Wednesday, March 30, 2022

 

Grandfather's Frank Hugh Robinson's Story of the 1630 Fleet of Ships and Our Ancestor

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

                                                                Meppershall High Street

Our DNA connects us to a Robinson line with us both coming from Meppershall, Bedforshire, England.  Meppershall is a hilltop village in Bedfordshire near Shefford, Campton, Shillington, Stondon and surrounded by farmland. The village and the manor house are mentioned in the Domesday Book in 1086 - with the entry reading: Malpertesselle/Maperteshale: Gilbert FitzSolomon. (Fitz (pronounced "fits") was a patronymic indicator used in Anglo-Norman England to help ... Thus fitz Bernard, would indicate the person so referred was "son of .Bernard;  ..  Irish families used this when anglicizing their Gaelic patronymic surnames.)

Actually, our Big Y DNA test shows we are connected to the Fitzpatricks of Ireland. Our Big Y DNA test shows my 1st cousin Robinson matching James V Dyer, A. Sullivan and D.L. Fitzpatrick  Grandpa Robinson had told us that our ancestors were from Wales, however.  Well, at about age 16, he had left home and must have had a shaky knowledge of his family lore.  

Through a few samples of DNA of someone in the group saying they are on the genealogy of Isaac Robinson, this is not our Robinson line, but it is the line that my grandfather, Frank Hugh Robinson (6/21/1870-5/27/1952) thought we belonged to.  He had said that his ancestors came over not on the Mayflower but a ship after that.  He and I took for granted that he was talking about his Robinson line.  It could have been another.  He was not a Quaker, but a Methodist.  

In 1630 John Winthrop (1587-1649) organized a fleet of 11 ships to carry almost 1000 immigrants from England to America and founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Departing in two groups in April and May, they arrived at various dates in June and July.

A key catalyst for this big migration was the internal strife in England in the first half of the 17th Century.  The Stuart dynasty has just come to power and aligned itself with the Church of England (Anglican faith) and began intense persecution of those who practised Catholicism (the predecessor of Anglican church) and Puritans, which was the intended to be a even more "pure" form of Christian faith than either the Catholic or Anglican church.  There was also the rich acquiring up a lot of farmlands forcing the poor off their farms and into London.  Then the Thirty Years War started in 1618 that pitted England and other Protestant countries against the Catholic countries of Spain and Central Europe.

The Winthrop Fleet consisted of eleven ships sailing from Yarmouth, Isle of Wight to Salem. Some sailed April 8, arriving June 13, 1630 and the following days, the others to sail in May, arriving in July.

Winthrop Fleet Large list of names of passengers to New England 1630 on board the ships: The Ambrose; The Arabella; The Charles; The Hopewell; The Jewel; The Mayflower; The Success; The Talbot ; The Trial; The Whale; The William & Francis. This list is from the excellent book: _The Winthrop Fleet of 1630_: (An Account of the Vesselseake, Robert Fien English Homes from Original Authorities) by Charles Edward Banks. It is believed by Banks to be a complete list, gathered from many sources.

From another source: 

The Winthrop Fleet consisted of eleven ships sailing from Yarmouth, Isle of Wright to Salem. Some sailed April 8, arriving June 13, 1630 and the following days, the others to sail in May, arriving in July. The total count of passengers is believed to be about seven hundred, and presumed to have included the following people. Financing was by the Mass. Bay Company.

The ships were the 1.Arbella flagship with Capt Peter Milburne, the 2.Ambrose, the 3.Charles, the 4.Mayflower, the 5.Jewel, the 6.Hopewell, the 7.Success, the 8.Trial, the 9.Whale, the 10.Talbot and the 11.William and Francis.

Sailed April 8 1630: Ambrose, Arbella, Hopewell, Talbot, (arrived June 13)

Sailed May 1630: Charles, Jewel, Mayflower, Success, Trial, Whale, William and Francis (arrived in July).  

(Ships Lyon 1630 and Mary and John sailed in 1631.)

Winthrop wrote to his wife just before they set sail that there were seven hundred passengers.  Six months after their arrival, Thomas Dudley wrote to Bridget Fiennes, Countess of Lincoln and mother of Lady Arbella and Charles Fiennes, that over two hundred passengers had died between their landing April 30 and the following December, 1630.  That letter traveled via the Lyon April 1, 1631 and reached England four week later.

 In 1630, their population was significantly increased when the ship Mary and John arrived in New England carrying 140 passengers from the English West Country counties of Dorset, Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. These included William Phelps along with Roger LudloweJohn MasonRev. John Warham and John MaverickNicholas Upsall, Henry Wolcott and other men who would become prominent in the founding of a new nation. It was the first of eleven ships later called the Winthrop Fleet to land in Massachusetts. (none of my surnames)

Isaac Robinson, son of Pastor John Robinson, who sent the Pilgrims in Holland on the Mayflower in 1620,:  Isaac arrived Boston Harbor on ship Lyon. He had departed from Bristol on December 11, 1630 on a tempestuous 66-day journey..  That's 2 months on a ship with sails and no motor.  He arrived on February 5, 1631 in the Boston Harbor.  

The Lyon made the rare journey in the vicious Atlantic storms of a Little Ice Age winter, stuffed full of supplies, food, and “a store of lemons” to curb the starvation and scurvy rampant in Massachusetts. That ship carried only about 20 passengers, including Rev. Roger Williams.
The ship’s master, William Pierce, wrote to John Winthrop just before departure and presumably sent the letter by a small, fast ship, “and now having obyned some quantity my ship is so full that I cannott take in what I would and should; but mr. allerton hath a ship to depart from barnstable very shortly, unto the which we send away what I cannot take in. I wish with all my heart you were here at present to help in the Busines I am over chardged with, to my leisure. if the lord did not greatly sustayn me I should be over whelmed with it. I do now with all my strength endevor to be gon to sea.”
On Nov. 11, after another food and supplies delivery from the Lyon, Boston held a day of thanksgiving. Plymouth Colony people traveled to Boston to celebrate a thanksgiving feast. (none of my surnames, except Bartlett, name on a DNA match) 

Dyer is a very close Y haplogroup and DNA match to our Robinson.
 On 6 June 1660, five days after the execution of Mary Barrett Dyer, a Quaker,  Isaac Robinson “for being a manifest opposer of the laws of this government expressed by him in a letter directed the Governor and otherwise” is disfranchised of the freedom of the corporation.  "What were they to do? a book, Mary Dyer Illuminated.  Books on William and Mary Dyer.  The books closely follow and personalize many more luminaries than the Dyers: William and Anne Hutchinson, John Winthrop, John Cotton, Thomas Dudley, Isaak Johnson, and other brave and brilliant people."

An interlineation following says, there being some mistake in this, Isaac Robinson is re-established and by general vote of the court, accepted again [PCR 3:189]; this interlineation may have been made as late as 1673, for Isaac Robinson is not in the 29 May 1670 list of Plymouth freemen, and on 4 July 1673 Plymouth Court “voted Mr. Isacke Robinson to be reestablished in the privilege of a freeman of this corporation” [PCR 5:126]. http://www.revjohnrobinson.com/isaac.htm  
1704             Isaac died, aged 94, at daughter Fear Robinson Baker’s home in Barnstable, Mass.
Isaac:  

Son of Rev. John Robinson, M.A. and Bridget Robinson
Husband of Margaret Robinson and Mary Robinson
Father of Susannah RobinsonReverend John RobinsonIsaac RobinsonFear BakerMercy Weeks and 5 others
Brother of Ann SchetterDr. John RobinsonBridget LeeMercy Robinson, Died YoungInfant Robinson and 4 others



Resource; 

American Revolutionary War

Read more: http://rootingforancestors.blogspot.com/2018/12/2018-christy-k.html#ixzz7M6oF4Vgk


Read more: http://rootingforancestors.blogspot.com/2018/12/2018-christy-k.html#ixzz7M6nW7Ruq



Read more: http://rootingforancestors.blogspot.com/2018/12/2018-christy-k.html#ixzz7M6lLlRnx

Resource:

http://wwwrobinsongenealogy.blogspot.com/2019/07/first-robinsons-to-america-ships-first.html

https://familypedia.fandom.com/wiki/Immigrant_ships_to_America/First_Families/Winthrop_Fleet#:~:text=In%201630%20John%20Winthrop%20(1587,dates%20in%20June%20and%20July.

Frank Hugh Robinson's family story

They Came In Ships, by John P. Colletta, Ph.D.

https://www.packrat-pro.com/ships/winthrop.htm

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