“To Miss Ruth Fletcher,
“Srcoby, England.
“Most dearly beloved sister, Governor Winthrop has informed us that ye Lyon will soon set sail for England so I will give this letter to Richard Gardner, who will bring it to you when he come to Scrooby, that you may know how we are faring in the new land. While we have endured many hard ships one repents not, he has come hither or desires to go back for we count happiness enough that we are free to enjoy God and Jesus Christ. We will shortly have a church in a settlement near here, which is called Boston and there will soon be many others for all do exult in ye escapt from oppression and are happy to continue here. You cannot think how full of courage these Pilgrims be.
...
A ship came into ye harbor at Charleston, laden with provisions, and was not that good cause for Thanksgiving? I believe that will grow into a custom of keeping days of thankfulness’ to God for away cut here we feel how much we have to depend on His good providence and we praise Him that He has brought us safely through so many hard ways. Do you know how Grovernor Bradford, ye first year after coming to Plymouth appointed a day of Thanksgiving in November and had a fine dinner of game and deer meat and fruit and many other de-licacies and had for guests ye Indian Chief Massasoit and his warriors? Ch[sic] but I think that was a time of real rejoicing for those pilgrims that had been guided by God across ye Great Ocean and been sum lied with so many good things and had been befriended by ye savages.
...
Robert made ye journey to Plymouth which is more than 12 leagues, from here, hoping to find where ye body of our dear brother, Moses [Fletcher, sic] is laid, but as you know the place was made into field so that ye savages might not know how many had died and he could not find ye spot but it is with God."
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Notes:
1. Biographical Summary:
Moses Fletcher [who came over on the Mayflower] died the first winter [in Massachusets], his children staying in Leyden, Holland. None of his children came to America, so Moses Fletcher's descendants are Dutch, and live in the Netherlands. For more detailed information on the known descendants of Moses Fletcher, see the Mayflower Quarterly, Vol. 41. His descendants do not carry the Fletcher surname, because in Holland children's surnames were derived from their father's first name.
(Moses Fletcher geneology records, link)
2. This is from a family letter which was published in the Blair, Nebraska, newspaperr on September 29, 1949. It was originally found in the 1900 Herman (Nebraska) Record. My greatgrandfather was Freeman Edward Fletcher from Maine.
I have reproduced this letter, using OCR (optical character recognition) of a scan. My orginal is a copy of the letter typed in 1949. It is on my blog, link.
3. Read the entire letter, click here.
Thanksgiving Holiday
That's fascinating! What's the Jim bunch gonna eat today??
ReplyDeleteThanks for the interesting facts about the Jim family tree. Hoping you have a great gathering of thanks with family and friends today. Now give the Mrs. a break today and help with the dishes, please.
ReplyDelete