Great Migration: Passengers of the Handmaid, 1630

Arrival of the Handmaid, 29 Oct. 1630

After twelve weeks at sea, the Handmaid docked at Plymouth on 29 Oct. 1630 with about 60 passengers. [1] They were the last group from Leiden. [2]

The brethren described these arrivals as the "weakest and poorest", which may account for why none of their names were preserved. This was the last of the Pilgrim ships, although a few more brethren strayed in from time to time. At this point organized efforts to colonize Plymouth came to an end due to lack of funding. Emphasis shifted to the well financed Puritan migration farther up the coast at Massachusetts Bay. [3]

The group included 28 cows [4], Captain Standish, and "2 gent passingers, who came to plant here, but havinge no testimonies we would not receive them." [5][6]

Links

• http://www.histarch.uiuc.edu/plymouth/townpop.html
• http://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/pilgrims.htm/printable

Sources

• Plymouth Colony, its history & people, 1620-1691 By Eugene Aubrey Stratton
• Dunham Genealogy by John Dunham Duguid
• Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (hereafter MHS Collections) 3rd Series (Boston, 1825), 1:199; Charles Henry Pope, The Pioneers of Massachusetts (Boston, 1900; reprint, Baltimore, 1986), 151. John Winthrop, Winthrop Papers 1623-1630, Vol. 2 (1931, reissued New York, 1968), p. 269
• John Eddy (1597-1684)
• History of Plymouth plantation 1620-1647, Volume 2 By William Bradford, Worthington Chauncey Ford, Massachusetts Historical Society

Citations

1. Winthrop's Journal, "History of New England" 1630-1649, James Kendall Hosmer, Ed. (New York: Scribner, 1908), vol. 1, p. 53.
2. However ... "Winthrop's writings make it appear that the Handmaid was destined for Plymouth and did not even dock at at a Bay Colony port, though whether any of these passengers were of the Leiden group cannot be said.(21) Stratton, p. 47
3. Dunham.
4. Findagrave.
5. That the Eddy brothers did arrive on the Handmaid can be seen from the same source, 319, where in a letter to his wife on 29 November 1630 Winthrop writes, "Edy of Boxted, who came in her [the Handmaid] tould me a fortnight that he had many lettres in the shippe for me, but I heer not yet of them: which makes me now (havinge opportunity to send to Plimmouth) to write these few lines to thee, least the shippe should be gone before I have received my lettres." The wording of these two passages makes it appear that the ship's master, along with Standish and the two gentleman passengers, arrived at Boston via some other, perhaps smaller, vessel, and the Handmaid stayed at Plymouth. This would make it seem that some at least, perhaps most, of the about sixty passengers on the Handmaid must have been destined for Plymouth. Winthrop Papers, p. 269.
6. Winthrop notes that the Handmaid, John Grant, master arrived at Plymouth 29 1630 having been twelve weeks at sea and spent all her masts. She had sixty passengers who "came all well," but of twenty eight heifers she landed seventeen alive. On November 11 the vessel came to the Bay with Captain and two gentlemen passengers "who came to plant here, but having no testimony, we would not receive them." History 1 37 38. Dudley tells us that Morton of Mare Mount was sent home to England in the Handmaid and in December this year. Some beaver was also sent home in her, but whether on Plymouth or Bay account Morton does not state; but he does give a relation of the unseaworthiness of the ship and the hardships of the passage New English Canaan (Prince Society), 337 342.