Crewmen pose beside their whaleboat during a reenactment of a 17th century water crossing from Connecticut to Long Island. Many early settlers made the crossing from Stamford to Hempstead. (Photo by Lance Mead)
By LEE MEADE
During the 16th and 17th centuries, whenever a ship sailed westward across the dangerous North Atlantic Ocean, bringing a new and adventurous group of people from the Old World to the English colonies, it had a common passenger on board.
He was a minister who often encouraged the migration, helped organize its very being and was a visionary spiritual leader of a dedicated body determined to sail to the corners of the earth in the search of religious freedom.
There were many reasons for people leave their homelands along the northeastern shores of Europe. The rule of kings was absolute and few common folk had a say in how their lives would be governed. For many able-bodied young men, a life of military service awaited them as they grew into manhood on the family farm.
Some, such as the Puritan Separatists of England, made their way to Holland in their search for religious freedom. But, when their children grew up speaking Dutch instead of their native tongue, they looked for another solution, even if it meant moving once more. The discovery of a new land called America seemed to be an answer.
When their group of 88 men, women and children sailed with the blessing of the British government in 1620, it heralded a new beginning, however, their ship, The Mayflower, was blown off course and landed in what would become Massachusetts instead of Virginia. At the time, it was of little consequence. Their single purpose was to obtain religious freedom. Others quickly followed and the American colonies were soon established.
While everyone wanted the right to worship as they pleased, there was no one way of agreement on how to achieve it. In fact, several distinct regions developed during the settlement and colonization of the New World, each with its own specific and varied views that soon became very different social, religious and cultural communities. In each case, it was the minister, often with the advice of close church elders, who dictated the lot each group would follow.
Among the early leaders was Rev. Richard Denton, a strong-willed maverick minister of the Puritan faith who was instrumental in the founding of Stamford and may have been very involved in the Mead family's decision to leave Hertfordshire in the mid-1630s.
Rev. Denton was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1603 and graduated from Cambridge University in 1623. He was a deacon at Coley Chapel in Halifax and lived near the Mead family home in Hertfordshire. He came to America about 1635, the same time as the Meads, and, settled first in Watertown, Mass. Moving to Wethersfield in 1638, he became the leader of the group of settlers who founded Stamford in 1641.
Some of his followers in England accompanied him, although no record of ocean passage has been found. It is possible, perhaps, even probable, William Mead, his wife and three children were among them.
Although the first records of the Meads in America indicate William was given "a homelot and five acres of land" in Stamford, it has been speculated the family traveled from their hometown of Watford in Hertfordshire, England, to Watertown, Mass., and Wethersfield, Conn. They continued on to Stamford with Rev. Denton's party. And, after Rev. Denton abruptly left Stamford for Hempstead, Long Island, in 1644, the Mead brothers, Joseph and John, later joined him..
The church in Hempstead was the first Puritan Presbyterian church in America. Rev. Denton was highly respected among early American ministers, but he seemed to always be at odds with members within his flock. It has been suggested he was "a minister who lived ahead of his time." Soon, a disagreement developed with members of the church in Hempstead and they refused to pay him for his services.
The issue seemed to be his willingness to baptize the children of parents who were not members of the church, much to the chagrin of independents in the membership.
Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor of New York, intervened in an attempt to settle the controversy, but Rev. Denton left Hempstead anyway. He spent time in Virginia looking for a new church, only to return to Hempstead in 1657. A few years later, he returned to England where he died.
Rev. Cotton Mather, one of the most respected ministers of the day, called him "a highly religious man with strong Presbyterian beliefs." Mather said, "He was a small man with only one eye, but in the pulpit he could sway a congregation like he was nine feet tall."
Rev. Denton's church in Hempstead is believed to have been the first Presbyterian church in the American colonies.
After Rev. Denton left for Virginia, Joseph and John Mead returned to Connecticut and entered into a venture to develop the town of Greenwich. They continued to be friends of members who belonged to the Hempstead church and Joseph was asked for assistance in recruiting a replacement from Connecticut to succeed Rev. Denton.
There are other threads of history that tie the Meads and the Dentons together. Richard Crab, a fiesty, but close friend and church elder who became a partner of John Mead in the acquisition of land forming Horseneck (later to become Greenwich). Also, the Meads and Dentons intermarried and may have traveled together when they moved from Connecticut to upper New York state. Their travel in the early 1800s took them to Kortwight, Maryland, Brutus and Owasco.
A Revolutionary War soldier in military dress during reenactment ceremony. (Photo by Lance Mead)
Inns, ale and fish tales
(EDITOR'S NOTE: Genealogist Vance Mead spends his summers in England researching Mead family origins. This story describes the 16th Century records of Mead life in eastern Hertfordshire and the author's reconstruction of it.)
By VANCE MEAD
The town of Ware in eastern Hertfordshire was famous for two things: its malt and its inns. The two went together well.
Ware was well situated for malt-making. It was located in fertile, barley-growing country on the river Lea, which provided barge transportation to the brewers of London. And, it was a town of inns, a day's ride out of London on Ermine Street, the Roman road north to York. What could be better after a long ride on dusty roads than a pint of warm English ale?
All sorts of people traveled on the Old North Road, as Ermine Street was known in the 16th Century: merchants, soldiers, vagrants, students on their way to Cambridge. And, at the end of a day's journey out of London, they stopped for the night at Ware. There were dozens of inns and taverns, but the grandest of them were the Crown, the White Hart, the George and the Bull.
In 1547, the Bull was the property of Michael Meade and Elizabeth Morris, a widow. In 1555, a license was granted to innkeeper Michael Meade to sell, during his lifetime, wines by retail to be drunk within his houses in the town of Ware. This is probably the same Michael Meade who paid tax in 1545 at Upland, a few miles outside of Ware. It is not known where Michael Meade came from, but possibly he was from Buntingford, about 10 miles up the Old North Road.
In his will in 1524, John Sawyer of Buntingford beqeathed "until Elizabeth Poole my daughter two tenements with the appurtenances thereunto belonging, the one is in Ware called the Bull and the other is in Buntingford called the George." In 1501, John Sawyer and John Fyssher had sold a house and garden in Buntingford to Robert Mede and his wife Joan.
There were many Meades in Ware in the 16th and 17th centuries, but it's difficult to be certain how -- or if -- they were all related. The parish records date from 1558 and there are 18 Meades christened there before 1600. None of their parents names are given I have the wills of four Meades of Ware, but they are all from the 17th Century. However, there are other records available, for example, from Cambridge University and the Feet of Fines, so I will attempt to reconstruct how the family might have looked.
Michael Meade was born in about 1520, married Elizabeth and had four sons: Edward, born about 1542; George, born about 1547; Thomas, born about 1552, and Humphrey, born about 1554. Michael died in 1590.
Not much is known about Edward, except that he was married to Philippa and they granted lands to Michael and Elizabeth, his wife in 1585. In 1593, Edward and Philippa were mentioned in the Feet of Fines concerning a land deal in Amwell, Herts. They probably are the parents of Edward, both in Ware in 1564.
George was married to Elizabeth and granted land and a messuage to Michael and Elizabeth Meade in 1575. He is mentioned in the will of his brother, Thomas, in 1616 and made his own will in 1620 in which he mentions his son, George, born in Ware in 1582.
Much more is known about Thomas. He was born in 1552 and attended Eton in 1563. He studied there until 1570 when he went to King's College at Cambridge. He received a B.A. in 1574 and an M.A. in 1578. He was a fellow of the university from 1573 to 1584 and the vice-provost frp, 1582 to 1584. For the rest of his life (1583-1616), he was the vicar of Prescot, Lancashire, and the chaplain to the Earl of Derby. He married Eleanor and they had Thomas (born 1586 in Prescot), Susan (born 1587 in Ware), George (born 1588 in Ware), Henry (born about 1590) and Edward (born 1592), both in Prescot.
Humphrey was born in about 1554 and entered St. John's College at Cambridge in 1570. He married Anne and is mentioned, with her, granting land to Michael and Elizabeth Meade in 1578. In the same year, Humphrey and Anne, together with Edward and Dorothy Smythe and William and Frances Preston, sold three-fourths of the manor of Chilwicke and lands in Chilwick, Saint Michaels, Harpenden, Sandridge and Redbourne, Herts, to George Rotherman and William Toock. These lands were in the western part of the county, around St. Albans and Watford.
Humphrey and Anne had Humphrey (1578), Richard (1579), Nicholas (1580) and Anne (1582). Nicholas was an apprentice in London to William Watkins, skinner, from Michaelmas in 1597 for eight years, but later lived in Ware. Richard was a vintner in London and died unmarried in 1604.
In addition to their other interests, many of them continued to be involved with inns at Ware. In 1634, Edward Meade was "of the Crane Inn". He was born in 1564, the son of Edward and Philippa. In his will, Edward Mead of Ware, innholder, mentions his grandchildren, Elizabeth and Thomas Holland, daughter Mary, the wife of Abram Baker, wife and executrix Joan, and overseers Isaac Heath and cousins Thomas and Nicholas Mead.
In June 1619, George Mead, Doctor of Physic, in his will gave five pounds a year, issuing out of the George Inn, to the poor. Although a physician, he must have owned a share of the inn.
In December 1622, Nicholas Meade of the George Inn in Ware wrote to Framlingham Gawdy of West Harling he "sends Gawdy's bay mare, her keep at six pence a day comes to 13 shillings."
Isaak Walton (1593-1683) writes about another aspect along the river Lea in "The Compleat Angler," published in 1593. He describes a "great Trout that is near an ell long (45 inches), which was of such a length and depth that he had his picture drawn, and now is to be seen at the George in Ware."
Of course, some tales grow in the telling.
A gathering of the 'family'
Scattered members of the Mead Research Group from across the nation are planning a weekend get-together this summer in the Glen Falls, N.Y., area.
Tentatively, they will meet -- many for the first time face-to-face -- on the weekend of Saturday, July 30 and Sunday, July 31.
The group is the brainchild of Wanda Mead-Campbell of Binghamton, N.Y., and consists of approximately 30 fellow researchers who regularly communicate through the auspices of Yahoo.com.
Primarily, they meet on a web site, meadresearchers, to share information about the pioneer Mead family which originally settled in Stamford, Conn., on Dec. 7, 1641, when its progenitor ancestor, William Mead, was given a "home lot and five acres of land" as one of the town's first inhabitants. The Meads, who also spell their name as Meade, Mede and Mayd, have multiplied across America, over the 350 years.
When the study group was formed in November 2004, the focus was on the Meads who had migrated from Greenwich, Conn., to Dutchess County, N.Y., in the early years of the 18th century. Although the group still emphasizes its emigration through the Nine Partners area of New York, it's membership is now quite broader.
The membership now includes persons from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Texas, Florida, Vermont, Maryland, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado, Arizona and California. Lance Mead (lmead52089@aol.com) of Brandon, Vt., is coordinating arrangements for the mid-summer meeting. Details will be announced through the website and the April edition of the mead-e family tree.
Between Us . . .
Grave of Fayette C. Meade
MOST OF YOU already know Helen and I just completed a cross-country move from Horseshoe Bay, Tex., to Eden Prairie, Minn. It got me thinking about the trials and tribulations our Mead(e) ancestors had as they walked, rode on oxcart or were carried in a horse-drawn buggy across the countryside in much earlier days.
As near as I can count, I have lived in 10 different states, 2 foreign countries and, once I began repeating states, moved my residence a total of 44 times. Obviously, that's enough to make anyone travel-weary. But, I don't think it meant a thing when I began looking back at the migration across America our early relatives made.
After sailing across the treacherous Atlantic Ocean, the first Meads trekked through the wilds of Massachusetts from the Boston area to Wethersfield, Conn., some 150 miles away. For the most part, they must have carried their household goods on their backs. Then, when wanderlust set in, they were off again 75 miles to the south to begin their role in the formation of Stamford. They likely climbed into a whaleboat, much like those pictured in this issue of the mead-e family tree for the journey to Hempstead ... and back, again.
It was a short move of just a few miles from Stamford to Greenwich, but, when they started across an unknown and uncharted nation into New York state, they became serious vagabonds. My own direct relatives -- Eliphalet Mead and Susannah Olmstead -- moved from Ridgefield with three small children -- Harvey, Betsy and William -- about 1806. Along the way to the Finger Lakes area of New York, Anna and Rufus were born in Kortwight, Laura in Maryland, Polly in Brutus and Cordelia in Owasco.
What a chore it must have been for Susannah, giving birth and nursing her brood of eight as they made their way across New York without knowing how many times they would stop or where their journey would end. Susannah was 66 years old when she died in Owasco. Eliphalet passed away a year later and was buried beside her in the Sennett Cemetery, just east of Auburn.
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MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER, Fayette Clark Meade, was born to Harvey and his wife, Almira Goodrich, in Elbridge. The genealogical record is quite complete from thereon, although I have been unable to find anything at all on Almira's early life. It is believed she came from Washington, but I don't know if it was the town or county. It is my only claim to a possible connection to Dutchess County and a rightful place among the membership of the Mead Research Group.
But, the mood to travel had been established. My great-grandfather edited a weekly newspaper in Appleton, Wis., in 1858; farmed before the Civil War near Litchfield, Mich., served as a 1st lieutenant with the Michigan Sharpshooters, and took his family to Alexandria, Minn., following the armistice. As a sidenote, he was a guard of the conspirators who were charged with the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
Letters he wrote to his wife, the daughter of a pioneer Windsor, Conn., founder and diaries he kept indicated to us he never lost his passion to travel. On his wedding trip, he and his wife took a boat from Appleton to Chicago and a train to Massachusetts to visit her relatives. He walked miles across South Dakota before finding land to buy in Minnesota. They traveled by train from Michigan to Minnesota and, following his wife's death, he took a train to Washington, D.C., to visit the Smithsonian Institute. Later in life, he went to Seattle and Omaha for political conventions and to Detroit for a celebration honoring the Grand Army of the Republic. It was a heartwrenching moment for me when I read the doctor's notation on his death certificate stating he had died of "feeble mindedness."
I imagine I carry something of his genes to account for my seven decades of work in the newspaper business and, I suspect, my urge to travel is inherited from him, too. But, I stop and shake my head in awe every time I reflect upon the early passages family pioneers made to get from Hertfordshire to the American colonies and then spread out across the nation. It makes the 1,300 miles we traveled in a modern, air-conditioned automobile pale in comparison. Perhaps, I still have him beat by my travel to all but Hawaii of the 50 states.
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OUR MOVE, accomplished in two days of comfortable driving, cannot be compared to what our relatives endured.
I have a note in my files of an early-American mother who rode six days behind an oxen to visit a fifth generation granddaughter. The 25 miles she traveled was the farthest she had ever been away from her Connecticut farmhome.
As we search our computerized files for dangling Meads and other loosely connected links in our family chains, it is easy to forget the difficulty we had ourselves just a few years ago. Most of us have stared at microfilm, copied poorly written records and grasped to understand what others of different generations were striving to convey to us.
How blessed we are in looking back at what those who came before us have left behind.
-- Lee L. Meade Sr., Editor and Publisher
This, that & other things
THERE'S GOOD NEWS! Our readers have responded so well that we can announce the mead-e family tree will continue. We have approximately $300 in the bank to be used for ongoing expenses of maintaining our domain name and archiving past issues of the newsletter. While we explore some other possibilities of financing production costs, that will assure us of making it through the 2005 calendar year.
Labor is free and our writers continue to work without being reimbursed, however, if you would like to make a contribution, all donations should be sent to: Lee Meade, mead-e family tree, 8505 Flying Cloud Drive, Apt. I-221, Eden Prairie, MN 55344.
The same mailing address can be used for anyone who wishes to suggest an article or submit an old Mead-e family photo for publication. All photographs will be scanned and returned within 24 hours by Express Mail, but we do not assume responsibility for their possible loss.
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A REMINDER: If you haven't read it already, the 17th century historical novel "MASSACRE: Daughter of War" by Danielle Skjelver is available in paperback. Any major bookstore should have it on sale at about $15. Otherwise, you can get it from Amazon. I was particularly struck by the author's choice of words in explaining the book's graphic violence: "When white people slaughter hundreds of Indians, it is a battle. When Indians do the same, it is a massacre."
Based on the true story of Hannah Hawks Scott, this novel takes the reader deep inside the conflict between Puritan colonists and the First Nations of North America. Born the daughter of a sergeant in King Philip's War, Hannah is a woman inexorably linked to a Native family whose means of self-restoration changes her life forever. The author delivers insight into a vastly different time. Even as she opens a window on loving Native and English homes, she draws the reader into a world of brutality and barbarism. Spanning from the 1637 attack on the Pequot Fort to the 1704 raid of Deerfield, Mass., and through Queen Anne's War, MASSACRE: Daughter of War is a moving story of early American history. (286 pages).
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DNA STUDY CONTINUES: Efforts to link members of the related Mead (Meade, Meagh, Mayd and Mede) families through their common DNA is continuing. Recent test results in the Mead DNA Surname Project have been identified for descendants of Joseph and John Mead, the sons of Hertfordshire immigrant William Mead, while still another unrelated line has been uncovered. Carolyn Mead Hildebrand (noelcaro@aol.com) is coordinating the program.
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IT'S A RECORD: For the seventh consecutive issue, the mead-e family tree has scored a record number of "hits" for the October 2004 newsletter. Totals compiled by NetworkSolutions.com show 2,013 readers called up the website. The previous high was 1,699 for July 2004.
