OUR CONQUEST OF NORTH AMERICA
The first permanent English settlement in America was begun at
Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. Gloria Catherine Dewar’s ancestor
Stephen Hopkins visited Jamestown in
1610, but returned to England a year or so later. In 1620 Hopkins and his
family sailed on the Mayflower to Plymouth Colony, the first English settlement in New England.
The Frenchman Samuel Champlain and a number of Englishmen had visited
the coast of New England previously. Native Indians had even been enslaved and
taken to England.[1] However
the first colonists in New England were the religious dissenters who
called themselves Pilgrims and other non-Pilgrims from England
who together founded Plymouth Colony. These colonists may be divided into three
groups. The first are those who sailed to New England in 1620 on the vessel Mayflower. The second are those who sailed on the
first three ships, Mayflower, Fortune (1621) and Anne (1623), who
collectively are known as the First (or Old) Comers. Third were later arrivals.
Gloria Catherine Dewar and her Murphy
offspring descend from seven passengers on the Mayflower who arrived
in New England in 1620. These are: William
Bradford who became governor of Plymouth Colony in 1621 and served in that
position for most of the next 35 years; William
Brewster, the dominant figure of the Plymouth Church; Brewster’s wife Mary and son Love Brewster; and Stephen Hopkins, a non-Pilgrim,
and his children Constance and Giles Hopkins.
The Murphys also descend from First Comers William Ford, his
wife Hannah and their first child William, and from Stephen Deane all of
whom arrived at Plymouth on the ship Fortune in 1621. The
Murphys descend from eight other First Comers who reached America on the ship Anne
in 1623. These were Edward Bangs, Nicholas
Snow, John Faunce, George Morton,
George’s wife Juliana Carpenter,
their daughter Patience Morton, and Juliana’s sister Alice Carpenter. Soon after her arrival Alice married Governor
William Bradford. Patience Morton would marry John Faunce.
Other settlements in New England followed soon after the founding of
Plymouth Colony. One was the colony at Naumkeag, a name changed in 1628 to
Salem. In 1629 a Royal Charter was granted to the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay. John Winthrop was
elected Governor and in 1630 he sailed to Salem with some 1,800 Puritans who
subsequently settled in various locations around Massachusetts Bay, which
became the towns of Boston, Charleston, Dorchester, Lynn, Medford, Roxbury and
Watertown. This early period came to be called The Great Migration. Agreement
is lacking as to when the event ended. Some say as early as 1632, others as
late as1642.
Besides the First Comers mentioned above, other ancestors participated
in the Great Migration to New England. John
Holmes arrived between 1626 and 1632. The widow Mary (Durrant) Ring and her children arrived in 1629. Richard
Masterson and his wife Mary Goodale came the same year. William
Collier and family came soon after. The family of William Knowlton, a sea captain, moved to New England in 1632
although he died on the way. Elder John
Whipple arrived in Massachusetts on the ship Lyon in 1632. Edmund Hobart arrived in 1633. Philip
Fowler and his wife Mary Winsley arrived in May 1634. Richard Kimball and his family arrived
at Boston on the ship Elizabeth in
July 1634. William Nickerson and Anne Busby with other members of
an extended family landed at Boston from the ships John and Dorothy and
the Rose of Yarmouth in 1637. The Reverend John Mayo and family
arrived in 1638. Renald/Reginald Foster arrived about 1634 with his wife
Judith Wignol and seven children, settling in Ipswich, Wessex County
about 1638. August/Austin Kilham, his wife Alice Gorball and
children came in or before 1640. Nathaniel Covell landed at Boston in
1653.
For some ancestors we have no arrival dates. Thomas Dorman was admitted a freeman in Ipswich in 1634. William Goodhue, born in Kent in 1612,
was admitted a freeman in Ipswich in
1636. William Lumpkin was living at Barnstable in 1639. Daniel Wood
was living in Ipswich in 1643. John Rice
married Ann Hackly at Dedham in
1648. Richard Hutton had a son in Wenham, MA about 1647. James Stuart
from Scotland had a son in Massachusetts in 1650. All these had obviously arrived
earlier than the dates that we do have.
Gloria Catherine Dewar and her Murphy progeny descend from all
of these families. She is therefore a Daughter of the Great Migration
and her descendants a Daughter or a Son of the Great Migration as
the case may be.
Other ancestors who were early immigrants to Massachusetts include Thomas Robinson who married Hannah Dorman in Topsfield in 1695, and
William Watkins who was in Boston
before 1690. Finally, John Trefry
and Hannah Pitman, from families who lived in Marblehead in or before
1661, are thought to have married in Marblehead about 1733.
Numerous ancestors of Kathy June (Logue) Murphy settled in the Dutch
colony of New Netherlands prior to its takeover by the British in 1664. Caspar
Steynmets arrived in 1631, Cornelius Van Schaick before 1635, and Maria
Badie and her daughter arrived between 1628 and 1638. Adam Brouwer
Berkhoven arrived in 1642. Magdalena Jacobs Verdon, who had arrived
earlier from Holland, married Adam Berkhoven in New Amsterdam in 1645. Jannetje
Van Wagener and Jacobus De Groot both arrived before 1652. Epke
Jacob (Banta) got off the boat in 1659. Pieter Janse Haring came
from the Netherlands in time for his marriage to Grietje Cozyns in Bowery
6 May 1662. Lubert Westervelt arrived about 1662. Michiel and Jan
Bastian (Van Koortrijk) sailed from Holland to New Amsterdam in the ship Der
Bonte Koe in 1663. Jan Laurenson Bogaert and his family came
on the same ship, as did David Des Marets (Demarest) and his second wife
Marie Sohier.
A number of ancestors settled in New York and New Jersey soon after the
takeover and renaming of New Netherlands by the British. Joost De Baun
and his family moved from Holland to New York about 1685. He and some members
of his family relocated to New Jersey in the early 1700s. Reyer Michielzen,
a native of Holland, died in Fordham, NY in 1733. Jan Tibout, who left
his native Bruges, Flanders about 1660, died in (probably) New York. His
daughter Jacomyntje Tibout was married in New Haerlem, NY in 1686. Mary
Merritt came from England before 1695 and died in Jamaica Bay, NY in 1737.
A Hollander, Josias Drats/Drake, married Altie Brouwer in New
York in 1682.
In 1678 David Des Marets bought a 2000-acre property between the
Hudson and Hackensack Rivers in New Jersey with a view to establishing a French
Colony there. He attracted a number of French colonists and opened a French
Church (1682) and a graveyard that still exists. His son Dirk Des
Marets (Demarest) bought land adjoining his father in 1681. Epke Jacobs was
appointed a judge in Bergen, NJ in 1679 and bought land near Hackensack the
same year. Ancestors born in New Jersey before 1700 include Johann Frederick
(1694), Jacob Banta (1696), and Anna De Math (1698).
Johann Peter Wannemacher, his brother and his sister came from Germany
to New York in 1710/11 and settled in Bergen County, New Jersey a year or so
later. Other early arrivals in New Jersey were Cornelia De Groot (before
1721), Bernhard Coole (before 1730), Christina Doolhagen (before
1730), and Johannes Westervelt (before 1735).
EARLY WARRIORS
Ancestors took part in wars against the Indians and the French in
America. Stephen, Giles and Caleb Hopkins fought Indians in the
Pequot War. Major William Bradford was wounded and Joseph
Fowler was killed fighting Indians in King Phillip’s War, 1675-76. Both William
Nickerson 2nd and Deacon William Ford fought in
the same war. In King George’s War Captain
Daniel Knowlton took part in the siege and capture, 1745, of the French
fortress of Louisbourg in what is now Nova Scotia. Captain William Watkins fought in the French and Indian War,
1754-63. Ancestors fought on both sides in the Revolutionary and 1812
Wars.
More than 100,000 descendants of the people mentioned above have since
spread out across the United States. However members of eight of our ancestor
families moved from New England to Nova Scotia before the American Revolution.
There they played a major part in the formation of an English-speaking presence
in what would one day become Canada.
Furthermore, our Wannamakers (from New Jersey) and Empire
Loyalist Russell Pitman were amongst the first settlers (1784) in what
is now eastern Ontario.
Immigrants from the old world continued to arrive in what would become
Canada. Our Fultons pioneered in central Nova Scotia. Abraham Bratt
and his wife Sarah Morgan along with William Cooper and his wife Ann
Oakley pioneered (1834) in western Ontario. Joseph Jackson and his
family were pioneers in Saskatchewan (1881) as was John Symonds (1885).
Other Jacksons were amongst the first to settle in several localities in
British Columbia.
Through the years additional Americans have come to Canada and married
into our ancestor families. However even more of our relatives have moved from
Canada to the USA. This latter phenomenon became noticeable in the late 19th
century and has continued unabated. For example in the year 2002 a
comparatively recent ancestor, Lucy Hannah Symonds, had some 29 living
descendants in the USA. In the same year Robert Thompson Murphy (1887-1974) and
his wife Norma Merriel Jackson (1899-1990) had 16 descendants resident in the
USA of whom at least half were US citizens.
[1] A map published in England in 1616 actually named the site later selected by the first colonists as Plimouth.