Betty Alden: The first-born daughter of the PilgrimsAustin, Jane G. (Jane Goodwin)
History
Betty Alden: The first-born daughter of the Pilgrims
Austin, Jane G. (Jane Goodwin)
United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction
Upon this headland in the early summer of 1625 a wild and motley crowd
of adventurers pitched their tents, and soon replaced the canvas with
comfortable log-houses and a stockaded inclosure. The leader of this
company was one Captain Wollaston, perhaps the same adventurer whom
Captain John Smith of Pocahontas memory encountered, some fifteen years
before, on the high seas, acting as lieutenant to one Captain Barry,
an English pirate. With Wollaston were three or four partners, and a
great crew of bound servants, men who had either pledged their own
time, or been delivered into temporary slavery as punishment by English
magistrates, and the purpose of the leaders was to found a settlement
like that of Plymouth. The place was named Mount Wollaston by the white
men, while the Indians continued to call it Passonagessit, just as
they still speak of Weymouth as Wessagusset. One New England winter,
however, cooled the courage of Captain Wollaston, as it had that of
Robert Gorges, and in the spring of 1626 he took about half his bound
men to Virginia, where he sold their services to the tobacco planters
at such a profit, that he wrote back to Mr. Rasdall, his second in
command, to bring down another gang as soon as possible, and to leave
Mount Wollaston in charge of Lieutenant Fitcher, until he himself
should return thither.
Rasdall obeyed, and in making his parting charges to Fitcher remarked,--
“All should go well, so that you keep Thomas Morton in check. Give him
his head and he will run away with you and Wollaston.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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