i go back to my research, on the leverett family in the early puritan days, and it's full of surprises; it never stops surprising me. i'll give you a couple of different examples. both are related to rainsborough.

the governor, governor leverett, who i am allegedly related to, was an interesting guy; he'd taken the ship over here at the age of 17, got married and started trading and doing business, and he joined the artillery, where the old soldiers hung out and talked about life in puritan massachusetts. but at one point this guy, isaac, comes around, and says, we need soldiers back in england, to overthrow the king. the king is a pompous bastard; a blatant liar, things he's a god, wastes money, raises taxes, drives the place into ruin, and we've had enough, we're taking up arms. isaac stoughton intends to take a group of colonists back to fight in the civil war to overthrow the monarchy, and leverett goes. he is now about 26. a guy named william hudson, and also nehemiah bourne go with them. all four go, and are put in rainsborough's regiment.

now i had kind of lost track of this, so i went back looking for the information about what this regiment did, and what exactly happened. it was only a couple of years of his life, so it kind of got lost in the shuffle, though it made him a war hero. he was a war hero yes, but a war hero on the side of oliver cromwell, who had his own problems as history rolled out. i knew 1) that rainsborough's regiment was pretty much immobile, and stationed in lincolnshire, where leverett was from; it was paid for by lincolnshire, so it didn't sweep the country as the other regiments did; 2) that leverett had his own regiment within rainsborough's larger one, so that hudson was under him; 2) that hudson, upon returning home, found his wife in bed with his servant, and she was almost hung as death was the penalty for adultery. this information by the way was of interest to me because we are investigating what happens when people don't live up to the strict puritan moral codes.

ah but come to find out that rainsborough was a leveler, and so was his brother, so this meant that some radicals, the 1600's version of the socialists, had entered into the war against the crown, for their own reasons, and though cromwell himself might not have been a leveler, rainsborough and his brother and anyone associated with him, by nature, would at least be willing to be associated with the word. double-you tee eff...

and i find out another thing. there is another puritan colony at that time. in other words, massachusetts is one of two. can you guess where that might be? i had never heard of this one. it was in paradise island, off the coast of nicaragua.

back to my research - there is so much to learn!