Hiram Martin's Journal

By Mark Knudsen

Trapped on the streets of Manchester, Hiram Martin accepts Edmund Scarborough's indenture contract hoping to improve his station in life. After a frightening sea voyage to Virginia in 1637, Martin enters a foreign world driven by personal ambition and tobacco profits. Vowing to survive, he slowly makes his way despite hostile Native Americans and rivalries.

Martin witnesses the planters' shift toward the Africans as a possible answer to their ever-present need for labor. He writes of his experiences and observations of the emerging planter class in Virginia as he suffers abuse at Scarborough's hand and undertakes tasks at his direction that will further Scarborough's interests. Martin finds some of these tasks repugnant but knows their successful completion is critical to his survival and advancement.

Martin's lot improves after he helps resurrect Scarborough's position in Virginia after he attacks a peaceful Native American village and slaughters all he finds there. As Native American tribes from all about the colony gather to avenge this assault, Governor Berkeley vows to destroy Scarborough while suing for peace.

Near the end of his life, Martin finds himself importing luxury items for the Virginia elite and assessing his life in a place he now calls home as the colony recovers once again after Nathaniel Bacon, one of their own, and his followers nearly level Jamestown as they challenge the authority and position of those who came before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798885058919

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

About the Author

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Hiram Martin's Journal

Mark Knudsen

Copyright © 2023 Mark Knudsen

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2023

ISBN 979-8-88505-890-2 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88505-891-9 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Preface

I was fifteen, skilled in reading, wrote a fair hand, and had a facility for accounts when I read Edmund Scarborough's offer to pay my passage to Virginia. Like many, I had no prospects or family connections useful in finding a position suitable for someone of my talents in England. I had no permanent place to live, nor could I count on regular meals. I lived cold and hungry on the streets of Manchester after my parents died until a priest took me in as a drudge. It was here that I learned the skills upon which I depended for the rest of my life.

Scarborough's offer was irresistible. I was to give him seven years of my labor, after which I would be free to follow my own course. I ended up giving him much more, but that is later to tell. I made clear to his agent my skills; for my troubles, he merely grunted.

For better or worse, Virginia is now my home. My name is Hiram Martin. Most simply call me Martin. And now that I have reached nearly the end of my life, I make public my journal, which I have faithfully kept since my arrival in 1636, about thirty years after Virginia's founding. Only now after Edmund Scarborough's death do I feel safe enough to reveal to those interested what I have seen and experienced in the years I have lived in Northampton, once called Accomack Shire. Whether I have made the best of my story or a muck of things in this endeavor will be for those who read these pages to decide. Regardless, the reader will find in these pages the true thoughts and observations of someone who lived through these times.

Of those men I met—for they were always men—I knew Edmund Scarborough the best, so my story begins with him. There had been others as important, even more important, in this corner of the English world, but since Scarborough lured me here and governed my life until he died in 1671, it is only fair that I start with him.

Chapter 1

I first met Scarborough in the late spring of 1636, when I stepped from the Traveler, grateful to be off that miserable bark. I had sailed with fifty-six souls like me who were lured to Virginia in the hopes of a life better than one found on English streets. To us, Virginia was an opportunity, a chance at a life denied to us in England. But I get ahead of myself. Five of us, whose names and faces I have forgotten, were bound for Scarborough's place; the others, none of whom I ever saw again, were scattered about the plantations found along the James and York Rivers.

I did not always live on the streets in Manchester. It was only after my parents and siblings died in a wave of disease that swept the city in 1627 that I found myself on my own, without a family, without a home, scrambling with other boys for what food we could find. Like most boys my age, I stole from the unwary and cadged shelter and food when and where I could. I was small for my age and had to rely upon my wit to survive rather than the brawn that came to many on the streets.

My life changed when Father Michael pulled me from the trash behind St. Ann as I plowed through for something to eat or, better yet, to sell. He was a gruff man and was as eager to use the back of his hand as his words to command obedience. I was a victim of both. His first words to me were, I have work for you to do if you can stand it. I suspect you will find yourself at home doing it since you seem to enjoy plowing through our trash.

Not all priests could read or write, but enough could to help me when they were so inclined. Mostly, though, I listened and watched closely as they went about their work, careful not to let on what I was about. The same was true with numbers; they were much easier for me to learn than all the sounds and scribbles that came with reading and writing. Those who caught me undertaking this clandestine learning would help me if they were not too busy with their own duties. By the time I was fifteen, I was fairly proficient in these skills, though I was careful to not let on how proficient.

I never experienced fear on the streets, just cold, hunger, and a sense that my future would be little more than that which I had already experienced. St. Ann's sheltered me from the worst. There were dangers there too, but for the most part, I felt safe and grateful that I had a place to sleep and eat in relative peace. When I turned fifteen, the priests expected me to take vows, but I had no desire to join them. I was restless but had no place to go until I saw Scarborough's advertisement.

I traveled south from Manchester to join others who planned to travel to Virginia. In all, there would be fifty-six of us, mostly farmers and laborers who had fewer chances in England than I. We each signed a piece of paper stating that we would work for our sponsors for seven years. At the end of that period, they were to provide us with enough land and implements to start our own farms. Scarborough's agents kept a close eye on the five of us who signed his paper as we traveled. To those who hired us, we represented 2,800 acres of land and seven years of labor when we arrived. We were a princely sum.

My first true taste of fear was when I stepped on the deck of the Traveler. I stopped cold at the top of the ladder that descended into the Traveler's hold when I realized I would be only inches away from a watery death. I could go no farther on my own. Only with the pushing and cursing of those behind me that I was able to make my way to my bunk, a narrow, uncomfortable affair on the third level, which would be my home for I knew not how long.

A deck light cast its light feebly into the gloom, and where its light did not reach, a flickering oil flame tried in vain to dispel the darkness. A stink from the lowest level assaulted my nostrils as I stumbled to my assigned place. As I did, I could hear the water whisper my name and laugh at me as the boat bobbed in the harbor. I was truly afraid; my wit and facility with words would serve me no purpose here if the ship suddenly broke up far out at sea.

The Traveler, I learned later, was a carrack, a three-masted oceangoing large vessel used by explorers and traders alike. Its high stern and forecastles and round blackened hull made it a cumbersome sailing ship, but it could haul up to one thousand tons and could carry as many as two hundred people. For those reasons, it was a popular choice among those who made their living on the oceans. None of this I knew when I first stepped aboard and made my way to what the others and I would call home for, as one sailor informed me, as long as it took.

We left Plymouth three days later, sailing south much to my surprise. I had assumed we would simply head west, but one of the sailors explained, The winds and currents do not favor us this far north. We go south first and then west off the coast of Spain to catch more favorable winds and currents. The man laughed as he explained further, As long as it takes—sometimes six weeks, sometimes eight or longer. Best make yourself as comfortable and accept what the wind and water bring. With that, he left me with my dread.

The first big storm struck three weeks after we left Plymouth. The Traveler had turned west, picking up the steady wind and current from the east. I had been on deck in the late afternoon when I felt the wind sharpen, and in the south, I saw gray clouds welling up from the horizon, speeding in our direction. Soon, the water turned choppy, and ocean swells grew larger.

Could be a good blow, a sea hand said to me. Best you get below before it gets rough. With that, he and the others began to batten down all they could before the winds and waves washed them away. The rain began to fall as I made my way below, and as I did, large waves crashed over the deck, washing the deck clean of unsecured debris. The captain ordered the sails stricken and secured as the crew made ready for the storm.

The sound of the high winds and crashing waves above us had some scrambling for their Bibles; others simply prayed silently. I tossed about on my bunk as a wallowing sickness entered my stomach and a cold sweat broke out along my spine. I had never been so miserable in soul or in body as I was that night.

Two hours after the storm hit, a sailor came through, dousing all the lamps, leaving us in complete darkness. The cook had doused the galley fires earlier as a precaution. There was no meal that night—not that anyone had any appetite. For six hours, the sea tossed and rolled the Traveler. The loud, crashing waves and rain fed my fears and those around me, if their strenuous prayers were any indication. The sounds of the pumps did little to quell our fear as the water raged just outside Traveler's oaken planks. Its fanatical laughter rang in my ears until I fell asleep sometime after midnight.

The next morning, all was calm, as if the previous night was a hallucination, a frightful dream. A friendly, steady wind blew, allowing the Traveler to make steady progress through a smooth sea. When I emerged on deck, all seemed normal, as if the past night had not happened, but it had. It was then that I swore that if I were to survive this voyage, I would never sail again, an oath I have kept all these years.

For a lad of fifteen, the voyage should have been a glorious adventure; but I remember only the fear, discomfort, and tedium that accompanied me on this four-month journey. My fellow travelers did little to break the tedium, though I tried to engage them in conversation. They turned aside my efforts, muttering the barest of words. After a while, I stopped trying, leaving myself with my thoughts. During the day, I found myself in the middle of a watery expanse with no land in sight and no end to the rolling of the ship or the large waves that would sweep unexpectedly across the deck. There was no end to it, and to my mind, there was no progress to our ultimate destination.

My only solace was that the Traveler's crew and captain strode the deck in the worse of the weather and seas as if nothing was amiss. In quiet moments between the wind's lashings, I would hear them trod on the deck, shouting orders, as I lay in my bunk, unable to move, listening to the water shout and laugh my name. I did what I could to calm myself, but my anxiety never left me entirely until I set foot on the dock at Jamestown.

On the rare days when the sun broke through the clouds and warm mist rose from the deck, I would sit on the deck and gaze westward. As the blue-black sea rolled by in large log-like swells, I would search my mind about what I knew about Virginia. It did not take me long to realize that I knew nothing about this land. I had heard tales and snippets of conversation among the deckhands who seemed to fear its dark forests filled with demons and their minions, the Indians.

One crew member was fond of saying, Those devils would prefer to scrap the hair from your head than kill you outright. Another was eager to tell us all that he would rather be swept away at sea in the iciest of waters than step foot in that godforsaken place: "One does not just die in Virginia. One is tortured first, if not by the Indians, then by fevers, insects, and those who have survived thus far. No, my lads, one is safer aboard the Traveler than living in Virginia."

I had heard similar tales before I left Manchester but disregarded them as merely a means to scare the younger boys. Virginia had existed in the English imagination for about fifty years since Sir Walter Raleigh's ill-fated venture in 1586—long enough for the tales to become facts and for the facts to become frightful enough to make us, the uninitiated, wary. However, as the Traveler drew near Virginia, the stories repeated over and over again in my mind unbidden. Try as I might, I could not remove the lurid descriptions of the slaughter, disease, and mayhem that awaited the early settlers and those who followed. Despite the bravado expressed by some of the crew's audience, we all wore, when one examined our faces closely, signs of worry and fear.

My fellow passengers and I shared only the barest of words, too few to ease our hearts or to quell our anxieties. For much of the voyage, we were left to our own thoughts as the Traveler slowly sailed westward. When a behemoth the sailors called a whale surfaced and shot a tall plume of what looked like smoke from its head, a flurry of excitement swept the ship, but it was replaced quickly by the daily routine and boredom that accompanied us for the entire trip.

The crew left us pretty much alone, except in those times when one chose to regale us with what Virginia was like. For our part, we tried to stay out of the crew's way since we knew our chances of survival were much greater if they were in good humor. The time passed slowly. I filled it as best as I could by practicing my hand and doing my sums in my head, wishing all the while that the voyage would be over.

On one of the rare sunny days, as I took my position on deck, I realized that if I survived this trip, my life would never be the same. For reasons unknown to me, I felt freer than I had ever felt in my life when this realization swept through me. I felt released from the unexpressed expectations that permeated life in England. I had a notion that I could carve out my life in a fashion suitable for me in this new place.

These thoughts comforted me, but looking back now, I realize how naive I was. If anything, life in Virginia was to become for me even more proscribed than I remembered England in my youth. The dangers found here and the unremitting toil it took to survive in this land made it so, not to mention the desire among many of the planters to recreate in Virginia what they had left in England. None of this, of course, was known to me as this sense of possibility coursed through me. Maybe I was summoning from some recess deep inside me reassurance that I had made the right decision to leave the only place I knew for a place clouded with mystery and rumor.

I wondered then—and I still do today—whether my fellow passengers had similar stirrings. Expectations, propriety, class, and the daily routine of life at St. Ann's hemmed in my daily life and my future. A street urchin had few expectations of a better life, but somehow, I felt as I journeyed west that this would all change. I thought then that I would be