Alice Brackett

Immigration

Came to America in the Puritan Great Migration (1620–1643), most of them emigrating from the southeast of England and settling in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The busiest years of the Great Migration were those of “The Eleven Year Tyranny” (1629–1640) during which Charles I tried to rule without calling the Puritan-dominated parliament. Once the King was forced to call Parliament in 1640 and the Puritan revolution began, immigration to New England came to a near-complete halt. Virginia Anderson’s book New England’s Generation: The Great Migration and the Formation of Society and Culture in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1993) is an excellent account of the immigrant group and the experience of sea travel.

Many of the immigration dates given below are upper bounds, based on when the person in question first appears in the New England records. Thus, in the absence of more specific information, a date of 1636 should be understood as “arrived by 1636.” Very few passenger lists exist from the time of the Great Migration and only in a few cases are the names of ancestors’ ships and their actual departure or arrival dates known. For the period 1620–1633 the standard reference is now Robert Charles Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633 (New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1995). It should be noted that the early work of Charles Banks on the composition of the Winthrop Fleet of 1630 is now considered unreliable. None of Banks’ conjectures about arrival dates are used here.

RICHARD BRACKETT — second trip to New England, returning with his new wife Alice (Blower) Brackett. ALICE (BLOWER) BRACKETT — Alice (Blower) Brackett was the wife of Richard Brackett (see 1632 above) and daughter of Thomas Blower (see 1635 below). Richard immigrated in 1632, then returned to England for their marriage on 6 Jan 1633/4 in London. They were back in New England again in late 1634. Their first child, Hannah Brackett, was baptized 4 Jan 1634/5 at Boston, so Alice was probably pregnant during their voyage to New England (making Hannah an immigrant ancestor also) [GMB 203–206]. The Truelovefrom London to Boston The Truelove under John Gibbs took on passengers for New England in September 1635 at London, and arrived at Boston in late November. Hotten [131%E2%80%93132] transcribes a Truelove passenger list from the London port book that is dated 19 September. Surnames represented among the Truelove passengers include …

THOMAS BLOWER — Thomas Blower was baptized 23 Apr 1587 at Stanstead, Suffolk, and died about 1639 in Massachusetts. In “September 1635 Thomas Blower, set sail in the Truelove, John Gibbs, Master. The ship arrived in Boston in late November. He was listed as aged 50 on the passenger list and alone. Ages were often mere estimates and in this case he seems to have been actually aged 48. There is no record of a family with him. His daughter Alice had preceeded him to Boston two years earlier as the young bride of Richard Brackett. Three years later, his sister-in-law and her husband, Edmund Rice, also came to New England to join him” [GMC50 77]. ALICE (FROST) BLOWER — May have accompanied her husband Thomas Blower on the Truelove in 1635.