1621 Gossip 0n 4 Women who Cooked the 1st Puritan Thanksgiving

1899 painting, The 1st Puritan Thanksgiving 1621 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris   Jean Leon Gerome Ferris !863-1930)  was an American painter best known for his series of 78 scenes from American history, entitled The Pageant of a Nation, the largest series of American historical paintings by a single artist.

Four Women Who Cooked the 1st Puritan Thanksgiving

The New England Historical Society conjectures that 4 women who cooked the 1st Puritan Thanksgiving probably didn’t feel all that thankful, when they learned there would be 90 guests, all Wampanoag men that their husbands may have invited , to eat with them.

They were the only women left after the 1st deadly winter that killed half of Plymouth Colony. They died of exhaustion, starvation, pneumonia, scurvy & cold. By springtime, 14 women had perished. The 4 women left managed to feed 143 people without kitchens, ovens, wheat, spices or butter.

Their dinner guests may have shown up unexpectedly, or...perhaps their menfolk had invited them to seal a peace deal. The meal itself – or rather meals, because they stayed for three days – served as more of a harvest celebration than a Thanksgiving.

The women faced another challenge: getting along with each other. Cooking for so many people required cooperation among the 4, who had different backgrounds & aspirations. They included a Saint, a Goodwife, a Traveler & a Troublemaker.

The colonists referred to themselves as “Saints” & “Strangers” or “Travelers.” The devout Saints wanted to separate from the Church of England & crossed the Atlantic for religious freedom. Strangers came for adventure & opportunity. That both Saints & Strangers signed the Mayflower Compact shows the inclusiveness of the colonists.

That 1st Puritan Thanksgiving was cooked by 2 Saints, Mary Brewster & Susanna Winslow, & 2 Strangers, Elizabeth Hopkins & Eleanor Billington. But they probably all deserved sainthood for cooking all that food. The men just “feasted & entertained,” according to one of their husbands.

Goodwife Susanna White Winslow had married Edward Winslow, had married Susanna in May, about 5 months earlier. He would serve as Plymouth’s governor & diplomat, & together they would prosper. So at 29, Susanna Winslow was a rising figure in the little colony...

Her 1st husband had a common name, & no one seems to really know which Englishman named William White boarded the Mayflower with her. Susanna & William brought their young son, Resolved, about 5 years old. Susanna was pregnant, & gave birth to their 2nd son, Peregrine, below decks on the Mayflower as it lay at anchor in Massachusetts Bay. Odd as “Resolved” & “Peregrine” may seem, their names were typical of the Puritans. They suggest Susanna was a Saint.

William died in February & another  wife Elizabeth Winslow died in March. Forty-eight days after Elizabeth died, Edward married Susanna. He brought to the union a daughter, Margaret, about 3 years old.

Edward & Susanna had practical & emotional reasons for marrying so soon after their spouses died. Martyn Whittock points out in Mayflower Lives, “Shared faith, shared history, mutual respect, &, no doubt, physical as well as emotional attraction drew them together. & there is plenty of evidence for loving physical union enhancing partnership in the godly marriages.”

A portrait of Edward Winslow suggests a happy marriage. In his hand he holds a letter. The last three lines read, “From your loving wife, Susanna.” The portrait was painted in 1651, 30 years after their wedding.

William Brewster's wife was Mary Brewster, who was a Saint. Puritans believed in social hierarchy, so one can easily guess who took charge of the cooking operation. Mary probably wished she had the help of her 2 daughters, Patience, 21, & Fear, 15, to cook for all those people. But the Brewsters left their daughters behind. They believed, like many of the colonists, that the weaker sex might not survive the journey. That Mary joined her husband tells us something about her grit, her courage & her deep religious faith.

The Brewsters did bring their two boys with them, Love & Wrestling, about 11 & 7 at the 1st Thanksgiving. They would have helped prepare the meal, along with little Resolved White & Margaret Winslow. Richard More, their 7-year-old servant, would have helped, too.

Young Richard had come with three siblings, all dead by the time of the 1st Thanksgiving. Known as one of the Mayflower Love Children, Richard’s legal father had sent the children to America, when he discovered he was not their biological father. Patience & Fear arrived in Plymouth a few years later, along with older brother Jonathan. Fear married another saint, Isaac Allerton.

Another female survivor was Elizabeth Hopkins, Traveler. Two years before boarding the Mayflower, Elizabeth Hopkins, married one of the most interesting Plymouth colonists, Stephen Hopkins. She was 33, he was a 36-year-old widower with 3 children. He had already survived a shipwreck in the Caribbean & taken part in the settlement of Jamestown before returning to England. His adventure as a castaway on a Caribbean island probably inspired Shakespeare to create the character Stephano in The Tempest.

Stephen, a rough-&-ready sort, planned to return to Virginia with his family. His family included Constance, 14, & Giles, 12, the t2 surviving children from his 1st marriage. Little Damaris was about three.  She probably hoped to have her baby on land, but crosswinds & storms extended the unpleasant Mayflower voyage. She gave birth to Oceanus in a dark, cramped berth below the decks of the gyrating vessel.

Stephen, though a Traveler, held a position of importance in the colony. Because of his time in Jamestown, he could hunt, & he knew about Native Americans. When the English-speaking Native American Samoset came to Plymouth, Elizabeth & Stephen put him up that night in their tiny house.

The house had at the very most three rooms, cramped quarters 4 adults, 3 children & the Hopkins’ 2 servants, Edward Doty & Edward Leister. The crowding probably didn’t help anyone’s temper. The 2 servants had fought & wounded each other in a sword-&-dagger duel a few months before that Thanksgiving...

 They would have 5 more children, run a tavern & occasionally get into trouble with the authorities. Stephen had to pay fines for allowing drinking & shuffleboard on Sunday, for overserving & for overcharging customers. But theirs seems to have been a successful partnership. When Stephen died in 1644 his will directed he be buried as close as possible to Elizabeth.

Eleanor Billington, on the other hand, was a troublemaker from a troublemaking family. The younger of her 2 sons, Francis, nearly burned down the Mayflower as it lay anchored in Plymouth Harrbor in December of 1620. He’d set off some homemade fireworks with his father’s gunpowder.

Eleanor had a hard time controlling her sons... Both tended to wander off unsupervised. In one case her older son John roamed into a camp of Nausets, who had clashed with the colonists upon their 1st arrival.

Gov. William Bradford described Eleanor’s husband, John Billington, as “a knave.” Billington contemptuously challenged Capt. Myles Standish’s orders during a militia drill in March 1621.Had he not begged forgiveness, the Plymouth authorities would have punished him. In 1630, he did get punished – hanged for murdering a neighbor. Bradford then described the Billingtons as one of the “profanest families among them.” He could not understand how the Pilgrims had allowed them to join them from London.

Eleanor Billington also caused trouble. In 1636, she went to the stocks & received a whipping for slandering another Plymouth citizen, John Doane.

Five teenaged girls survived the winter, & they would have worked alongside the 4 Thanksgiving cooks. Mary Chilton was 14 when she came ashore from the Mayflower, the 1st woman to set foot on Plymouth soil.

The oldest, Priscilla Mullins, at 19 had lost her mother, father & brother during the winter. She would soon marry John Alden after a courtship immortalized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, their descendant. 

Constance Hopkins (13 or 14), Elizabeth Tilley (14 or 15) & Dorothy, an unnamed maidservant, perhaps 18 or 19, would have helped prepare the meal as well. They probably also had to keep an eye on the children, who included Bartholomew, Mary & Remember Allerton, Humility Cooper, Samuel Eaton & Desire Minter. The older ones would have helped.

Perhaps the teenagers minded fires, turned spits, carried water, plucked wildfowl or shucked shellfish. Maybe the lucky ones got the easy job of setting the tables – rough boards covered with cloth. They had just knives & spoons, as the 1st fork wouldn’t arrive in America until 1633. Tableware would have included pewter or wooden trenchers, tankards & lots & lots of napkins. Since they ate roast meat with their hands, napkins were a must.

While the women cooked, the men entertained their guests. They showed off their military drills for the Wampanoags. & theymight have played a version of football on the beach with the Natives, using a deerskin ball stuffed with deer hair.

At least they’d brought food. Bradford ordered 4 (probably including Stephen Hopkins) to shoot wildfowl. They blasted their muskets for the benefit of the Wampanoags, who outnumbered them.

They may have shot some turkey, but they most likely got duck, geese, swans & maybe even carrier pigeon. The women would have plucked, trimmed & trussed them, then spit-roasted the small birds & boiled the larger ones.

They may have stuffed the birds with onions & herbs from their garden, & maybe chestnuts from the woods. The next day, they would have taken the leftover meat & made a broth or a potage in their Dutch ovens.

The Wampanoags killed 5 deer & brought them as gifts. The women would have also cooked them on spits outdoors. Vegetables like corn, turnips, cabbages & carrots went into Dutch ovens on the hearths.

They would have eaten lobster, mussels & clams without butter, because cows didn’t arrive until later. Cod, bass & eels likely appeared on the tables.

They probably also served native fruit—cranberries, wild plums, melons & grapes – as well as walnuts, beechnuts & chestnuts.

Pumpkin, called pompion, undoubtedly would have appeared on the menu. The early colonists ate vast quantities of the stuff. In fact, the 1st American folk song is a lament about how much pumpkin they ate. The 4 women who cooked the 1st Puritan Thanksgiving most certainly did not make pumpkin pie. With no flour, sugar or baking ovens, they probably just stewed it.

History of the Turkey for Thanksgiving & Christmas Celebrations

 

An engraving from Audubon's painting of a hen with her poults, or chicks, circa 1827–30.

A Short History of the Turkey

Centuries before Christopher Columbus reached the New World, the Aztecs had domesticated a wild game bird that we call the turkey, but they called huexolotl. The turkey was so important to the Aztecs as a source of food that the Indians regarded the bird as a god. There were two religious festivals a year in the turkey's honor.

When the Spanish arrived in the earliest years of the sixteenth century, they were at a loss what to name the strange bird ...& settled on calling it "a kind of a peacock with great hanging chins." The bird's reputation for delicious, fine-textured flesh & distinguished plumage, as well as a comical appearance, was soon talked about in the court circles of Madrid & Seville. Who sent the first birds back to Spain is unclear. Most likely, it was Columbus after his fourth transatlantic visit in 1502, when he visited Cape Honduras. 

Some historians say Hernando Cortes, the swashbuckling Spanish conquistador, deserves the credit. But Cortes began his Mexican adventures in 1519, eight years after King Ferdinand sent out instructions that every Spanish ship returning from the New World should bring back ten turkeys, "half males, & the other half females ...because I desire that there be bred here some cocks & hens of those which you have there & were brought from Tierra Firme."

There are two wild species of turkey, members of the pheasant family that evolved in the New World about eleven million years ago. The Ocellated turkey—Agriocharis ocellata—is native to the jungles of the Yucatan & Guatemala. The other, more familiar species is the granddaddy of all present-day gobblers—Meleagris gallopova—& ranged from southeastern Canada to Mexico. Like pheasant & grouse, wild turkeys can burst into a short flight that clocks up to 55 miles per hour. On the ground they are no slouches either, running at up to 30 miles per hour. But turkeys are bred nowadays for brawn, not speed. 

Like the Aztecs to the south, the North American Indian tribes regarded the turkey as a powerful spiritual symbol. They prized its breast feathers as an alternative to goose down for warm winter cloaks. Southwestern tribes, believing the turkey to be the guide that ushered the dead into the next world, buried their loved ones in turkey-feather robes. 

But with the advent of the Europeans, the turkey's prospects turned. They were still revered—but now as an easily obtained meal. Early reports talk of hunters shooting 100 birds in a day—day after day...

The spread of the delectable turkey around Europe quickly followed its introduction into Spain. England gawked at its first turkey in the 1520s—introduced, it is said, by William Strickland of East Yorkshire after a visit to the New World with John Cabot. In later life, Strickland's perspicacity appears to have been honored with the award of a grant of arms—a family crest—that sported a heraldic "turkey-bird in his pride proper." 

As elsewhere in Europe, the bird proved a great hit in England. Hitherto, the high-end feathered diet of English aristocrats had included such tough & chewy morsels as cormorants, swans, cranes, herons, storks, & another, now critically endangered bird known as the Great Bustard...

According to Thomas Tusser's 1570 Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, turkey meat was now part & parcel of England's Christmas celebrations, at least for the well off. Such was the demand, that farmers from Norfolk, eighty or more miles distant, would drive their thousand-strong turkey flocks to market in London on foot, reportedly creating the first traffic jams on the streets of the English capital...

By 1541 eating turkey was so popular that when Thomas Cranmer, the Church of England's top archbishop, introduced a sumptuary law to restrict the consumption of meat dishes by his underlings, turkey was on the hit list. He said "of the greater fishes or fowles, there should be but one in a dish, as crane, swan, turkeycocke, haddocke, pyke, tench."

In Italy, the Venetian senate passed similar laws to curtail excessive feasting, & turkey—this time along with pigeon—was outlawed. But the Venetians did not take kindly to being told what not to eat & apparently continued to evade the law by carving the birds in secret & making enormous pies with the meat. One similar, monster English pie made in the northern cathedral city of Durham was touted as having used up 100 turkeys in the making.

The turkey's European invasion was virtually complete by 1560. The novelty of the birds made them status symbols for the rich & famous. With European nobility fond of turning their estates into zoological extravaganzas, all manner of exotic birds & beasts were sent home from the New World, & what more intriguing species to join the now passé Indian peacock than a strutting, gobbling turkey-cock? Particularly if you had not seen one before...

Put there were questions about what to call it. Once the bird began to strut its stuff across the European continent, every different language settled on a different name. The result was a muddle. Adding to the confusion was that people mistook the word for "turkey" as referring to the equally odd-looking guinea-fowl that were being imported from West Africa about the same period. The French called the turkey coq d'Inde, meaning rooster of India. This was shortened to dinde—the modern French word for turkey—but as we know, it did not come from India.

Columbus had sown the seeds of geographic confusion with his assessment that the New World was India. Nevertheless, the name-that-bird quest did not end there. In Arabic, the turkey was called the Ethiopian bird; to the Lebanese—the Abyssinian cock; the Portuguese called it the Peru bird, though there never was a turkey in that country either; in Greek it went by the name gallopoula, or French girl. Presumably, the Greeks got their first turkeys from the French. But it gets curiouser. In Malay, a turkey is ayam belanda, or Dutch chicken, though the Dutch & the Germans call it a Calicut chicken, after a southwest Indian seaport; & to cap it all, the Turks call the bird hindi...

Two hundred years later, when the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus tried to classify the turkey & its relatives in the natural scheme of things, he did not get it right either. He cobbled together the Latin name Meleagris gallopova. Well, meleagris is a guinea fowl, gallus is a chicken, & pova is a peacock—a mishmash if ever there was one. All in all, the turkey had Linnaeus stumped.

But how did the English-speaking world make the mistake of calling a North American bird a turkey when everyone else was heading off in the direction of India, Peru, or Ethiopia? The first explanation was that Columbus called it "turkey" after the noise it makes: tuka, tuka. Similarly, North American Indians supposedly called it turkey after the sound they thought it made—firkee—though it seems a stretch from firkee to gobble-gobble. It has also been suggested that Luis de Torres, a doctor who sailed with Columbus, called the bird tukki, which in Hebrew means "big bird."

Perhaps the most plausible explanation is that English traders who specialized in trading with the Ottoman Empire, which included Turkey, were called Turkey merchants, & they had tasted roast turkey in Spain or Portugal on their way to & from the eastern Mediterranean. With an eye to a profit, the traders brought birds back to England, augmenting those introduced by Strickland. But the name turkey stuck.

When the Pilgrims disembarked from the Mayflower in 1620, along with livestock that reportedly included some domesticated turkeys, it didn't take them long to realize that the wheel had turned full circle, & the native birds they admired & hunted were distant cousins of their own domestic turkeys.

Of all the hallowed stories of the Pilgrim fathers, the most venerable is that of their Thanksgiving dinner—particularly the turkey...But sad to say there is no real evidence that turkey was on the menu that day.

Colonist Edward Winslow wrote:  Our harvest being gotten in, our governour sent foure men on fowling, that so we might after a speciall manner rejoyce together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labours; they foure in one day killed as much fowle, as with a little helpe beside, served the Company almost a weeke, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Armes, many of the Indians coming amongst us, & amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoyt, with some ninetie men, whom for three dayes we entertained & feasted, & they went out & killed five Deere, which they brought to the Plantation & bestowed on our Governour, & upon the Captaine & others.

No mention of turkeys, except in an ambiguous account written years later by the governor, William Bradford, who makes no specific connection between the turkey & the 1621 festivities. He wrote: They begane now to gather in ye small harvest they had, & to fitte up their houses & dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health & strenght, & had all things in good plenty; ffor as some were thus imployed in affairs abroad, others were excersised in fishing, aboute codd, & bass, & other fish, of which yey tooke good store, of which every family had their portion. All ye somer ther was no want. & now begane to come in store of foule, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besids water foule, ther was great store of wild Turkies, of which they tooke many, besids venison, &c.

Bradford had "sent four men fowling" to find food, but whether they returned with turkey to grace their table is not clear. It hardly matters. The tradition is still revered, & turkey is still served. Only nowadays, there is little doubt about what it is we are eating.

By Andrew Gardner,  Christmas 2005 edition of the Colonial Williamsburg Journal.   https://www.slaveryandremembrance.org/almanack/life/christmas/din_turkey.cfm

Christmas in Britain & Europe - 12th Night - The Bean King

Jacob Jordaens, The Bean King. 1635-55.

Twelfth Night, the evening before Epiphany (January 6 - when the biblical kings reached the newborn Christ Child), was a final frenzy of Christmas feasting, drinking & raucous merry making before the community returned to its daily working grind for the rest of the winter.

In medieval & Tudor England, the Twelfth Night marked the end of a winter festival that started on All Hallows Eve — now more commonly known as Halloween. The Lord of Misrule symbolized the world turning upside down. On this day the King & all those who were high would become the peasants & vice versa. At the beginning of the Twelfth Night festival, a cake that contained a bean & perhaps a pea was eaten. The male who found the bean would rule the feast as a king. Midnight signaled the end of his rule, & the world would return to normal. The common theme was that the normal order of things was reversed. This Lord of Misrule tradition dates back to pre-Christian European festivals such as the Celtic festival of Samhain & the Ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia. In some places, particularly south-western England, Old Twelfth Night is celebrated on 17 January. This continues the custom on the date determined by the old Julian calendar. In England, the lord of the manor was charged with the solemn responsibility of providing the Twelfth Night cakes for his tenant families. This usually informal practice achieved the status of law at the village of North Curry, Somerset, in 1314.

Jacob Jordaens, The Bean King. ca. 1640-45

Dancing, clowning, & consuming prodigious quantities of liquor and food, the celebrants followed the practice of crowning one of themselves "king" to rule over the 12th Night's celebrations. Those who donned the crown were also expected to treat their fellow revelers to a round of drinks. During the Renaissance, some of the most splendid feasts of the Christmas season occurred at the homes of the wealthy on Twelfth Night. In England King Henry VIII (1491-1547) appears to have introduced the Italian custom of celebrating Twelfth Night with masques. These elaborate costumed events featured the enactment of some simple scenes or tableaux using song, dance, flowery speeches, & fancy scenery. The masques performed at court were short, simple, & sometimes frivolous works designed to raise as much laughter as possible while providing a colorful spectacle. These productions were very popular during the Christmas season, but they were also performed at other times of year. The famous writer Ben Jonson (1572-1637) offered a Christmas masque - Christmas His Masque - to be performed at court in the year 1616. In England the Twelfth Night masque reached its zenith in the early 17C and then began to decline.

Jan Miense Molenaer (1610-1668) Twelfth Night 1660

At some point, this tradition gave rise to the creation of the "12th Night Cake" or the "King Cake" (after the Biblical kings) -- an often-ornate confection into which a bean, a coin or a tiny carved or cast metal version of the Baby Jesus was placed. In English & French custom, the Twelfth-cake was baked to contain a bean and a pea, so that those who received the slices containing them should be designated king & queen of the night's festivities. During early evening ceremonies, the cake was cut and its pieces distributed to guests who were advised to chew carefully. The person who found the icon then became the king or queen of 12th Night. Sometimes the designated king of the festivities was called the Bean King.

The King Drinks

Samuel Pepys recorded a party in London on Epiphany night, 6 January 1659/1660, & described the role the cake played in the choosing of a "King" & "Queen" for the occasion: "...to my cousin Stradwick, where, after a good supper, there being there my father, mothers, brothers, & sister, my cousin Scott & his wife, Mr. Drawwater & his wife, & her brother, Mr. Stradwick, we had a brave cake brought us, & in the choosing, Pall was Queen & Mr. Stradwick was King. After that my wife & I bid adieu & came home, it being still a great frost." The choosing of King & Queen from the pie, usually by the inclusion of a bean & a pea, was a traditional English 12th Night festivity. The cake was called a "12th Cake", "Twelfth-night cake", or "Twelfth-tide cake."

Twelfth Night - Jan Steen -1662

By the late 18C in England, the selection of 12th Night's "royalty" was also alternately accomplished by the distribution of paper slips with each piece of cake. The slips were opened and the person holding the one with a special mark inside was declared king. Some believe this paper ballot tradition was instituted as a matter of safety to prevent often-inebriated & distracted guests from inadvertently choking to death on hard beans, coins or a cast metal Jesus hidden in wads of cake.

Twelfth Night (The King Drinks) by David Teniers c. 1634-1640

Traditionally, groups of family & friends may have "king cake parties" through the Carnival season between Epiphany & the day before Lent. In Portugal & France, whoever gets the King cake trinket is expected to buy the next cake for these get-togethers.

Twelfth Night, Jan Steen, 1668

The King Cake is a popular food item during the Christmas season (Christmas Eve to Epiphany) in Belgium, France, Quebec & Switzerland (galette or gâteau des Rois or galette des rois), Portugal (bolo rei), Spain, & Spanish America (roscón or rosca de reyes & tortell in Catalonia), Greece & Cyprus (vasilopita) & Bulgaria (banitsa).

Twelfth Night or 'The King Drinks' - Peter Paul Rubens

In the United States, Carnival is traditionally observed in the Southeastern region of the country, particularly in New Orleans, Saint Louis, Mobile, Pensacola, Galveston, & other towns & cities of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. In this region, the king cake is closely associated with Mardi Gras traditions & is served throughout the Carnival season, from Epiphany Eve to Fat Tuesday.

Le gâteau des Rois, by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, 1774

Related traditions are the tortell of Catalonia; the gâteau des Rois or reiaume in Provence; or the galette des Rois in the northern half of France, & the Greek & Cypriot vasilopita. The galette des Rois is made with puff pastry & frangipane (while the gâteau des Rois is made with brioche & candied fruits). The gâteau des Rois is known as Rosca de Reyes in Mexico.

1621 Foods at Plymouth Thanksgiving

“And God be praised we had a good increase… Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.”

Edward Winslow, Mourt’s Relation: D.B. Heath, ed. Applewood Books. Cambridge, 1986.

“They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty. For as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which is place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides, they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports."

William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation: S.E. Morison, ed. Knopf. N.Y., 1952.

Proust on Taking Tea in the Winter

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Edward George Handel Lucas (English artist, 1861-1936) Silent Advocates of Temperance 1891

From Remembrances of Things Past (À la recherche du temps perdu 1913-22), here is Proust's young memory of taking tea...

"When one day in winter, on my return home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called petites madeleines, which look as though they had been molded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell.

"And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shiver ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin.

"And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory - this new sensation having had the effect, which love has, of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it-was-me.

"I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. When could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savors..."

Marcel Proust 1871-1922.

Greenery & other Christmas Traditions mostly from The British Isles

Here in Maryland, families begin searching for their Christmas greenery after Thanksgiving.  

Collecting Holly Sprigs in December pub by Robert Sayer in London in 1767

Long before the advent of Christianity, plants & trees that remained green all year had a special meaning for people in the winter. In many countries folks believed that evergreens would keep away pesky ghosts, evil spirits, & illness.

In the Northern hemisphere, many ancient people believed that the sun was a god & that winter came every year because the sun god had grown weak. They celebrated the solstice, because it meant that at last the sun god would begin to get well. Evergreen boughs reminded them of all the green plants that would grow again when the sun god was strong & summer would return.

Springs of holly or ivy at the windows & mistletoe above.  1770s Christmas gambolls, mid-18th century, etching published by P. Griffin

The ancient Egyptians worshipped a god called Ra, who had the head of a hawk & wore the sun as a blazing disk in his crown. At the solstice, when Ra began to recover from his weakness, the Egyptians filled their homes with green palm rushes symbolizing the triumph of life over death.

Greens decorate the room with mistletoe hanging from above.  The Young Sweep giving Betty her Christmas Box, 1770-1780

Early Romans marked the solstice with a feast called the Saturnalia in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture. To mark the occasion, they decorated their homes & temples with evergreen boughs.

Holly on the mantel Published by  Carrington Bowles in 1780.

In Northern Europe the Druids, the priests of the ancient Celts, also decorated their temples with evergreen boughs as a symbol of everlasting life. The fierce Vikings in Scandinavia thought that evergreens were the special plant of the sun god, Balder.

Sprigs of ivy in the windows & mistletoe above.  Settling the Affairs of the Nation, pub by London's Bowles & Carver c 1775.

Decorating one’s house with natural boughs has been a Christmas tradition since Celtic times in England. Boughs of holly with their bright red berries were especially coveted.

Sprigs of holly over the mantle. Christmas Gambols The Wit’s Magazine, London, December 1784

"Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.”
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Mistletoe hanging from ceiling.  1790s Christmas Gambols or a Kiss Under the mistletoe Published 22d. Octr. 1794 by Laurie & Whittle, N°.53, Fleet Street, London.

Mistletoe hangs above & sprigs of holly or ivy decorate the lower window panes.  1791 Christmas in the Country, from drawing by Samuel Collings and pub Bentley & Co. in London, January 1, 1791.

1796 The Misteltoe, or, Christmas Gables, London  Pub 1 May 1796 by G.T. Stubbs

Mistletoe hangs above1800 Unknown British artist, The mistletoe - A Christmas Tale 1800. Published by Laurie and Whittle, London

Greenery hangs over the table.  1800 Farmer Giles's establishment.  Christmas day 1800 Published London

Rope of Greens in the Pastry Shop Window - George Cruikshanks Comic Almanac Excitement outside the pastry cook & confectioners shop window as people view the 12th night cakes

1825 High life below stairs Robert Cruikshank London Pub by G. Tregear 136 Drury Lane

Swags of Greenery decorate the windows of the Pastry Shop for 12th night.  The Every-day Book, 1827, Naughty Boys

1837 Bringing home Christmas from The book of Christmas Illustrated by Robert Seymour

Greenery decorates the old family portraits and hangs from the chandelier.  1847 Christmas at home with family & cats  Illustrated London News

Greens decorate the archway, the cake, and the boar's head!  The Illustrated Times 1857 - The Boar’s Head and Christmas Pie for the  Royal Banquet at Windsor Castle

Selling greenery

 Preparing for Christmas

Gathering Mistletoe in Normandy

Kissing under the Mistletoe

Gathering Mistletoe

Thanksgiving - 1621-31 Gov John Winthrop's Mixed Emotions

Governor Winthrop had a conflict of emotions about Thanksgiving. Even though the Thanksgiving that is celebrated on the last Thursday of November was proclaimed by Governor Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637, to honor a massacre of Indigenous Peoples. The Governor, wrote that for “the next 100 years, every Thanksgiving Day ordained by a Governor was in honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won."

The 1st Pilgrim “Thanksgiving” meal in 1621 was an event celebrated between the immigrant Pilgrims & the Wampanoag, Pequot & Narragansett people. In fact, in October of 1621, survivors of their first winter in Turtle Island in North America, the Pilgrims who had a miserable crop that year invited a Native named Massaosit to their meal.  Massaosit followed the Indigenous tradition of equal sharing & invited many from his Nation. Much of the food brought to that meal was provided by the Natives, as they had much more of a bountiful harvest that year.

Ten years later, after often being separated from his wife by the Atlantic Ocean for 10 years, Margaret Winthrop (c. 1591-1647), the 3rd wife of John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, celebrated a Thanksgiving full of love. 

During this long period of enforced separation that letters between them were written. Here both husband & wife put their love to God first, love of husband & wife second.  In Margaret Winthrop’s words “ I have many reasons to make me love thee, whereof I will name two, first because thou lovest God, & secondly because that thou lovest me.” Religious feeling exalted their mutual love & dignified it.

After her visiting husband had left England, Margaret Winthrop remained at Groton for more than a year, until he could make suitable preparation for her coming to North America. She arrived in Boston Nov. 4, 1631, in the ship Lyon, which brought a cargo of much-needed supplies for the winter. Her baby daughter, Anne, had died on the voyage.

“The like joy & manifestations of love had never been seen in New England,” John Winthrop wrote in his Journal. One week later, on Nov. 11, “We kept a day of thanksgiving at Boston.”

See:

Notable American Women edited by Edward T James, Janet Wilson James, Paul S Boyer, The Belknap Press of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1971

Some old Puritan love-letters: John and Margaret Winthrop, 1618-1638. Edited by Joseph Hopkins Twichell. Dodd, Mead and company, 1894.

1578 Thanksgiving in The Americas - Newfoundland

Sir Martin Frobisher, English mariner, privateer, explorer (born c 1535-1594)

In 1578, English explorer Martin Frobisher landed in what is now Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada, as part of his quest to locate the fabled Northwest Passage. Before the Europeans arrive, First Nations across Turtle Island had traditions of thanksgiving for surviving winter & for receiving crops & game as a reward for their hard work. These traditions appear to include feasting, prayer, dance, potlatch, & other ceremonies, depending on the native peoples giving thanks.

In response to his safe travels to the Great White North, over 4 decades before the Plymouth Colony celebration, Frobisher & his men held a service of thanks. "Frobisher, an English explorer in the uncharted northern territories, organized the 1st religious Thanksgiving for his crew & early Canadian settlers as a way to take stock of all they had accomplished in a short time." 

During his 1578 voyage to Baffin Island to set up a new English colony, Frobisher's ships were scattered. At Frobisher Bay, the explorer was happily reunited with his fleet, & all who had survived the storms honored their reunion with a day of thanks.

Martin Frobisher, mariner, explorer, 3 three voyages from England to the “New World” in search of a passage to Asia. He failed, but he was the 1st European to discover the bay that is named for him & returned with tons of dirt that he thought contained gold. Each expedition was bigger than the preceding one & on his 3rd, in 1578, he commanded a flotilla of 15 ships & more than 400 men. They set sail on 31 May for Baffin Island, where they intended to establish a gold mining operation & the 1st English colony in North America. On 1 July, they sighted Resolution Island, but they were driven by storms across the entrance to Hudson Strait. The fleet was dispersed & one ship, which carried their prefabricated barracks, was sunk by ice. Another ship deserted the flotilla & sailed back to England. 

The remaining ships assembled at the Countess of Warwick’s Island, which is known today as Kodlunarn Island, a tiny speck of land in Frobisher Bay. They established 2 mines on the island & set up shops to test the ore from other mines. The mine sites & the ruins of a stone house are still clearly visible.  

Vicious storms blew the fleet around Hudson Strait for most of July & when they finally assembled at their anchorage in Frobisher Bay, they celebrated Communion & formally expressed their thanks through the ship’s Chaplain, Robert Wolfall, who “made unto them a godly sermon, exhorting them especially to be thankefull to God for theyr strange & miraculous deliverance in those so dangerous places” (Richard Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher: In Search of a Passage to Cathaia & India by the North-West, Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Frobisher sailed for Elizabeth I, whose reign was marked by public acts of giving thanks. Elizabeth expressed her gratitude for having lived to ascend the throne, for delivery from the Spanish Armada and, in her last speech to Parliament, for her subjects.  

The 1st known use of the word “Thanksgiving” in English text was in a translation of the bible in 1533, which was intended as an act of giving thanks to God. The tradition of gratitude was continued each fall as people gave thanks for the harvest that would see them through the winter.

Forty-eight years later on November 14, 1606, inhabitants of New France under Samuel de Champlain held huge feasts of thanksgiving between local Mi’kmaq & the French. Though not known at the time by the settlers, cranberries, rich in vitamin C, are credited with helping avoid scurvy. The neighbouring Mi’kmaq likely introduced the French to cranberries, or as they called them, petites pommes rouges (little red apples).

Champlain’s feasts were more than an annual affair. To prevent the scurvy epidemic that had decimated the settlement at Île Sainte-Croix in past winters, the Ordre de Bon Temps (Order of Good Cheer) was founded, offering festive meals every few weeks. Medical treatises recommended better nutrition (more food) & entertainment to combat scurvy.

However, despite this history of uniquely Canadian thanksgivings, modern concepts of Thanksgiving were influenced by the American neighbors to the South. Foods that are associated with a “traditional” Thanksgiving, such as North American turkey, squash, & pumpkin, were introduced to citizens of Halifax in the 1750s by the United Empire Loyalists, who continued to spread this “traditional” fare to other parts of the country.

See

Bicheno, Hugh. Elizabeth's Sea Dogs. Conway, 2014.

Brigden, Susan. The Penguin History of Britain. Penguin, 2001.

Courtauld, Augustine. From the Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of Polar Writings. Oxford University Press, 1958

Elton, G.R. England Under the Tudors. Routledge, 2018.

Ferriby, David. The Tudors. Hodder Education, 2015.

Guy, John. Tudor England. Oxford University Press, 1988.

Wagner, John A. Historical Dictionary of the Elizabethan World. Greenwood, 1999.

Williams, Neville. The sea dogs. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975.

Christmas for Slaves in Early America

The Slave Experience of the Holidays

From Documenting the American South.University Library, 

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

American slaves experienced the Christmas holidays in many different ways. Joy, hope, & celebration were naturally a part of the season for many. For other slaves, these holidays conjured up visions of freedom & even the opportunity to bring about that freedom. Still others saw it as yet another burden to be endured...

The prosperity & relaxed discipline associated with Christmas often enabled slaves to interact in ways that they could not during the rest of the year. They customarily received material goods from their masters: perhaps the slave's yearly allotment of clothing, an edible delicacy, or a present above & beyond what he or she needed to survive & work on the plantation.

For this reason, among others, slaves frequently married during the Christmas season. When Dice, a female slave in Nina Hill Robinson'sAunt Dice, came to her master"one Christmas eve, & asked his consent to her marriage with Caesar,"her master allowed the ceremony, & a"great feast was spread."Dice & Caesar were married in"the mistress's own parlor . . . before the white minister."More than any other time of year, Christmas provided slaves with the latitude & prosperity that made a formal wedding possible.

On the plantation, the transfer of Christmas gifts from master to slave was often accompanied by a curious ritual. On Christmas day,"it was always customary in those days to catch peoples Christmas gifts & they would give you something."Slaves & children would lie in wait for those with the means to provide presents & capture them, crying 'Christmas gift' & refusing to release their prisoners until they received a gift in return. This ironic annual inversion of power occasionally allowed slaves to acquire real power. Henry, a slave whose tragic life & death is recounted in Martha Griffith Browne'sAutobiography of a Female Slave, saved"Christmas gifts in money"to buy his freedom.

Some slaves saw Christmas as an opportunity to escape. They took advantage of relaxed work schedules & the holiday travels of slaveholders, who were too far away to stop them. While some slaveholders presumably treated the holiday as any other workday, numerous authors record a variety of holiday traditions, including the suspension of work for celebration & family visits. Because many slaves had spouses, children, & family who were owned by different masters & who lived on other properties, slaves often requested passes to travel & visit family during this time. Some slaves used the passes to explain their presence on the road & delay the discovery of their escape through their masters' expectation that they would soon return from their"family visit." Jermain Loguen plotted a Christmas escape, stockpiling supplies & waiting for travel passes, knowing the cover of the holidays was essential for success: "Lord speed the day!--freedom begins with the holidays!"These plans turned out to be wise, as Loguen & his companions are almost caught crossing a river into Ohio, but were left alone because the white men thought they were free men"who have been to Kentucky to spend the Holidays with their friends."

Harriet Tubman helped her brothers escape at Christmas. Their master intended to sell them after Christmas but was delayed by the holiday. The brothers were expected to spend the day with their elderly mother but met Tubman in secret. She helped them travel north, gaining a head start on the master who did not discover their disappearance until the end of the holidays. 

Likewise, William & Ellen Crafts escaped together at Christmastime. They took advantage of passes that were clearly meant for temporary use. Ellen "obtained a pass from her mistress, allowing her to be away for a few days. The cabinet-maker with whom I worked gave me a similar paper, but said that he needed my services very much, & wished me to return as soon as the time granted was up. I thanked him kindly; but somehow I have not been able to make it convenient to return yet; &, as the free air of good old England agrees so well with my wife & our dear little ones, as well as with myself, it is not at all likely we shall return at present to the 'peculiar institution' of chains & stripes."

Christmas could represent not only physical freedom, but spiritual freedom, as well as the hope for better things to come. The main protagonist of Martha Griffin Browne's Autobiography of a Female Slave, Ann, found little positive value in the slaveholder's version of Christmas—equating it with"all sorts of culinary preparations"& extensive house cleaning rituals—but she saw the possibility for a better future in the story of the life of Christ: "This same Jesus, whom the civilized world now worship as their Lord, was once lowly, outcast, & despised; born of the most hated people of the world . . . laid in the manger of a stable at Bethlehem . . . this Jesus is worshipped now." For Ann, Christmas symbolized the birth of the very hope she used to survive her captivity.

Not all enslaved African Americans viewed the holidays as a time of celebration & hope. Rather, Christmas served only to highlight their lack of freedom. As a young boy, Louis Hughes was bought in December & introduced to his new household on Christmas Eve "as a Christmas gift to the madam." When Peter Bruner tried to claim a Christmas gift from his master, "he took me & threw me in the tan vat & nearly drowned me. Every time I made an attempt to get out he would kick me back in again until I was almost dead."

Frederick Douglass described the period of respite that was granted to slaves every year between Christmas & New Year's Day as a psychological tool of the oppressor. In his 1845 Narrative, Douglass wrote that slaves celebrated the winter holidays by engaging in activities such as"playing ball, wrestling, running foot-races, fiddling, dancing, & drinking whiskey."He took particular umbrage at the latter practice, which was often encouraged by slave owners through various tactics."One plan [was] to make bets on their slaves, as to who can drink the most whiskey without getting drunk; & in this way they succeed in getting whole multitudes to drink to excess."

In My Bondage & My Freedom, Douglass concluded that "[a]ll the license allowed [during the holidays] appears to have no other object than to disgust the slaves with their temporary freedom, & to make them as glad to return to their work, as they were to leave it." While there is no doubt that many enjoyed these holidays, Douglass acutely discerned that they were granted not merely in a spirit of charity or conviviality, but also to appease those who yearned for freedom, ultimately serving the ulterior motives of slave owners.

Spring 2022 at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania

"I have recently experienced what I would formerly have diagnosed as an attack of insanity; that is, I have purchased a small farm,” Pierre du Pont wrote to a friend soon after purchasing the Peirce farm in 1906. However, he added, “I expect to have a good deal of enjoyment in restoring its former condition & making it a place where I can entertain my friends.”

It didn’t take Pierre long before he started making his mark on what he called Longwood. The name came from the nearby Longwood Meeting House, which in turn was named for a neighboring Longwood Farm. “Longwood” probably derives from a nearby stretch of forest known locally as The Long Woods.

In 1907, Pierre laid out his first garden—the 600-foot-long Flower Garden Walk, which is today one of Longwood’s most popular gardens. Longwood’s first fountain—a simple pool with a single jet of water—was constructed in the center of the walk.

The springtime effect of the Flower Garden Walk was so successful that in 1909 Pierre began hosting June garden parties that quickly became highlights of the summer social season. Their success encouraged him to look for ever more wonderful ways to delight his guests.

The Open Air Theatre debuted five years later. His inspiration was an outdoor theatre near Siena, Italy. Within a year, he equipped it with “secret” fountains that shot out of the stage floor to drench visiting nieces & nephews.

To combat dreary winters, Pierre built an extension onto the original Peirce house & connected the new & old wings with a conservatory – Longwood’s first “winter garden.” Its courtyard was planted with exotic foliage & graced with a small marble fountain, a wedding gift to mark Pierre’s marriage in 1915 to Alice Belin.    See: Longwood Gardens History for more. 

“Beauty awakens the soul to act.” - Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)

Earth's Creatures Stop to Smell the Flowers

“The first real day of Spring is like the first time a boy holds your hand. A flood of skin-tingling warmth consumes you, & everything shines with a fresh, colorful glow, making you forget that anything as cold & harsh as winter ever existed.” – Richelle E. Goodrich

Spring & Summer are the perfect time to celebrate the rebirth of Earth's Beauty & Bounty.  Flowers gave beauty & inspiration to mankind's basic struggle to live & to populate & to protect his home-base, The Earth.  Holding on to The Sweet Divine - The Lord God took man & put him in the Garden of Eden to work it & to keep it...Genesis 2:15.

The expression came into popular modern use in the 1960s & is a rephrasing of a sentiment found in an autobiography written by the golfer Walter Hagen: “Don’t hurry. Don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.”

5–6C CE Egyptian TAPESTRY - Myth - Female Spring Goddess

Bust of Spring ca. 5C–6C CE Egypt - Tapestry weave of dyed wools. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This small tapestry panel comes from Egypt. That area had a major weaving (especially linen) industry throughout the ancient and medieval period, which brought the country a great deal of its trade and wealth. Unlike the textiles of other cultures, many of these pieces have been preserved by Egypt's hot, dry climate, which prevents rotting. Personifications of the seasons were thought to represent prosperity.

Historically in many cultures, a female personification or a Spring goddess celebrated the hope of new growth as the decay of winter gave way to Nature's renewal and rebirth.  Spring begins with the first green shoots and explodes into a multitude of beautiful blossoms and promise of good harvest. In ancient times, communities often held festivals to celebrate Spring goddesses who were associated with flowering, growth and fertility of the land.

Seeds with Stories: Wisteria

Old Salem Museums & Gardens tells us in its series Seeds with Stories: Wisteria that depending on who you talk to, it is a beautiful, fragrant bloom or an unstoppable, invasive curse that is devastating to gardens & the grounds around them.

The most common varieties are wisteria sinensis, introduced from China in 1816 & wisteria floribunda, introduced from Japan in 1830.  These highly invasive varieties were sought after for the larger size of their blooms compared to the native wisteria frutescens, which has smaller, slightly less fragrant blooms. 

The introduced varieties offer 2 weeks of blooms in April & May while growing aggressively in sun or shade, up to 25 feet per year.  Fuzzy seed pods are often carried by birds to unsuspecting & unprepared innocent landscapes.  These varieties can choke out all other plants.  

The vines climb on the ground as well as up trees, fences, & woods girdling the trees until they die to get more sunlight to the vines growing upon the ground, which then pushes up more flowers to seed.  

If you admire these introduced varieties but don’t want your landscape overrun perhaps the native variety, wisteria frutescens may work.  Despite its quick growth, 15 feet per year, it is often considered the dwarf wisteria, because the leaves & blooms are smaller in size.

The fragrant flowers range from purple to  blue. The individual flowers resemble pea flowers. This super pollinator blooms on new wood from May to July & can be trained to grow in tree form or on a trellis by astute pruning in the winter. 

Old Salem explores the diverse cultural history of the early South, with special emphasis on the Moravians in North Carolina, enslaved & free people of African descent, & Indigenous peoples of the Southern Woodland.

1607 Thanksgiving in Popham Colony in Maine

Maine’s Lost Colony : 

Archeologists uncover an early American settlement that history forgot

Smithsonian Magazine February 2004

By Myron Beckenstein

A highway-marker at Popham Colony, located in modern-day Phippsburg, Maine, marks a 1607 Thanksgiving in Popham Colony. Fourteen years before the Pilgrims & the Wampanoag tribe feasted together, the short-lived settlement of Popham Colony held 2 celebrations considered by some to be thanksgiving observances. "The first occurred in September when the settlers encountered a native tribe (the Abenaki). Nine canoes arrived at the Popham settlement with about 40 people. The settlers gave them food & Skidwarres & one other Abenaki stayed the night," reports a researcher with the Maine Historical Society. "Later in October, 5 tribesmen arrived: Skidwarres, Nahandada & his wife, one other & a tribal leader named Amenquin. They feasted for 2 days with Popham & the others. The second day was Sunday, so they also joined the settlers in morning & evening prayers." Captain George Popham, leader of the colony, died within a year of the 2 ceremonies. 

Not far from Portland along Maine’s winding coast, someone has placed a neatly lettered sign on an otherwise undistinguished boulder. It reads: Popham Rock 1607. A play on Plymouth Rock 1620, some 200 miles south? Not entirely. A colony called Popham actually did precede the renowned Massachusetts settlement. “Popham was the cornerstone in the foundation of English America,” says Jeffrey P. Brain, 64, an archaeologist with the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, who is excavating the site of the forgotten colony. “The lessons learned were important to the later success of the Pilgrims.” Popham’s value lies in its failure. Its remains...have been called one of the most significant archaeological sites in the country. Unlike Jamestown, Popham’s successful sister colony in Virginia, whose footprint changed as it developed, Popham represents a unique, undisturbed time capsule of a very early North American settlement. 

 "Each September since 1997, Brain has enlisted a few colleagues & some 30 volunteers & amateur archaeologists to work for 3 weeks at the mouth of the Kennebec River, about 25 miles northeast of Portland. This year’s team included an epidemiologist, an engineer, a nurse, a sociology professor & a historian from England. Popham was named after its principal financial backer, Sir John Popham, & his nephew George Popham, the colony’s president. It was founded about 20 years after Sir Walter Raleigh’s North Carolina colony disappeared in the 1580s, when, as the economic race with France & Spain heated up, England made another attempt to plant its flag in the New World. In 1606, James I granted a charter to a joint stock company to establish two colonies, one, Jamestown, on the southern Atlantic Coast, & the other, Popham, on the northern. On May 31, 1607, about 100 men & boys set sail for the northerly destination. Discharged soldiers made up most of the colonists’ ranks, but shipwrights, coopers, carpenters & a smattering of “gentlemen of quality” rounded them out. About three months later, the group landed on a wooded peninsula where the Kennebec River meets the Atlantic Ocean, & began building Fort St. George. In December, with winter coming & food scarce, half of the colonists returned to England. The next fall, after erecting several buildings, the remaining 45 sailed home.

 "Popham’s rediscovery came about by two events a century apart. In 1888, a researcher for an American diplomat happened upon a map of Fort St. George in government archives in Madrid. Drawn & signed by Popham colonist John Hunt, it was likely snatched, or copied, by a Spanish spy soon after it arrived in England in 1608. The only known detailed plan of an early English colony, the map contains sketches of trenched ramparts, a storehouse, a chapel & various buildings—in all, more than 15 structures. Though published in 1890, the map provoked little interest for 100 years, until Brain came upon a mention of the lost colony while vacationing in Maine. At first “I thought it was some sort of local mythology,” he says. “But it was historically known, & I decided it was time to look for it archaeologically.” Research led him to Hunt’s map, which took him to Sabino Head, a windy promontory on the Kennebec. Topographical features seemed to match Fort St. George’s modified star-shaped contours. Conducting a test excavation on the area in 1994, Brain & his team found a posthole after several weeks of digging. Baffled by not finding more postholes, he “fiddled with the map,” rotated it 20 degrees & came up with a dead-on match with the landscape. “It was a eureka moment,” he recalls. Soon the crew was “turning up one after another” of the three-foot-wide pine mold-filled holes, eventually 19 in all, outlining the 69-by-20-foot storehouse that Hunt had depicted on his blueprint almost 400 years before. "

Archaeologists are still not sure how many of the map’s structures were actually built, but so far, in addition to the storehouse, they’ve located parts of the trench wall & the “Admirals howse,” & they have leads on the buttery, a storehouse for wine & liquor. During the second week of this year’s dig, Kathy Bugbee, a retiree from Southport, Maine, unearthed an inch-long piece of decorated stoneware. A digger for seven years, she recognized the brown glazed fragment as part of a Bellarmine jug, a German-made container used throughout Europe to store liquor in the 16th & 17th centuries. In his on-site cache of artifacts, Brain found a wedge of Bellarmine that he had assembled from other fragments two years earlier. Bugbee’s find slid easily into a gap in the piece to reveal a medallion motif. The jug’s embossed seal reads: “1599.” In addition to Bellarmine, the site has yielded other ceramics, clay tobacco pipes, glass trading beads, bullets & tools, including a caulking iron, used in shipbuilding. The Popham settlers did succeed in constructing the Virginia, a small but durable vessel that would take them back to England & later make other transatlantic voyages. At the admiral’s house, the archaeological team turned up shards of delftware, more Bellarmine, fancy buttons, bits of etched wine glasses & jet beads—all reflecting the occupants’ upper-class rank... 

 "The main reason for abandoning the colony, Brain theorizes, was a loss of leadership. Only one member of the group, George Popham, is known to have died at Fort St. George. (Jamestown lost more than half of its 120 settlers the first year.) But he was the colony’s president, & on February 5, 1608, Raleigh Gilbert took command. Just 25, Gilbert was, according to one investor, “desirous of supremasy,” “a loose life,” with “litle zeale in Religion.” Six months later, a resupply ship brought Gilbert news that he had inherited a title & an estate back in England. When Gilbert decided to return to England to collect, the others headed back with him. “They were headless, so to speak,” Brain says. “English society was very stratified; people needed leaders.” Bad relations with the Indians, the fear of another severe winter & the area’s lack of easily exploitable resources, such as gold or other precious metals, also affected the decision to abandon Popham. 

 "Most of the returned settlers disappeared into history; a few crossed the Atlantic again to try their hand at Jamestown. The Pilgrims who arrived 12 years later, landing at Plymouth, had obviously learned some lessons from Popham. “They settled farther south in a milder climate that was more familiar to them & more conducive to agriculture,” says Brain. “They tried harder to work with the Indians. They also brought women & children. “Luck had a lot to do with these early ventures,” Brain adds, explaining that Jamestown, too, almost failed. Hit hard by disease & starvation, the 50 or so remaining settlers abandoned the colony in the spring of 1610 & were sailing home when they encountered a relief fleet & a new governor, who ordered them back to Jamestown."