From Amateur Genealogist to Author
January 27, 2023
I started this blog to describe my journey from amateur genealogist to author. It was not a journey I expected to make, and I was as surprised as anyone when I produced a 350-page manuscript set in 17th century New England. I wrote the book because my genealogical research had uncovered so many interesting stories about family ancestors that writing a book seemed like the best way to memorialize these stories. My manuscript describes European colonization of New England and its neighboring colonies as our ancestors experienced it. It is a work of narrative nonfiction so it describes actual events, but I've created a narrative to personalize and enliven the ancestors' experiences.
For example, I describe the Mayflower and her voyage from passenger Francis Cooke's perspective. I tell the story of Mary Chilton's romance and marriage with John Winslow through imagined conversations and scenes. I imagine how 16-year-old Katherine Hoskins might have felt when confronted with her first experience of bloodletting. I sneak into the heads of several male ancestors to describe the Pequot War and King Philip's War. I delve into the motivations and frustrations of Puritan women, such as the lay preacher Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer, the Quaker Martyr, whose culture revolved around religion but whose status in that culture was constantly undermined. I explore the motivations for and results of sins committed by the ancestors and how New England's religious governments punished transgressors. I consider the Edwards and Tuttle families to understand how ambition and mental instability had the unlikely result of producing possibly the greatest 18th century Revivalist Preacher. The novel ends with the Salem Witch Trials and one family's attempt to make sense of it all.
While the book is based on Richardson ancestors, not all who appear in its pages bear the Richardson surname. If you have New England, New Netherland, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania ancestors, you may well find one of them in the pages of my book.
Pilgrims, Puritans and Heretics: 1620-1700
Table of Contents
February 3, 2023
Prologue
PART ONE: Birth of a Colony
1. The Mayflower
2. The Voyage
3. The First Winter
4. Samoset Visits Plymouth
5. Departure of the Mayflower
PART TWO: Plymouth Colony 1620-1630
6. Building the Town of Plymouth
7. Arrival of the Fortune
8. Departure of the Fortune
9. Relations with the Indians Deteriorate
10. Wessagusett Colony – A Failed Experiment
11. Arrival of the Anne and the Little James
12. The Courtship of Mary Chilton
13. The Buy-Out
14. Wedding Plans
15. Transition Years: 1628-1630
16. Immigration to Plymouth Stalls
PART THREE: The Second Wave of Immigration 1630-1640
17. The Meeting at Sempringham 1629
18. Massachusetts Bay Colony: Salem & Charlestown 1629
19. Massachusetts Bay Colony: Dorchester 1630
20. Massachusetts Bay Colony: The Winthrop Fleet 1630
21. Massachusetts Bay Colony: Boston 1630
PART FOUR: Puritan vs. Puritan: the Seeds of Rebellion 1631-1636
22. Reverend Roger Williams
23. Reverend Thomas Hooker
24. Two Choices: Accept & Conform or Question & Change
25. The Great Hurricane of 1635
PART FIVE: Settling the Connecticut Valley
26. Reverend Warham Leads his Flock Westward
27. Reverend Hooker Makes a Choice
PART SIX: Mixed Stories: One Ordinary Man, Two Banishments
28. John Dwight of Dedham, Massachusetts Bay Colony
29. Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Crisis
30. Roger Williams is Banished
PART SEVEN: War
31. The Pequot War
PART EIGHT: Puritan Ministry in New England – Opportunities and Challenges
32. Harvard College
33. Death Tests the Faith of Two Dedham Families
PART NINE: New Colonies and Settlements
34. New Haven Colony 1638-1664
35. The Dutch in North America: New Netherland Colony
36. Island Settlements: Long Island, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket
PART TEN: Puritan Intolerance Spins Out of Control
37. Mary Dyer, the Quaker Martyr
PART ELEVEN: Living Up to One's Religion
38. Love Brewster's Problem
39. The Sin of Suicide: A Scandal in the Dwight Household
40. The Sin of Ambition: Thomas Willett, Mayor of New York
41. The Sin of Fornication: Mary (Ball) Monroe, Abandoned
Child, Abused Servant, and Unwed Mother
42. Broken Dreams: The Herrick Mystery
PART TWELVE
43. King Philip's War
PART THIRTEEN: Pennsylvania, Religious Haven
44. Bevans and Richardsons in Pennsylvania 1687
PART FOURTEEN: The Century Closes
45. Bad Behavior: The Shocking Decline of the Tuttles of
New Haven
46. Witch Hysteria