The Prence situation

Recently I was challenged, and actually it was a challenge I had already faced and thought about to some degree. The challenge is this: You research your Leverett ancestor, from eleven to thirteen generations ago, but if you go back that far there are over two thousand people who played an equal part, genetically, in who you are. Are you going to research any of them? Obviously none of them were Leveretts; only one out of the 2048/4096 was a Leverett.

The fact is that I had already started in on one of them: William Brewster. And there are stunning things about him that will easily make a book. So after this particular conversation I googled him again and came out with a simple kindle unlimited book on the Mayflower that reviews some of the things we know about him. He's an amazing guy. Here are some things I've found:

First, we are related to him through Harriet, my great-great grandmother who I just wrote a book about (see below). This line is apparently all women; in other words, it was his daughter Patience who had a daughter, who had another, who had another, etc., and if you go down through Harriet, she had a daughter (Carrie) who had daughters (Belle had only sons) - so there are women around today, my third or fourth cousins, who would have come down a direct line of women (you may have to let me check that for sure, or document it carefully) - from Patience, survivor of the early days of the colony.

Patience arrived after her father William, who with his sons Love and Wrestling arrived on the Mayflower itself, in 1620 (?). She arrived in 1623. There are remarkable things about her story. First, she married Thomas Prence, Governor of the Massachusetts Colony. Second, she died of smallpox early on, but after she'd had a couple of kids including a daughter.

Her marriage to Prence is important for many reasons. Of the Anglos who came to Massachusetts in the early days, Puritans (including the Leveretts) were the majority and by far the dominant strain. They settled Boston, Charlestown, Salem, Dedham, most of the towns along the Mass. Bay in the 1630s in what is called the Great Migration. But the Pilgrims were important too for several reasons. One was that their ardent separatism was distinct from the Puritans who wanted to purify the church but stay in it. The Pilgrims settled in Plymouth and dominated that area but were not the only people who lived in Plymouth and Duxbury and down along the south shore. Their desire to be separate caused them to make an effort to make their own distinct government as they were determined to survive and run things themselves outside of any oversight by the crown.

William Brewster was, in these early days, the leader of the Pilgrim band. His younger compatriot William Bradford would get a lot of credit and would be easily confused with him, as they were both all over the place with their political and religious leadership. But the main point was that they survived. And that the marriage of Patience to Prence put the two colonies together; it joined them.

Years later history would grab onto that "religious freedom" idea of the Pilgrims and make the Pilgrims heroes of the early settlement of Massachusetts and the colony. Those separatists were actually a minority on the Mayflower itself, and definitely a minority in Massachusetts when they finally got established there. The majority (Puritans) had no use for religious freedom or tolerance although they weren't about to go wipe the Pilgrims out. The Mass. colony and Plymouth colony were separate, simply survivors in those early days. The people who filled the boats just looking for ways to make money, to run across the oceans, etc., filled out the background. They had no particular religious orientation but were opportunists to some degree - if you establish a town, with a church, I'll live in the town. And maybe go to church. Those were the majority of the Mayflower. But the Mayflower had its problems and a lot of its people didn't make it through that first winter. William and Love were among the lucky ones.

Once again, Patience had an unbroken string of daughters leading down to the present and crossing our line of Leveretts in about 1857 with the marriage of Harriet to James Walker. I'll have to research this a little better. I find all aspects of her life to be interesting, but I'm not surprised to find her dying of smallpox as so many people did. Lots to document here. And there are books out there about William Brewster, the leader, father of Fear, Love, Patience, and Wrestling (and another?) - those were the days.