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Papers of the Winthrop Family, Volume 2

mundaye 14:

14 June 1630

July 1: thursday

1 July 1630
264
Thursday 17.
Winthrop, John

1630-06-17

Blank of three-quarters of an inch, measured vertically. 1

we went to mattachusettes 2 to finde out a place for our sittinge downe.

we went vp misticke river about 6: miles3

we laye at mr. mauerockes,4 and returned home on saterdaye, as we came home we came by nataskett, and sent for Capt Squib a shore, (he had brought the Plimouth west countrye people viz mr. Ludlowe mr. Rossiter mr. maverock etc: to the bay who were sett downe at mattapan) 5 and ended a difference betweene him and the passingers,6 where­ 264

[PWF02fd7]
265 vpon he sent his boat to his shipp (the one word cancelledmary and John) and at our partinge gave vs 5: peeces: at our returne we founde the Ambrose in the harbour at Salem.

1.

These blank spaces which occur in the Journal for 1630 after Winthrop's arrival in New England, may merely indicate that he was too busy to keep a diary properly. Note, however, his statement in his letter to John Winthrop, Jr., of July 23, 1630, to the effect that he is sending “a journall” of the voyage “and other occurrentes” to “your vncle D.,” and in the same letter he says, “take order that a coppye of my relation etc. be sent to Sir Nath. Barnardiston . . .” This journal or relation may have been merely a copy of the Journal printed here; but it may also have been an original, which Winthrop found time to copy only partially into the manuscript now in the possession of the Society. A search for this hypothetical “missing journal” has been made in England, without result.

2.

A name then confined to the country lying about Boston Harbor from Nahant to Point Allerton. “This journey of exploration,” writes Robert Charles Winthrop, “resulted in the immediate removal of the Governor and Company to what is now called Charlestown, and led soon afterwards to the settlement of Boston.” L. and L. II. 33. The first letter Winthrop wrote from New England is dated “Charlton in N: Eng: July 14 1630.”

3.

Such distances were apparently measured with either Governor's Island or Noddle's Island as a starting point.

4.

Maverick lived on Noddle's Island, now East Boston.

5.

Roger Ludlow (1590–1655) and Edward Rossiter (d. 1630), assistants of the Massachusetts Bay Company, and the Reverend John Maverick, were the leaders of the west-country emigration in the Mary and John, which sailed from Plymouth March 20 and arrived May 30, 1630. They were actually set down at Nantasket, made their way by boats to the site of Watertown, but decided to locate at Mattapan (Dorchester). The first Mr. Maverick mentioned above was Samuel, who came out to New England in 1623 on the Katherine, Joseph Stratton, Master, a ship sent out by Sir Ferdinando Gorges. He settled at Noddles Island (East Boston) which was formally granted to him April 1, 1633 (Records of Massachusetts, I. 104) for a yearly rent of a “fatt weather, a fatt hogg, or XL. shillings in money.” He was a “gentleman of good estate,” and “Josselyn, who visited him 10 July, 1638, calls him 'the only hospitable man in all the country, giving entertainment to all comers gratis.'” Like Blackstone (Blaxton), who came on the same ship the same year, he was a Church of England man. For the statement that Samuel Maverick was the son of the Reverend John Maverick (1577–1637) of Beaworthy, co. Devon, see New England Historical and Genealogical Register, XLVIII. 207–209; and also Banks, Planters of the Commonwealth, 56, 89. For a good account of Ludlow, see D. N. B. Notice of Rossiter's death is to be found in Dudley's “Letter to the Countess of Lincoln,” Young, Chronicles, 318.

6.

For this dispute between Captain Squib and his passengers, see “Roger Clap's Memoirs,” young, Chronicles, 348–349. A Captain Squib went out for the “discovery and Survey” of Mount Mansell in 1622. Clap was one of the passengers on the Mary and John, for which see Banks, The Winthrop Fleet, 100–102.