spent some time looking into a certain ancestor of mine, william brewster. he was a "first comer," came over on the mayflower, and his daughter's daughter's daughter's son's daughter married my great-great grandfather.

he was a leader of the "separatists," who came to be romanticized as pilgrims seeking the freedom to worship as they pleased. now much has been written about the mayflower and in fact much of it has been romanticized - the mayflower compact, the encampment at plymouth, the leaders, which included brewster, but also myles standish and william bradford. so there is no shortage of information out there.

his sons love and wrestling were also on the mayflower. his daughters fear and patience arrived three years later, and patience married a guy named thomas prence, who went on to be governor of the colony several times. of their four children, one was a daughter who had another daughter etc. that much is clear and well documented, unlike the leveretts, who have all kinds of issues with our just proving we go back that far.

but here's the kicker. a few years back a guy wrote a book about a kid, who was one of four placed on the mayflower as servants in the care of the adults. one of these kids was named richard more, and he lived to become a very colorful character in colonial new england. but what they had found out is this: the four kids' father had placed them on the boat to get rid of them. he had discovered that his wife had had them by another man, as they had grown up to resemble that man more than they resembled him. and he'd placed them on the boat because he didn't want them around.

now william brewster and his wife, and the two sons who were with them, took on two of these kids, richard and his sister mary. mary and the other two died either on the voyage or immediately after, as the mayflower landed in a brutal winter and they were almost totally unprepared. richard not only survived but came to have an interesting book written about him. the author's premise (or one of them perhaps; i haven't read it) is that this richard guy is in some ways more representative of the people who made the colonies than some of the others.

william brewster indeed was the kind of guy for whom separatism had become a central issue. he valued freedom of worship and being away from the king. he was wanted by the king for printing 'treasonous' tracts and had been in hiding in the netherlands for several years.

but he also took on these kids. did he know about their past? did he know about why they were on the mayflower?

the virginia plantations had already had a head start. they were organizing and sending people to the colonies as they needed workers and hands, and kids were good that way. they had an investment. they had the right to trade furs in some cases or the ability to grow food and send it up and down the coast or wherever they could find a market. in terms of business, lots of people on the mayflower were simply in it for the money. the kids, of course, had no choice. their job was to survive and they in some cases just couldn't do it.

i'm curious about the moral culpability of taking on a kid or two, taking them across the ocean into an uncertain fate, knowingly (or perhaps not) separating them from their mother who, angry, was filing suit to prevent their abduction. brewster in other ways was a guy who resonated with me - printing separatist tracts, teaching esl/efl abroad, naming his kids jonathan, love, fear, patience, and wrestling. his wife mary is interesting too in that survival at that time the best i can figure depended on the strength of the women. and though patience died of smallpox after only a few years, her daughter, and that daughter's daughter, seemed to figure out how to get by and prosper, at least to a point in northeast ohio in about 1830.

it appears the mayflower wasn't the first, because jamestown actually had been established already and out here in new mexico, the spanish had been up near albuquerque and santa fe for years. and it's all a sensitive topic these days, when people are changing from columbus day to indigenous people's day, and thanksgiving is going underground, and in short it's an embarrassment to be a white guy trumpeting white colonists' murderous impulses. i'd like to prove that brewster kept his promises, treated the indigenous people with respect, and carried on like we could all live in harmony. but what good does it do for one white guy to keep his promises when those around him are butchering people and stealing land? if that was the case, he was a pawn in a larger colonial game, one that had gone on in other places besides north america. it was a general pattern, not something we white folks should go parading around bragging about.

on the other hand, because these are my ancestors, i have no qualms about at least learning more about who they were, and what they said. the challenge is to not put my own interpretation on it, or read too much into it. they were there, they had children, they survived, and here i am. that's all i know for sure.