.

8.   Map of New England.

9.   Piscatway River map. Original surveyor and creator of map is unknown. Courtesy of the Maine State Archives.

10.   Dolphin, Shutterstock image service.

11.   Ship in a storm.

12.   Puritans in the hold of a ship; painting is titled The Mayflower Compact 1620; artist is Jean Leon Gerome Ferris.

13.   Pilgrims praying on board the ship; painting from 1844 titled Embarkation. Artist is Robert Walter Weir.

14.   Prow of a sailing vessel.

15.   Cannon fixed on a gun deck of a sailing vessel.

16.   Map of Boston Harbor in 1888.

17.   A new and accurate plan of the town of Boston from Boston Public Library.

18.   Emigrants aboard the ship.

19.   Boston in 1660.

20.   Puritan preaching at a meal; painting Stony Ground by Edwin Austin Abbey, circa 1884.

21.   Reverend Roger Williams’s statue, an illustration in Foot- Prints of Roger Williams: A Biography, with Sketches of Important Events in Early New England History with Which He Was Connected by Zachariah Atwell Mudge, published in 1871.

22.   Painting of John Cotton by John Smibert, circa 1735.

23.   Engraved portrait of a Puritan woman with a baby, titled Hester Prynne and Pearl before the stocks by Mary Hallock Foote.

24.   Image of Thomas Hooker taken from a stained glass window in Center Church, Hartford, Connecticut, by Louis Comfort Tiffany, circa 1900s.

25.   Storm cloud from Shutterstock Images.

26.   Tornado from Shutterstock Images.

27.   Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635 track by Brian R. Jarvnen of the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, October 30, 2012.

28.   Painting titled A Frigate Heeling in an Offshore Gale by Nicholas Pocock, based on the wreck of the Angel Gabriel, circa early 1800s.

29.   Painting of early ship-building; Men from Francisco de Orellana’s Expedition Building a Small Brigantine, the San Pedro, to Be Used for Searching for Food. Artist unknown.

30.   Painting titled William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury by Sir Anthony Van Dyck about 1636.

31.   A beautiful river from Shutterstock Images.

32.   Puritans walking in the snow from North Wind Archives.

33.   Puritans celebrate in the forest from North Winds Archives.

34.   Tribal Territories: Southern New England about 1600 by Nikater, adapted to English by Hydrargyrum.

35.   Blue painted covered wagon from Shutterstock Images.

36.   Mountain waterfall from Shutterstock Images.

37.   Painting titled Hooker and Company Journeying through the Wilderness from Plymouth to Hartford by Frederic Edwin Church in 1846.

38.   Flintlock rifle from Shutterstock Images.

39.   Painting titled: Palisaded Fort of the Pequot Tribe by David R. Wagner.

40.   Headdress of a chief of the Nipmuc tribe in the 1600s from Shutterstock Images.

41.   Photo of an Indian woman; Cheyenne woman, Pretty Nose, in 1879 by Laton Alton Huffman.

42.   Image of a campfire rushing to the sky from North Wind Archives.

43.   Puritan and his wife walking from Shutterstock Images.

44.   Puritan girl from Shutterstock Images.

45.   Illustration of an Indian Family; History of the Indians of Connecticut from the Earliest Known Period to 1850 by John W. DeForest, published 1851.

46.   Painting titled Sharitarish—Wicked Chief by Charles Bird King, circa 1822.

47.   Man with flintlock rifle from Shutterstock Images.

48.   Team of oxen from Shutterstock Images.

49.   Painting titled The Oxbow (The Connecticut River near Northampton) by Thomas Cole in 1836.

50.   Puritan village from Shutterstock Images.

51.   Map of Windsor Connecticut: 1640 to 1654; The Phelps Family of America and Their English Ancestors, two volumes, published by Eagle Publishing Company of Pittsfield, Massachussets, in 1899.

52.   Painting titled The Trading House by L. F. Tantillo.

53.   Engraving—Hooker’s Company reach the Connecticut; History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Vol.1, Estes & Lauriat Publishers, 1879.

PREFACE

I N THE PROCESS OF RESEARCHING my own family tree, I learned about an ancestor who had led a particularly interesting life. This one grandmother lived through an Atlantic transit and epic hurricanes, met a female revolutionary in Puritan Boston, and raised her family through a time of Indian wars. Her grown children participated in witch trials fifty years before Salem’s famous ones. The more I learned, the more I realized she was a woman just like me, with all my feelings and thoughts. She made her life in a time alien to the culture we share here in the early twenty-first century.

My beloved niece and nephew Lauren and Christian Porter were eight and nine at the time. My initial goal in writing down Susannah Mary Wiggin’s story was to ensnare those two youngsters in the love of history. We shall see if I was successful.

You are about to meet, in this manuscript, real people participating in events that honestly took place, from the Great Comet of 1618 to the impending Pequot War threatening our infant plantation. The characters are verifiable, even down to the primary servants in the households. I invite you to google them, but have a care. They can be difficult to identify. For example, our main person, Susannah Wiggin, went by Mary all her life. Some official documents have her recorded under that forename. Also be aware, the only place the lowly maid Margery Parker is mentioned in history was in Major William Whiting’s will.¹

Furthermore, with the events herein, Susannah finds herself involved in more than just her own reality. By observing other women like Rebecca Roscoe, we might examine how other more commonly situated females faired. The reader will have a chance to glimpse women of other social status and of differing race. All the events of Mary’s life do not transpire within the pages of this volume. In order to give her and the people around her the proper opportunities to experience their life events, I found the story must arc over three books. Therefore, I present to you the first book of a trilogy.

I employed the use of published biographies written by family historians, documents contemporary to Susannah’s life, published sermons of Reverend Hooker, the diaries of certain popular figures, and transcripts of trials in order to develop thought patterns and interactions between people who lived neigh onto four centuries ago. In that time, popular beliefs diverged from those of the twenty-first century. You see, common experiences varied from those we share with our contemporaries. These different points of reference resulted in biases peculiar to our modern eyes.² Just look at the theories of how diseases were transmitted.

An area I had particular difficulty in dealing with was that of the dialogue. Just how does one know exactly what was said between everyday people in even an uncommon life? The words spoken are some of the facts than have slipped through holes. We no longer know them nor have the means of verifying them. In these cases I have reimagined or reconstructed events in a way I believe reflects the essence of the scene or the event in the minds and hearts of the people who lived through it. These thoughts were expressed by Melanie McGrath in her nonfictional book Hopping: An East End Family at Work and Play.³

I was offered a subscription to the magazine Creative Nonfiction: True Stories, Well Told at the time I pondered whether I was writing fiction or not. By reading that periodical, I identified that this was a work of creative nonfiction, or if you will, narrative nonfiction. The goal of an author of this new kind of story is to make non-fiction stories read like fiction so that readers are as enthralled by the facts as they are by fantasy.⁴ I hope every one of my readers are just that—enthralled.

Where appropriate, you will find quotation marks and footnotes with references that are verifiable should you care to research yourself. I admit there are a few actors who lack biographical documentation. They are not listed in the index. The glossary lists events and the dates as they happened. To both Ms. McGrath’s and my mind’s, any literary tinkering does not alter the more profound truth of the story.⁵ I claim logical inference versus imagining scenes.

Allow me to point out that this time lies smack in the era wherein God and the devil were as real and predictable as the man who lives next door. I present the Holy Trinity, as one and separately, in terms I feel Susannah might have chosen to perceive Him. As for the other one, his influence is less evident in this initial book. Later in the series, he will rear his ugly head with a vengeance.

The 1630s are dark to us in many ways because so little information about the everyday life of women has survived. This is due to the fact that spokespersons giving voice to the female perspective in literature are sadly lacking. My intention has been to shed some light on that place for others interested in that time, perhaps due to their own genealogical studies around their own maternal ancestors.

I feel a kinship with this woman, as I should. I carefully crafted a saga of the life of one of my tenth great-grandmothers. You will find it a drama of adversity and change, a true telling of lives of women as Pilgrims in Puritan New England.

CHAPTER ONE

THE GREAT COMET OF 1618

December 1618

H USH, THAT’S ENOUGH! EBENEZER’S PARENTS are going to hear! The voices came out of the darkness to my right.

If they do, Seth’s whisper carried only to our cluster of children, we’ll get the tanning of our lives. And just ’cause you are the daughter of the richest merchant in town, Mary Wiggin, you know you’ll get it same as the rest of us.

I bent down and scooped up another pebble to toss at the shuttered window. Ebenezer himself had told me that corner one opened to the room that contained the hearth, as well as the bed all the children shared every night. I think he just cannot hear the signal.

I let it fly. The stone the size of an unripe plum struck harder than intended. Our four shadows scattered.

Several breathless minutes later, we all crept to the break in the hedge. We now stood some fifteen feet farther from the cobbler’s cottage than before. A puddle of faint, sickly pink starlight surrounded us. We stared glumly at the offending window covering.

Seth had switched his position to my left in the return from cover. I could just make out the outline of his body. If he did not hear that, he’s deaf.

Oh, la! I stamped my foot. He shall be sorry he did not come with us. I just know it. He was as eager as any of us to do this.

To this day, I am amazed the four of us had been so daring. Our group included three nine year old children and a tag-along six-year-old. The goal of the adventure entailed a late-night excursion to the highest point in all the countryside. We all decided to defy our parents and have a good long look at what had all the elder population abuzz with speculation.

A draft off the River Box, cold December air, managed to work its way up my skirts even though I wore an extra woolen one. My full-length finely loomed nightdress alone would never have been enough to keep me warm that night.

I wondered how little Constance endured the damp chill off the waterway with only her homespun skirt and shawl of the same stuff. As part of a prosperous woolen exporter’s family, all of us Wiggins had access to several grades of top-notch cloth for our usage. I slid a shawl off my shoulders, leaving the one wrapped around my head and entire upper body. I then tucked the overly small sister to one of our band of night wanderers inside the closely woven outerwear. Her body wobbled under my not-too-gentle attention.

There now. You must not take a chill, I said to her.

Stephen, who was now behind me, spoke. I wish you wouldn’t take such good care of her. Then she’ll get cold and go home where she belongs. Hostility dripped from his voice.

Constance answered in the snippy tones of younger sisters everywhere, Ha, you’re lucky I didn’t run to Mama. I could’a told her you sneaked out of the cottage. I knew it must be something fun to get you up so late. Midnight it must be.

Seth demonstrated his common sense, a virtue probably necessary in a farmer’s son. Naw, you forget how early the sun sets in December. It can’t be much past nine or ten of the clock. Now let us go!

I think we should give him a few more minutes, I persisted.

Susannah Wiggin, what ails you? I, for one, can’t wait to see it up close. He glanced over his shoulder to where the leading edge of a red glow peeked through the tops of the dead gray-brown leaves of the plants used to separate the cottage yards. "After all I’ve heard about the Blazing Stars and this, the third of the year,⁶ I knew I was coming when you asked today. But now you don’t seem as sure as you were this afternoon."

Stephen chimed in before I could answer, Ha, I bet I can guess. Her brother said he didn’t want to come. What’s the matter? Are you afraid he’ll snitch on us?

I know it was not Christian, but a small voice in my head noted that he sounded squeaky, like a nasty rat.

I purposely ignored that accomplice in the night’s crime. He had only been able to push himself into our endeavor because he had overheard me asking Seth to come along. Then his threat to weasel on us to our parents ensured his inclusion. Seth’s presence was necessary. Without him, we would not be able to find our way through the darkest section of our trek.

Do not call me Susannah, Seth! My nose tilted up in imitation of the elders at church. You know my mother is the only one who does, and it is only when I am in trouble. Please call me Mary.

I threw one last look at the annoyingly bolted shutter. Very well then, let us be off. And no, Thomas will not tell anyone where we are. He said, ‘One Blazing Star is just like any other, but I will not betray you.’ The tutor taught him all about them … with pictures. That is why he stayed home. He knows all about them.

I did not mention that Thomas learned about the current occurrence in the skies when I was off doing my morning chores. I never got to hear the lesson or see the chalk pictures Mr. Hawkins drew. The only opportunity I had to share Thomas’s lessons now was when the private tutor was teaching reading and writing. That I excelled beyond Thomas in the spoken, reading, and even written language was a secret between us three in the room set aside for our lessons. The door to the study had closed behind my back for math once I’d mastered simple addition and subtraction.

I guess I was lucky my father decided these skills were beneficial for the wife of a merchant, so I might run a home effectively when my future husband was away on business. The many other subjects thought necessary for the scion of a wealthy merchant house proceeded while I learned stitching, music, and housekeeping from our mother.

When we were nearing the edge of the cemetery, Seth’s quavering whisper betrayed his lack of conviction when he suggested, Let’s cut through the side of the churchyard to the south entrance.

Stephen piped up, spitting out what the rest of us thought of that idea. Not through the graveyard!

Be still. The watch is not that far away, I warned. It would be a shame to get this far and fail. We can take the few extra steps to follow the wall around to the walkway itself. Why, even as children, do we women have to be the voice of reason?

The church of St. Mary stood as the massive hulk at the center of our proud village of Boxford.⁷ It is yet part of the civil parish in the Babergh district of Suffolk, England.

My hard-soled shoes clopped on the cobblestone surface of the street. I shook my head and commenced tiptoeing to move as quietly as the other soft-shod members of the group.

We four youngsters proceeded stealthily down Stone Street. From that point, the danger to the completion of our goal was the night watch. Each able-bodied man in the village took turns walking the roads to ensure no brigands caused mischief. Of a course, my father’s position as the richest merchant in residence allowed him to hire one of his workers to take his turn.

The situation was that there was a greater chance that a chimney fire might break out at this time of the season. Six miles to the nearest town was a goodly distance to travel by foot in the chill of winter. The River Box posed an avenue for thieves. But again, sailing at night in the bitter wind brought little comfort.

‘Twas when we were about to turn down Church Street that we saw him—old Jeramiah Babitz. Though he thrust his torch high in the air, we could not identify him by his features. His muffler swathed his mouth and nose. We knew him by his limp. He had brought it home from his time in the service to the East India Company and the battles he engaged in for them.⁸

The four of us had been keeping to the shadows, and it was a good thing too. Upon catching sight of the night watchman, we scurried like a bunch of squirrels into the shelter of an alley.

Babitz never paused as he passed our hiding place, making his noisy clip-clop way along.

We gave him a generous amount of time to move along before we peeked our wind-reddened noses out to ensure the way was clear. I am sure we all resembled those selfsame gray rodents as we emerged, shoulders hiked up to our ears.

Moving on, we finally emerged from the shadows and walked quickly through the yard that separated the grand old church from the street.

Halfway along the path, the phenomenon broke forth from the cloud cover. In a trice, the landscape was bathed in a crimson light.

Constance caught full sight of the Angry Star. Her mouth fell open, and she was rooted to the spot.

The remainder of us harbored a respectable amount of trepidation for the consequences of being caught breaking curfew. Our feet flew across the well-manicured flagstones leading to the sanctuary of the ornate stone-worked portico.

Image%201.jpg

Saint Mary’s Church, Boxford, Suffolk. This is the destination of the four children, showing both the famous South Porch and the Bell Tower.

Upon arrival at the haven of St. Mary’s Church⁹ built in the fourteenth century, we took note of Constance yet standing in the wide-open churchyard. At first, we remained wordless as we all stared at each other.

When no one moved, I made no attempt to cloak my scorn at the older sibling falling down on his responsibility. Well, she is your sister.

Stephen finally grunted in disgust and dashed back for the one who could get us all hauled in front of the constable should she remain standing, gape-mouthed and in the open. The two laborer’s children barreled into the covered space, the small one sputtering in the cold.

What? Constance’s query was full-voiced.

All the rest of us shushed her in one instant. Several mittened hands waved about in agitation.

Speaking of responsibility, my station as a merchant’s daughter placed me in a position of leadership. Enough, it is time for the altar boy to step to the front, I reminded the larger two of my companions.

Right, the stair to the tower … inside, of a course, bear to the right, just across from the memorial to David Birde.¹⁰ Seth took command of the situation smoothly.

The door is quite small, and it’s black as coal inside. Seth slowly opened the southern door, the left one of the pair. I knew it to be intricately carved, but now the darkness made it look like a foreboding hulk.

I felt obliged to ask, Constance, you’re not afraid of the dark, are you?

An ominous creak accompanied the movement of the solid oak.

Me? Naw, never. The high pitch of her answer gave the lie to her words.

I wordlessly made my way to her side and slid my own hand over hers. Somehow, I knew her brother was not going to be there to provide that comfort.

Seth only cracked the portal enough for the four of us to squeeze through and slid it shut quickly.

After we stood still for a time, we became aware of light allowed in through the stained-glass windows. Knowing every one of those apertures were filled with bright reds, blues, yellows, and all, ’twas surprising that all color was drained from our sight. The luminescence high above was useless to us standing below in the deeper gloom. Shades of gray and black were all that led us on our way across the grand vaulted space.

Guesswork gave names to the masses we beheld. The baptismal font huddled near the altar to one side. Pillars holding up the roof and tower above were the black shapes marching across the area inside the church proper.

There was no seeing the tiny brass plate in the floor that Seth and Stephen searched for. I could picture its representation of the pastor’s son who passed into paradise back in 1606 at the touching age of twenty-two months.¹¹ Maybe it was those teeny-tiny shoes under the bed the carved child slept in that made it so sad. The living boys moved their feet over the stone floor, searching for the brass plate.

Stephen made the discovery while Constance and I stood aside. Here! Here it is, Seth.

Jolly job! Now over here. Seth lined himself up with the grouted lines in the floor and led the way to the wall. There he felt for and found the round brass pull handle for the door flush with the wall. Inside on the stairway, we climbed through utter blackness. The edges of the steps had been worn away by countless others who trod before us.

A puff of fresh air surprised me halfway up. I recalled that windows, arrow slits in actuality, dotted the sides of the tower. Three hundred years earlier, in the fourteenth century, our community took refuge in the church from marauders. Defenders of Boxford actually used those openings to fight for our safety.

Seth accessed the belfry itself by the topmost closed door. We emerged into a four-sided area almost filled by the three bells that spoke often as the voice of our church. Now the redness of the star superseded the faint white natural light of the usual pinpoint-sized sky occupants.

I found I could not resist joining in the elongated Oh that escaped Constance.

At first I caught but a glimpse of the Angry Star from across the open area designed for bells. An open space with a yawning pit at the center accommodated the bell ropes’ descent. Four ornate stonework pillars suspended the roof. The gusty winter wind had its way, sweeping through those spaces, chilling us mischievous children once more.

We had to skirt the bells to get to the widest area on the far side where we could see the Blazing Star the best. Unfortunately, only two of us could poke our upper bodies through the opening at the same time. I, as leader, took the first turn with Seth, who essentially got us here.

Below, the village and the countryside around it lay like a quilt in shades of red and pink. Any who beheld the manifestation still spoke of how even the light cast by the moon throughout its entire cycle succumbed to the power of the celestial stranger. Our streets reflected palely as they shone, glistening white during the day, but now they shone a new shade. Other objects my memory told me shared pearly hues of the palest pink, as the walls of some of the houses appeared to be blushing like a shy maiden.

The two bridges over the River Box were there for the seeing. But of a course, the stone one cast the ruby light back at one’s eyes better than the darker wooden one. Patchwork areas as the winter fallow fields held colors of deeper pink and full crimson outlined them where the hedgerows separated each farmer’s field. What captured the eyes the most were the deepest-hued parts of the scene—homes, seasonally skeletal trees, and of a course, the River Box winding its leisurely way past our town. They took on the aspect closest to dark old blood. I waited as long as I could, as the anticipation was making my knees quiver.

At last I turned my eyes upward. And there it was! Sailing over the landscape like a ship on the sea. At the center of the front was a ball that—I tell you—had fine but noticeable cracks in it! All around that center was a menacing luminous ring, like the moon seen through a fine fog, but it was radiating scarlet. Immediately behind the ball began the most spectacular portion by far. Clumped together while still within the bright and shining focal point and gradually spreading apart until they became wispy and then faded away were many streaks of the same hue as the unsubstantial corona around the front piece. Those streaks spread out like the wake of a fast-moving vessel in the waters that were the heavens. The combined size of the entire manifestation filled half the night sky.