A Girl Called Samson (9)

“If we do not exist for the king, what do we exist for?” I asked again. I was not ill-treated, but I was not free. And I did not know my purpose, beyond work. “If we aren’t governed by King George or the Lords of Trade, who will we be governed by?”

“That is the question, isn’t it, Deborah?” Reverend Conant answered, chasing his peas around his trencher. But nobody answered it.





3

ONE PEOPLE

Though I was only five when he left, I had very clear memories of my father, and they weren’t pleasant. I looked like him. His eyes were the same hazel and our hair the same hue as the wheat in the fields he hated. My father did not like farming, he did not like Plympton, and he did not like me or my siblings. He fretted endlessly, and my mother was always seeking to soothe him, though she had five children hanging from her skirts. I did not hang. It was crowded around her feet.

It was his departure that precipitated my being sent to live with Cousin Fuller with nothing but my name and Mother’s stories to remind me who I was. Mother moved in with her sister, and the house we’d lived in before Father ran off was occupied by someone else.

Instead of a farmer, Father thought he’d try to be a sailor or a sea captain—the story often changed—or a merchant of trade. Mother told us for the longest time that he would return. Or maybe that’s just what she told me, the few times I saw her. My sister Sylvia and my brothers, Robert and Ephraim, all whom were older than I, were sent away too. Mother kept the baby. Her name was Dorothy, and Mother called her Dot. She died of croup sometime after our family ceased to be.

I don’t remember Dorothy at all. She was a faceless cry, a little dot on the landscape of a truncated life. Perhaps Mother should have given her a different name. Every Dorothy in the family tree had a tragic end.

I never saw my siblings again, and I have no notion of what they were told, but I assume Mother drilled their identity into them like she did to me. Mother taught us our heritage.

I learned to read from William Bradford’s journal and to write by copying his words into the dirt. The journal I read was not the original. His descendants had made painstaking copies so the record wouldn’t be lost. The version we had was printed in my mother’s handwriting, giving his sentiments an almost feminine flair, like it was Mother experiencing his trials and triumphs. His story was woven through every early memory I had of her. I think her pedigree was the only thing of which she was proud.

Like I had done with the catechisms, she recited line after line of her great-grandfather’s writings and wonderings. His life filled our bedtime stories. One of the first letters I received from her after moving in with the Thomases was a desperate summation of his life, like she couldn’t bear for me to forget the details. She wrote:

My great-grandfather, William Bradford, was born in 1590 in Yorkshire, the son of a wealthy landowner, but his life would not be that of a cherished son. His father died when he was but a babe, and he was orphaned at seven years old when his mother too passed away.

He was curious, like you, Deborah, with a love of books and learning. He was fascinated with religion, not just God Himself, but in the rights of men to worship as they believed.

William began to attend secret meetings with a small congregation who called themselves Separatists, but King James vowed to destroy all reform movements and imprison those guilty of religious disobedience. People were fined, jailed, and hunted, betrayed by their neighbors and shunned by their friends. William and a small group of reformers fled England for the Dutch Republic, where religious freedom was permitted.

At eighteen, he was a stranger in a strange land, with no family and few friends. He worked at the most menial of jobs and eked out the barest of existences, but he was a weaver of fine cloth—a skill that has been passed down through our family. I can weave, and you can too. His blood runs in our veins, his courage, his talent, and his curiosity too.

He could have remained in the Netherlands, but that was not to be. He was compelled to seek a different life. He helped to secure a charter and a boat called the Speedwell, but alas, it did not speed well. It was not seaworthy at all, and the Separatists and the small group of tradesmen they’d hired all boarded the remaining ship, the Mayflower, and left everything else behind.

They made it all the way across the sea, crowded and sick, with icy water streaming down on them from quaking beams and rolling waves. Great miracles were wrought on their journey, but miracles do not make life easy. Most often, miracles just make the next step possible.

It was December when they arrived, and they had no shelter but the ship. William had disembarked with a small group and gone ashore to explore the area. He was gone for many days, and when he returned, he was told his wife, Dorothy, was dead. She had been fished from the water and was laid out on the deck.

She’d drowned in the harbor. She could see land, she’d reached her destination, but she had no desire to continue. Some say it was an accident. Others say she threw herself overboard. She’d left her young son John behind in Holland with her parents and feared she would never see him again. Perhaps she thought William would not return either. I think of her sometimes when I am at my lowest. She lost hope, but we must not. God willing, we will be together again.

That is the hope that kept William striving, a better world for his children. That is what keeps me striving too. Like Isaiah says of the Lord, William Bradford was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. But he did not succumb to that grief, and neither will we.