This can get a little complicated. I’ve been thinking this through and I’m not there yet. I’m not sure I’ll ever be there, but this is where I am today. It’s a mess, right? This place we call home. A mess. A bloody mess. And there’s anger and resentment and so much to learn about each other. There’s a lot on my mind. (What a weird phrase … on my mind. Social media prompts frequently ask me what’s on my mind. Like it’s a location that deserves a preposition. I digress.)
Lately, William Boynton has been on my mind. One of the things the pandemic has done is given me some time to take a glance at the old family tree. It’s an old tree. I mean. There’s a lot there. I’ve got it back to almost 1004. (Yeah … the turn of the last millennia … who knew?) And William was the first of my line to climb aboard this country.
In 1638. Plymouth Rock was 1620. So, you know … it was a while ago.
According to Ancestry.com William is my ninth great grandfather. He’s also part of a LONG line of Williams, and Calebs and Daniels, which makes it damn difficult to trust Ancestry.com. You have to really pay attention to dates and leave it for a while and then come back to see if connections have been made. And those are tenuous at best.
It’s like everyone is guessing at the same riddle — Where did we come from and how the hell did we end up here? I’ve got it down with a bit of certainty to 1638.
So here he is. William. A Yankee. There’s quite a bit written about him, actually. He was given 5 pounds by the church to build an addition to his house for a school. Contingent upon that “loan” he would have to teach the local village. Not only children but everyone who wanted to learn. If he ever decided to stop, he’d have to pay the church back 2.7 pounds. The Puritans were weird, huh?
But here’s what I’ve been thinking. And here’s where I am today. Why did he come here? What persuaded him to grab Elizabeth and get on the ship John of London with Rev. Ezekiel Rogers (and the first printing press that came to the new world by the way). Reverend Rogers was a nonconformist. Apparently, he feared for the “future of Puritanism” and left England with twenty families (mine included) and settled in Rowley, Massachusetts.
So here’s the known knowns. (Maybe … I warned you I wasn’t up to here yet.) William left a pretty sweet deal in England. (There’s a longer story here I have yet to flesh out, but he was probably the grandson of an aristocratic family. I’m not there yet and I’m running out of verifiable proof. He might have been a religious whacko. Or maybe just anxious for adventure. Who knows, really?) He set up a shop, was a tradesman, and a teacher. A craftsman.
Here’s the unknowns. (And I’m relying on my vivid imagination here, so … you know … ). He believed in himself enough to get on a ship with his wife and head to a new place. One that was only 18 years into being a place (or actually a place that was stolen from people who were already here, but … like I said, I can’t really get into that at the moment.)
I know his offspring sided with the Colonists even though they enjoyed a commission from George III. I know that the offspring of that offspring sided with the Union. I know that they worked the land. I know that the offspring of that offspring of that offspring defended this country in a couple of World Wars.
But I’m betting William could never imagine what this place is now. Where we are. Where I am. I’m fairly certain he probably wouldn’t approve of what we did with this country. (Unless he was a religious whacko, in the which case all bets are off.)
And I can only hope he would be proud of me for wanting to know his story.
Isn’t that what we can all agree on? That we should all at least try to make enough of this country to be worthy of the considerable efforts of our ancestors?