(This post is a follow-up to an introductory post about my personal genealogical journey.)
When do you think about your ancestors?
On September 6 of 1620, those four were among 130 travelers crammed aboard a small vessel about the length of a Boeing 737 and only twice as wide headed west from Plymouth, England, into the Atlantic, well aware their departure had come too late in the season to provide high prospects of a successful voyage. They would almost certainly face some winter weather on the high seas. One of them had a second wife who was eight months pregnant, adding to the fears she would almost certainly give birth during the two-month trip.
Think about your last Southwest Airlines flight to Las Vegas, then imagine spending two months on that plane—but sailing on the ocean. And, instead of arriving at a modern terminal with food and lodging, all you could anticipate on the end of your voyage would be the unknown threats of a hostile new world. But they were eager to accept the risks for the potential reward of opportunity for a freer and more prosperous life.
My lineage from Stephen Hopkins as configured by the WikiTree Relationship Finder tool.
Heading my family’s representation were my two tenth great-grandfathers, Thomas Rogers and Stephen Hopkins. They didn’t know each other when they joined the expedition, and they had no way of knowing they would have grandchildren who would marry and bring their families together. Although both were religious like all men of their era, these two men boarded the Mayflower with dramatically different backgrounds.Thomas Rogers, 49, was a legitimate Pilgrim separatist who had lived the last few years in Holland seeking religious freedom. He traveled with his 17-year-old son, Joseph Rogers, leaving his 47-year-old wife and my tenth great-grandmother, Alice Cosford Rogers to wait in Holland for Thomas and Joseph to establish a home in the new world. She would never see it, dying in Leiden, Zuid-Holland, the Netherlands in 1622. Ironically, Thomas was destined to precede her in death as one of the first to perish at Plymouth Colony during the harsh winter of 1621. But Joseph would survive to become my ninth great-grandfather. Joseph's son Thomas would marry Stephen's granddaughter, and their third child, Hannah Rogers, would become my seventh great-grandmother.
In contrast with Thomas Rogers, 39-year-old Stephen Hopkins boarded the ship as one of the adventurers using the Pilgrims to seek his fortune in the new world. He would be considered one of the “strangers” among the Pilgrim “saints”—as the crew of the Mayflower later described their passengers. And Stephen was leading an entourage. His group included his 14-year-old daughter Constance, who would become my ninth great-grandmother, her 12-year-old brother Giles and their pregnant stepmother, 35-year-old Elizabeth Fisher Hopkins. It also included his two-year-old daughter, Damaris, born after Stephen had married Elizabeth three years earlier following the death of my tenth great-grandmother, Mary Kent Hopkins at the age of 30. Besides his family, Stephen also accepted responsibility for two young indentured servants eager to learn his trade as a tanner: Edward Leister, about 20, and Edward Doty, 21.
But Hopkins was bringing more than a large family aboard the ship. He carried with him the priceless commodity of experience. Stephen was the only Mayflower passenger who had previously lived in North America, having sailed for England’s Jamestown Colony a decade before on a trip as famous for its mishaps as its successes. His knowledge of the land and its inhabitants would prove vital to the military and political leaders of the Mayflower expedition, Myles Standish and William Bradford, in the months to come.
Stephen Hopkins easily ranks as the most fascinating and inspiring member of my family tree. Although Stephen never wrote a memoir like Standish or Bradford, recent genealogical research has lifted the curtain on his exploits, prompting the publication of several books about his contribution to the creation of our nation.
Notably, Mayflower historian Caleb Johnson dug deep to prove that the Stephen Hopkins who arrived aboard the Mayflower in 1620 was indeed the same Stephen Hopkins who had been at Jamestown ten years before. Johnson’s 2007 book, Here Shall I Die Ashore, provides a detailed biography of Stephen and verification of the research. In addition, Johnson maintains a vital web site about Mayflower research at Caleb Johnson’s Mayflower History.
Although Johnson counts nine Mayflower passengers among his ancestors, Stephen Hopkins is not one of them. But Johnson’s meticulous research in the 1990s clarified a lot of information about Hopkins, and Johnson recounts his genealogical journey in the introduction to his Hopkins biography.
He describes the Hopkins personal adventure as “extraordinarily fascinating” adding: “He just seems to have been everywhere and experienced everything, whether it was a shipwreck in Bermuda, a near shipwreck on the shoals of Cape Cod, a shallop-wreck on Clark’s Island, a hurricane or a water spout, a death sentence, or a fine for selling beer too expensively, meeting Pocahontas or housing Squanto, signing up for the Pequot War, or heading off on a diplomatic mission to the great Wampanoag sachem Massasoit Ousemaquin.”
More recently, San Diego attorney and Mayflower history buff Jonathan Mack published another biography in 2020 entitled A Stranger Among Saints: Stephen Hopkins, the Man Who Survived Jamestown and Saved Plymouth.
Also this year, Stephen received the fictional treatment in The London Years of Stephen Hopkins, with retired police investigator Michael McCarthy imagining what might have happened in the years between 1615 and 1620 when Stephen returned to London from Jamestown to collect his children before returning to North America.
Stephen Hopkins was baptized on April 30 of 1581 in the Church of All Saints at Upper Clatford in Hampshire, England, near the Anton River, born the son of John and Elizabeth Williams Hopkins. More details about his lineage and life are available with sources and discussion on his profile at the WikiTree genealogical web site and at the web site for his heritage society. Stephen had two half-siblings born to his father and first wife, but he was the first child of John and his second wife. Not much is known about the lives of those two half-siblings, William and Alice. Stephen also had a younger sister named Susanna, but not much is known about her either. The family had lived as farmers in this area for several generations. When Stephen was five or six, however, the family relocated to the city of Winchester, where John apparently served as an archer in the local militia, according to Johnson’s research. John’s sudden death in 1593 left Elizabeth as a widow to tend her four children.
Reviewing John’s estate records, Johnson concluded that the family likely lived comfortably enough but it is not clear what John did for work in Winchester. Because his stepmother did not remarry, 12-year-old Stephen likely became an apprentice of some sort. Although Stephen does not emerge into any written records again until 1605 with the baptism of his first daughter, Elizabeth, it is possible to conclude a few things about his character development during those missing 12 years based upon known facts about his later years. Elizabeth was destined to die in 1613, about the same time as her mother while Stephen was still at Jamestown.
Stephen obviously had ambition and curiosity because he somehow learned to read well enough to land a job as a minister’s clerk and psalmist on that 1609 voyage to Jamestown. He also was known to have a trade as a tanner by the time he joined the Mayflower expedition, so he must have learned that profession somehow in his youth. It is also clear that young Stephen learned to be articulate and likely boasted a quick wit, while also harboring an independent and rebellious streak. Let’s not forget courage, a quality assumed for anyone willing to accept the risk of the voyages he did.
Outspoken later when organizing a mutiny on Bermuda and convincing enough to talk his way off the gallows, Stephen also was known as enough of a Puritan to fit with the Separatist Pilgrims—the “Saints” of the new colony—and that distinction would have been a dangerous admission in the religious turmoil of early Seventeenth Century England. It also reveals a thoughtful side to Stephen because Puritans actually ranked as the intellectual skeptics of their time, challenging the established religious orders in the face of dangerous retaliation and conducting church services that often sounded more like philosophical lectures than religious zealotry.
Stephen also likely enjoyed strong drink and could resort to violence, based on later court records from Plymouth where he ran afoul of the law for battery on one occasion and was fined for overcharging on liquor as a tavern keeper of some sort. I have uncovered no known physical descriptions or portraits of Stephen, but it’s safe to assume he was athletic and imposing enough to attract followers for some of the more dangerous missions when he later served as a leader. He could not have survived Bermuda and Jamestown, for example, without an ability to handle physical challenges.
Jamestown called to Stephen Hopkins in 1609 in the form of an opportunity while he and his family were living in Hursley, Hampshire. His occupation there is unknown, but it is believed that his wife’s family had operated a tavern so he might have been involved as a shopkeeper. One record indicates an eviction by a “widow Kent” around this time, but no details have survived. He also might have been plying his trade as a tanner. But it was his ability to read that caught the eye of a local minister, Reverend Richard Buck, who was signed to join a relief mission bringing a new governor to Jamestown.
Buck needed a clerk and someone to read scripture—a “psalmist”—and he offered Stephen that job as a seven-year indenture. Although it meant leaving his wife and three children in England, the indenture also offered Stephen the opportunity for something he likely would never have by staying in England: The chance to become a landholder. So, he climbed aboard a ship called the Sea Venture on June 2, 1609, with Reverend Buck and Sir Thomas Gates, the new governor for the Virginia Company at Jamestown, established just two years before.
The fleet of seven ships plus the flagship Sea Venture encountered the storm on July 25, 1609, according to the journal of survivor Silvester Jourdaine, published in 1613. Separated from the fleet, the flagship floundered several days before running aground July 28 on one of the Bermuda islands. Thus, Stephen Hopkins also figures in the origin of one of our most enigmatic scientific questions: What is so dangerous about the so-called Bermuda Triangle, or the Devil’s Triangle as it’s also been known through the centuries since. Besides Hopkins, Buck, Gates and Jourdaine, the company of 150 included other notable individuals, including the admiral and privateer Sir George Somers, later acclaimed as the founder of Bermuda. It was Somers who had taken the helm during the storm and sought salvation by deliberately driving the ship onto the rocks of what would be called Somers Island.
While the rest of the fleet managed to sail on and reach Jamestown some 600 miles to the east, the Sea Venture, its crew and passengers found themselves stranded on the uninhabited island that had been discovered by the Spanish in 1505, more than 100 years before. Initially they must have felt deep despair at their plight, but that quickly changed to great relief, according to the most detailed account of this adventure provided in a lengthy letter sent in 1610 from Jamestown back to England by another passenger, William Strachey. Although never colonized by the Spanish, the island chain had become home to a vast community of wild pigs that descended from swine that had escaped from intermittent visits by ships headed to Spanish America. Besides the pork, the Sea Venture survivors discovered a bounty of food on Bermuda, ranging from sea turtles to birds and fish.
Under the leadership of the 55-year-old Somers and the 24-year-old Gates, the castaways quickly worked to build shelter and began construction on two small boats they hoped to sail to Jamestown once winter had passed on Bermuda. The group numbered about 150 and included women and some children. They found the conditions on Bermuda so welcoming that their leaders would face mutiny on three occasions during the next ten months while working for departure to Jamestown, according to Strachey’s letter. None of them wanted to leave!
They had heard stories about the rugged conditions in Jamestown and contrasted those with the life they suddenly enjoyed on Bermuda. In fact, those tales had not been exaggerated. While the Sea Venture castaways were enjoying their winter on Bermuda—dining on sea turtle, Red snapper and wild boar—Jamestown would see 400 colonists perish from hunger, disease and native hostilities. The colony was close to collapse, despite the arrival of the other ships from the relief fleet. It suffered a fundamental problem based on its very reason for existence.
The Virginia Company had not initially intended Jamestown to survive as a true colony. Rather than sending farmers and families, the investors filled the colony with adventurers determined to seek the kinds of gold and precious metals the Spaniards had been taking from Mexico and South America. By the winter of 1609, however, Jamestown’s leadership had finally concluded Virginia had no gold to offer.
In the meantime, the colony’s inhabitants had never learned to even feed themselves, relying instead first on trade with the natives and then theft or extortion for deliveries of food. Of course, relations with the tribes in Virginia quickly deteriorated. It proved dangerous for anyone to even venture beyond the palisades for firewood. Although Jamestown was destined to survive—barely—and become the oldest continuing English settlement in North America, its beginnings would contrast dramatically with those later established by the Mayflower voyage to Massachusetts where investors hoped to plant a true colonial outpost with families and industry. And Stephen Hopkins would be able to contrast his Jamestown experiences with those to come later in Plymouth, a decade into the future.
While Jamestown struggled in the winter of 1609, however, Stephen and his fellow Bermuda survivors grew restless. Very quickly one small group declared their independence from Gates and Somers, announcing their plans to move into the forest and establish a colony there. Gates elected to punish them with banishment, basically ordering them to go ahead and do it. For some reason unexplained in the Strachey account, the group decided to rejoin their comrades after a few days by themselves. Perhaps their lack of a blacksmith or carpenter among them had diminished their ambitions. But they had apparently provided Stephen with an idea that nearly led to his execution as the second mutineer.
“A fellow who had much knowledge in the Scriptures and could reason well therein,” wrote Strachey of my great-grandpa Stephen, identifying him as the next mutineer. The 28-year-old Stephen had teamed with two other confederates to argue against the continued leadership of Gates. They claimed his authority had ended with the shipwreck, freeing the group to establish its own colony on Bermuda. But these arguments failed to impress the governor, who ordered manacles for Stephen, placed him on trial and sentenced him to hang.
“But so penitent he was, and made so much moan, alleging the ruin of his wife and children in this his trespass,” summarized Strachey about Stephen’s pleadings that prompted forgiveness by Gates. For descendants like myself, I wish Strachey had provided a more detailed transcript. I suspect Stephen’s position as the minister’s clerk and his value as a psalmist must have helped sway his fate. Strachey emphasized how much the company appreciated their Sunday worship services along with morning and evening prayers. He must have presented a sincere image of repentance. And it seems clear from his later encounters with authority that this experience likely humbled him into a more diplomatic rebel. Whatever the case, Stephen dodged the hangman on Bermuda and would live on to join the Mayflower ten years later.
The third mutineer had no such luck. According to Strachey, this fellow provided lots of mischief on Bermuda that ultimately ended with a sentence to hang. Instead of begging for his life, he begged to be shot instead, and this time Governor Gates was happy to oblige. Shortly after that final incident, Somers and Gates completed the construction of two small boats capable of making the short hop from Bermuda to complete the voyage to Jamestown. While on Bermuda, the group had conducted one marriage and welcomed the birth of two children. They set sail on May 10, 1610, and arrived at Jamestown on May 24.
Immediately the group realized a serious mistake: They should have brought food with them from Bermuda. Conditions in Jamestown proved so disheartening that Gates very quickly made a decision to abandon the colony and take the 60 Jamestown survivors north to the fishing grounds off Newfoundland aboard the four vessels available. Just as they set to sail away, however, another relief fleet arrived from England with a new governor for the colony.
By the middle of June, Gates had surrendered his leadership to Thomas West, known as Lord De La Warr, the new governor sent from the Virginia Company with three ships and enough food for a year. Gates would remain in Virginia to explore, while Somers was dispatched back to Bermuda to gather wild hogs for supplementing Jamestown’s livestock. Somers would die of illness in Bermuda. And Stephen would remain to serve out his seven-year-indenture while becoming an eyewitness to a dramatic authoritarian transition at the colony by De La Warr—whose title would become the name of the state of Delaware—and his successors.
By May of 1611, the colony had a new governor in Sir Thomas Dale, sent there to govern with an iron fist. In the process Dale treated Stephen to a real show of power and authority, executing an estimated dozen colonists. Some of them burned at the stake and other starved to death while tied to trees. Dale punished minor infractions with whippings and the stocks.
At the same time, back in England, William Shakespeare had written The Tempest, possibly using the Strachey letter about the Bermuda shipwreck as an inspiration. Stephen Hopkins descendants usually cite the Bard’s creation of the Stephano character in that play as a poetic reference to Strachey’s account of Stephen’s attempt at a mutiny on Bermuda. In Shakespeare’s shipwreck tale, Stephano is described as a “drunken butler” who plots to take control of the island. If that sounds familiar, you can see why Hopkins descendants enjoy The Tempest.
Of course, Hopkins was still in Jamestown while audiences in London sampled Shakespeare’s version of the Bermuda adventure. Continuing as the clerk and psalmist for Minister Buck, Stephen likely figured prominently in many famous events, including the marriage of John Rolfe to the native princess known as Pocahontas. Indeed, Rolfe had been with Stephen on Bermuda, so it seems likely they were acquainted. But the written record of Jamestown includes no mention of Stephen, so we are left to speculate on how events of those times affected his outlook on life. Then, when news of his wife’s death in 1613 reached him, Stephen won permission to return to England and resume care for his remaining children, Constance and Giles. It appears he departed in the Spring of 1616.
Back in England, Stephen left few official records to mark his movements. One record cites his marriage to Elizabeth Fisher on February 19, 1617. Researchers have not found any record of the birth of their first child, daughter Damaris, who also arrived aboard the Mayflower but died in Plymouth Colony in 1621. Despite the lack of records, novelist Michael McCarthy has offered a likely scenario for Stephen’s four years between Jamestown and the Mayflower in his speculative account about The London Years of Stephen Hopkins.
McCarthy assumes that Stephen’s two surviving children, Constance and Giles, would have taken residence with his brother pending his return from Virginia. The writer speculates that Stephen likely gathered them from the family home in Hursley, Southhampton before relocating to London where he hoped to use his connections to land another position aboard a mission back to Virginia. Besides working his trade as a tanner, Stephen also likely participated in trading deals while hanging around the port to gather information about future opportunities.
As a religious Puritan, he likely attended church with the London contingent of the group that had spawned a separatist movement with parishioners then living in Holland—the group that would eventually become known as the “Saints” aboard the Mayflower. McCarthy provides a speculative romance narrative in which the widower and single father Stephen meets Elizabeth when buying baked goods in London.
It is a matter of record, however, that Stephen and his entourage were aboard the Mayflower docked in Southampton by August of 1620, awaiting the arrival of another ship, the Speedwell, bringing passengers from the Holland group of Separatist “saints” to join the London-based group headed for Virginia. Researcher Johnson notes that Stephen’s large entourage of family and servants reflects both his status and his opportunity for success in the New World. Under the company’s partnership agreement, Stephen would receive title to more acreage for his wife, children and servants while adding young and capable colonists to the venture.
At the age of 39, Stephen would have been considered a prime candidate for joining the expedition. Of course, the Mayflower investors expected a financial return from this enterprise. Instead of seeking gold like those who financed the Jamestown adventure, however, the Mayflower backers expected their colony to prosper in natural resources, timber, animal furs and agricultural goods.
Eventually, the New England colonies would do exactly that, but the financial return would not come as quickly as anticipated. At any rate, the Hopkins gang waited in London for the group from Holland, which would include my other Mayflower grandfather, Thomas Rogers and his son, Joseph Rogers, destined to become my ninth-great-grandfather.
My tenth-great-grandfather Thomas Rogers was born about 1571 in Watford, Northamptonshire, England, the son of a William Rogers remembered as a farmer in the area. Records show no surname for William’s wife, Eleanor. But they do reveal a marriage in Watford on October 4, 1597, between Thomas and my tenth-great-grandmother, 24-year-old Alice Cosford. She was the daughter of another local farmer named George Cosford. Thomas and Alice had two children who died in infancy just after the turn of the new century. But Joseph’s 1602 birth in Watford would give them a surviving eldest destined to make his mark in the New World.
Information about the Rogers family has been spotty over the years, but recent research by members of the Thomas Rogers Society has filled some gaps. Although his English occupation remains unclear, he obviously became educated and religious as he grew to manhood in the village about 50 miles north of London. Although clearly connected somehow with the separatist Puritans, Thomas remained in Watford until at least 1613 as verified by the births there of three more children following Joseph: John in 1606, Elizabeth in 1608 and Margaret in 1613.
By then, the first group of separatists had made their move to Holland some five years earlier, so the Thomas Rogers family would have been a late arrival, leaving descendants uncertain about the degree of his religious affiliation with the separatists. Did he join them in Holland more due to business interests than religious rebellion? Whatever the motive for his connection, it appears clear he had one when he purchased a home in Leiden, the Netherlands, in 1617, near the homes of separatist leaders and eventual fellow Mayflower passengers William Brewster and William Bradford. Unlike other separatists, Thomas Rogers also became a citizen of Leiden in 1618 where he apparently enjoyed a thriving business as a merchant dealing in high-end textiles known as “camlet.”
To fully understand the Rogers legacy, however, a little historical context should first apply to explain the religious and commercial issues that would have prompted a man like Thomas to abandon his homeland and seek opportunities in Holland, or later the New World across the Atlantic Ocean. The religious differences of the era were complex, to say the least, with controversies and violence raging for nearly 100 years. That upheaval stemmed in good part from invention of the printing press about 1440 and the subsequent availability of religious or philosophical literature to the middle classes. They read. They thought. They debated. And, then they started fighting.
You can spend endless hours researching all the twists turns of the Protestant Reformation movement that eventually spawned the Mayflower‘s voyage to what would become New England. I’ll provide a summary here—just enough to help readers understand the forces at play by 1620. The movement began a century earlier with growing disillusionment about the abuses and corruption in the Roman Catholic church. Given the power to read scripture on their own and interpret the so-called “Word of God” for themselves, groups of dissenters broke from the central Roman authority to create new Christian communities observing different and more localized traditions. In his break from Rome, England’s King Henry VIII added a new twist with creation of the Church of England.
By 1600, however, many English churchgoers had become disillusioned with the lack of true reform in the church. Although they never used the term themselves, these groups became known as the Puritans because they advocated the goal of purifying the English church of Roman Catholic practices. But they, too, had divisions. Some believed that separation from the church would prove the only way to practice their brand of religion. Others rejected these Separatists and sought to reform the church from within.
During the next half-century, however, both groups would find a more effective escape by moving to the New World, where they hoped to pursue the twin goals of religious freedom and commercial prosperity. The result was what’s known as the Puritan Great Migration, with 80,000 colonists leaving England for the New World between 1620 and 1640. The passengers aboard the Mayflower would serve as the vanguard for that relocation.
This map from the National Geographic Society illustrates the extent of the Puritan Colony.
Before attempting to tame a new and savage land, however, some of the English Separatists tried what must have seemed the simpler route of relocating just across the North Sea in Holland. Indeed, Holland must have loomed as an attractive alternative. Besides offering an already civilized society and culture, the nation practiced religious tolerance while becoming a commercial center for textiles and other industries. And the port city of Leiden had emerged as a magnet for commerce providing many Separatists with opportunities to evolve from their farming backgrounds into more urban trades. Textiles proved attractive with at least a dozen of the Mayflower pilgrims listing associated occupations.As camlet merchants, grandfathers Thomas and Joseph Rogers were among them. Camlet is a fine, woven fabric originally made from combining coarse but tough camel hair with silk. By 1620, the Rogers family was among 300 Separatists thriving in Leiden but also considering the more dramatic change of relocating across the Atlantic Ocean. Coordinating with associates back in England, the Separatist leadership hatched a plan to sail two ships to a spot in the northern part of the Virginia colony. Leaders selected 45 members of the Leiden group to return to England aboard a ship called the Speedwell and rendezvous with the Mayflower for the voyage across the sea.
At the age of 49, Thomas Rogers ranked as the third eldest among those selected by leaders trying to fill the ranks with young and vital recruits. But Thomas had an eighteen-year-old son in Joseph, so possibly they joined as a package deal. The rest of the Rogers family remained behind in Leiden with plans to cross after establishment of a North American colony. Records show that Thomas sold his Leiden house on April 1, 1620 for 300 Guilders, accepting a loss of 175 Guilders from the 475 he had paid three years before. Thomas and Joseph left aboard the Speedwell on July 22, 1620, to meet the Mayflower in Southampton, England. My great-grandmother Alice Cosford Rogers would die in 1622 in Leiden without ever making the trip to the colony her husband and son helped build.
Had the Speedwell been seaworthy, North American history might have unfolded very differently. At least the voyage of the Pilgrims would have unfolded very differently. For starters, the two vessels would have departed Southampton in good time to sail the Atlantic Ocean in summer. They likely would have managed to land at their true target of what is now the New York area, then in the northern section of the Virginia Colony. They would have arrived in time to build suitable shelter for the winter of 1620-21 and perhaps grow some quick crops to supplement hunting and fishing for food.
But those possibilities vanished on August 5 when the crew of the Speedwell discovered a leak shortly after leaving Southampton, forcing a detour to Dartmouth for repairs. They tried again on August 23, but only made it 300 miles before the leaking Speedwell forced them into Plymouth for further assessment. The leaders decided to abandon the Speedwell, allowing some passengers to crowd onto the Mayflower for a single vessel voyage that did not begin until September 6.
In an article in 2017, The Orange County (California) Register included this drawing to demonstrate the scene aboard the Mayflower as it crossed the Atlantic. And, in an August 2020 article about the voyage, the UK newspaper The Daily Mail offered this written description of the now-iconic vessel:
Abandonment of the Speedwell left 102 passengers crowded into a space about 50-feet by 25-feet, with another 20 crew members on board. By now, Elizabeth Hopkins was ready to pop, and she did give birth aboard the Mayflower to a son they named Oceanus. Although she lacked privacy for the birth, Elizabeth did enjoy an abundance of midwives, if you want to consider the silver lining. Thus, Stephen increased the passenger population to 103 while adding opportunity for further shares of what would become the Plymouth company.
It seems obvious that Stephen and my grandfather Thomas Rogers would become acquainted, as would my grandmother Constance Hopkins and grandfather Joseph Rogers. But the written record is devoid of such personal detail about the voyage. I must assume Stephen shared many tales of his previous Jamestown adventures with what would have been an intensely curious audience aboard the ship.
Things grew interesting when the group neared the coast of Cape Cod and realized they had arrived off course to the north of their target. They were somewhat familiar with Cape Cod because it had been mapped by exploration parties from Jamestown. But the sighting of land off course created political problems for the group.
They immediately realized they had no government approval to settle in this location. In his book about Stephen, Caleb Johnson speculates how this recognition must have affected him given his problems a decade earlier in Bermuda. In organizing the Bermuda mutiny, Stephen had argued that the shipwreck there had eliminated any order of authority from their governor because he only had jurisdiction at Jamestown. That situation had ended with him nearly hanged for mutiny in Bermuda.
“Stephen Hopkins must have had some serious déjà vu when this began to unfold,” Johnson writes. He continues: “With Stephen’s consultation no doubt, the Pilgrims arrived at a very novel solution.”
That solution was creation of the Mayflower Compact, now considered one of the most important documents in North American history and a prelude to both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Drafted November 11 on the ship before any landing, the Mayflower Compact was a simple legal contract between the signees and their elected leadership acknowledging their authority to construct a government in their new colony. Details of that government were left for later, but the contract of self-government would become a landmark for colonial organization. Stephen was the fourteenth passenger to sign it, and Thomas Rogers the eighteenth out of 41—all of the adult males. As part of the deal, the group elected 36-year-old John Carver to serve as their first governor. He signed it first. Like my grandfather Thomas Rogers, Carver would not survive the first year.
Anchored off the tip of Cape Cod aboard the Mayflower with winter already under way, the group knew they needed to explore the area to locate the best spot for building shelter. Stephen played a crucial role in several small exploration expeditions. The group’s military commander, Myles Standish, led a squad of 16 men into the forest on November 15 with Stephen appointed as advisor. They would quickly learn that the native tribe at this initial location—the Nauset—already had experienced European contact. And they hadn’t liked it!
Several had been captured six years before and taken as slaves to Spain. The Nauset had avenged the kidnappings in 1617 with the massacre of the crew aboard a French ship that had stopped to trade. Now the Nauset watched as another group of armed Europeans began nosing around in their territory. Tensions increased more dramatically when the group chanced upon a hidden stash of Nauset corn and took it, knowing they would need more food to survive the winter. But the natives decided to bide their time before organizing a strike.
In the meantime, under the deadline pressure of increasing winter weather, the group debated its best options for location of a colony where they could build shelter and enjoy access to fresh water at a minimum. From their headquarters aboard the Mayflower, the group dispatched eighteen men on December 6 in a small boat to circle Cape Cod in search of the best spot. That group included Stephen and one of his servants, Edward Doty. After the group came ashore in one spot and camped for the night, the Nauset struck at first light, sending a barrage of arrows into the camp. The Pilgrims fired muskets and fled. None of the 30 natives nor any of the 18 Pilgrims sustained an injury in this first confrontation.
By December 12, the group had suffered through a storm and a small wreck that required repairs to their boat. But they also had come ashore at what is now Plymouth Harbor and decided this location could serve them best. The Mayflower followed on December 15 and anchored there while the group began its rigorous job of creating a home on the shore. Because Plymouth had been their final English port before departure, they adopted that for the name of their new home. By December 23, a construction crew had come ashore, and the hard work began. Although the group’s Pilgrim contingent refused to work on Sundays, they also refused to celebrate Christmas as any kind of holiday considering it a creation of the Pope and his Catholic Church.
The group divided their townsite into 19 plots, based on family size, in two rows of houses with a street between. Since standard lots measured 50 feet in depth with 8 feet of length for each family member, the biographer Johnson calculated that Stephen likely received an initial house and garden plot of 64 feet by 50 feet to accommodate him, his wife, his four children and his two servants. But first they all pitched in to build a common house that measured 20-by-20. Finished by the middle of January 1621, that structure would serve as storage, hospital and shelter while individual homes were built.
As they continued to build, the weather grew worse and food supplies grew short. By end of March, half of the Mayflower’s passengers had died—including my great grandfather Thomas Rogers—due to a combination of ailments including pneumonia and scurvy. Burials occurred after dark to prevent any natives from realizing the vulnerability of the group, even though the group had not seen any sign since landing. Stephen’s losses that first winter included the children Damaris and Oceanus. By March 21, however, the group had managed to deliver all passengers from the Mayflower into the shelters ashore. By then, some of them had been living aboard the ship for nine months!
With the weather starting to warm, it was inevitable they would have contact with the natives. On February 17, Stephen accompanied militia chief Myles Standish on a brief trip to attempt a meeting with natives they had spotted from the camp. But those natives fled into the woods. Then, on March 16, they received a thorough shock when a solitary native entered the camp carrying a bow with two arrows, walked down the street and spoke in spotty English: “Welcome Englishmen.”
His name was Samoset, a chief of the Sagamore tribe who had learned some English from trading vessels that had reached the area sporadically. Attracting a crowd, he was about to provide a history lesson with tales about the area they now claimed as their colony. He spent that first night in the Hopkins home as a guest of the only colonist with previous experience in the New World. Samoset would become one of two natives crucial to the success of the colony, and both would forge important ties with Stephen.
From Samoset, the Pilgrims learned they actually had landed in a place known as Patuxet to the natives. It was vacant because its previous inhabitants all had died of disease just four years before. Samoset also identified their nearest neighbors as the Wampanoag tribe. Their leader was named Massasoit, and he commanded a force of about 60 warriors. The Pilgrims did not know it yet, but this location and their timing would serve them well because the diminished Wampanoag felt vulnerable to attack from other regional tribes. Quickly, Massasoit would decide to use them as powerful allies, rather than enemies, based on the scouting report returned by Samoset about the weapons in the Pilgrims’ camp.
As a result, Samoset returned March 22 with another native who would become even more vital in the colony’s future: Squanto. This 35-year-old native boasted a dramatic personal story that sounds like the plot for a good adventure film—and that occurred in 1994 with production of Squanto: A Warrior’s Tale. It also left Squanto as the perfect ambassador between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag.
Kidnapped
in 1614 and taken to Spain as a slave, Squanto had lived in England for a while
after his escape, learning to speak reliable English! He had returned to the
area just the year before on a trip to Canada. Patuxet had been his village
before the disease killed everyone there. Essentially, he joined the Pilgrims
as an English-speaking, Patuxet orphan volunteering to help its new inhabitants
in creation of their colony. The day would end with Massasoit’s arrival to
negotiate a mutual assistance treaty that included plans for Squanto to stay
and help them out.
Biographer Johnson speculates that Squanto likely joined the Hopkins household for a while, since Stephen served as the colony’s de facto native ambassador given his Jamestown experience. But the record is well-documented about Squanto’s contribution, particularly in teaching the colonists best methods for growing corn, beans and squash in this region.
When the Mayflower finally sailed home on April 5, however, its cargo holds were bare. The Pilgrims had been too busy surviving the winter to fulfill any obligations to their investors for export of valuable trade goods like furs, lumber, dried fish or food. Food? At that point the Pilgrims barely had anything to eat for themselves. But their investors would have little sympathy after financing the voyage.
Eventually, the Plymouth Colony and its offshoots during the Puritan Great Migration of 1630-1650 would pay off handsomely for investors in England once those colonies began to exploit the natural resources available in New England. But the first few years of Plymouth would be marked by constant bickering between the colonists and their benefactors back home. Of course, their debts weighed little on their minds in the summer of 1621 as they focused with Squanto on the basics of survival there.
Just after departure of the Mayflower, Stephen’s de facto responsibility as native ambassador assumed a more formal position with his appointment to accompany Edward Winslow with Squanto on an exploration and negotiation mission into the wilderness. It’s a shame that Stephen never kept a journal or penned a memoir like several other notable Mayflower passengers, particularly William Bradford, Myles Standish and Winslow. Stephen’s book might have been the most dramatic of all, given his earlier years in Jamestown. But thanks to Winslow, we do have a colorful record of the trip they took in the Spring of 1621 to explore the Pilgrims’ new world and hammer down more details of their alliance with Massasoit. And biographer Johnson devoted an entire chapter of his book to this journey.
With Squanto to serve as guide and translator, they had several immediate goals. Since the colonists had hunkered down all winter, they still needed to survey the surrounding countryside and record the location of rivers, timberlands, hunting grounds and signs of other natural resources. But they also needed to create trading relations with Massasoit and the villages under his control. They also wanted to establish some ground rules for visitation from those villages, wary that they did not yet have enough food to offer unexpected guests stopping by to gawk at the new arrivals from across the ocean. They also hoped to trade for a larger supply of seed corn to enhance their prospects for the next winter.
On the exploration front, Stephen and Winslow apparently found much to admire. And Winslow’s account provides interesting tidbits of information about life in the woods. In one village, for example, they dined on “spawn of shad”—a local version of caviar! They learned about cornbread and edible acorns. They saw several places where land had been cleared and then villages abandoned, with Winslow declaring it a “pity.” They attracted small crowds in their travel, as curious natives joined them for short distances. They found rivers and fresh water sources. They demonstrated the power of their firearms, and in one village staged a target contest of guns against bow-and-arrow. They saw “much good timber” that included oak, walnut, fir, beech and chestnut. When Stephen fired a salute in the air to welcome Massasoit to their powwow, Squanto had to intervene and explain to frightened villagers about this English custom for honoring dignitaries.
Once they sat with Massasoit, they accomplished their goal. They presented him with a copper chain he could give to messengers for use as a badge to ensure welcome into Plymouth. They also asked Massasoit to help them find the natives they needed to repay for that theft of native seed corn when the group first landed in December. Informed of the Pilgrims’ desire to trade with local villagers, Massasoit made what Winslow called a lengthy speech to the villagers, urging them to bring skins for trade and keep the peace.
In return, Stephen and Winslow shared stories of their homeland in England and described King James I. Massasoit warned them about some of the rival tribes in the area, sharing his suspicion that the Narragansett were allies of the French, who had established bases to the north in Canada. Stephen and Winslow slept that night in a small bed—with Massasoit and one of his wives! Later, Winslow complained that fleas and lice had bothered them that night, but called it an improvement from the mosquitoes that would have devoured them outside. Massasoit provided two large fish for a meal the next day. Still hungry, Stephen traded for a small bird and shared it with Winslow.
EdwardWinslow would live on to become a prominent figure in New England, serving a term as governor at Plymouth and returning to England for a visit. He is acknowledged as one of a handful of Pilgrims responsible for success of the colony and his initial mission with Stephen ranked as a milestone event.
Following that trip, Stephen likely was called again to join another expedition in June dispatched to find a 16-year-old boy who had wandered off and gone missing. The colony sent a group of ten to search, with no list available among the records. But biographer Johnson wrote he could not imagine Hopkins being left behind, given his experience and his relationship to Squanto who served as the translator. Traveling by boat, the group managed to recover the boy, who had been staying with the Nauset tribe as a guest. Although wary of the Nausets—the tribe that had attacked them a year before—the group turned the meeting into a successful trade mission. But the Nausets also provided some disturbing news destined to send Stephen on one of the most celebrated military missions recorded in Pilgrim lore.
While the English were searching for the boy, they heard the Narragansett tribe had somehow kidnapped their ally Massasoit as part of a revolt among the Wampanoag leadership. Recognizing their duty to support their ally, the group dispatched Squanto and another Wampanoag warrior as scouts to determine their next move. When the other warrior returned to Plymouth alone, they feared Squanto had been captured or killed and decided to act. What transpired next was likely the first military commando mission conducted by the English in North America, led by Myles Standish with Stephen and Edward Winslow among the raiders.
The squad of about a dozen men stormed the village of Nemasket, about 15 miles from Plymouth. Taking control, they discovered Squanto still alive and asleep in one of the houses. No one died in the battle, but the Pilgrims conducted a meeting to make sure those natives understood their alliance with Massasoit would not be disrupted. They threatened the villagers with death in the event of any further attacks.
Again in September, Standish led another mission designed to further fortify the Wampanoag alliance. Stephen likely joined this trip, as well, but Johnson could find no records listing the names of the participants. On this trip, Standish traveled north to what would become Boston Harbor to visit the Massachusetts Tribe. That trip apparently ended without any serious confrontation and helped forge a new alliance in that direction. But peace with the natives would prove short-lived.
There’s been a tendency to imagine the Pilgrims as persecuted victims seeking refuge among the natives who teach them to plant corn while they pray and sing hymns. But it’s more realistic to recognize them as hardy pioneers quite capable of intimidating native populations and establishing themselves through aggression.
Known as much for his brutality as his military leadership, Standish accomplished the ultimate act of regional intimidation in March of 1623 when he brought the severed head of a hostile native chief back to Plymouth for positioning on a pike near the village gate. There’s no record of Stephen joining him on that expedition, but it is clear that Standish’s tough policies with the natives likely kept the colony safe in its formative years. Eventually, New England colonists would find themselves mired in one of history’s bloodiest native American wars from 1675 to 1678 with several of my other ancestors seeing action in that conflict, known as King Philip’s War. Ironically, it was Massasoit’s son who would lead the natives in that war—known by the English name he adopted, King Philip of the Wampanoag.
By then, however, the English colonial presence would have grown to an extent that the natives never could prevail. I don’t believe the natives of first-contact like Massasoit could even imagine the kinds of numbers the English would send in such a short period of time. Beyond their technological advantages, the Europeans also brought the ultimate weapon of diseases that could ravage the native population while Europeans enjoyed generations of immunity. To succeed, any vulnerable colony likely needed a man like Standish to handle the dirty jobs required to provide initial stability. Stephen and Standish apparently remained friends throughout the growth of the colony.
This graphic from the Plimoth Plantation Museum booklet depicts Plymouth in 1627.
During those developing years, Stephen took full advantage of his opportunities in Plymouth. But his legacy still holds something of a mixed message for his descendants. He won elections on the governing council, served as an advisor to the governor and on the tax assessment committee, and apparently grew quite prosperous though land and livestock divisions. Stephen joined other members of the colony in buying out their English investors in 1626, accumulating debt in the form of bonds but also seizing the opportunity to divide the land and livestock into larger private ownership plots. Biographer Johnson considered Stephen among the most prosperous of the village based on his tax records and holdings when he died on June 16, 1644 at the age of 63. Besides furniture, property and livestock, Stephen’s estate also included what Standish listed as “diverse books” so he must have been a reader. Second wife Elizabeth had preceded him in death about three years before.While the Plymouth records paint a picture of Stephen as a community leader, there’s also evidence he remained quite a roguish rebel. He operated a tavern in his home, and records show fines for price gouging on liquor sales and other items. I guess the Puritans believed in price controls.
My favorite court document involves his 1636 conviction for battery stemming from a fight with a newly arrived colonist named John Tisdale. The 55-year-old Stephen apparently beat the hell out of the 21-year-old Tisdale, leaving him “dangerously wounded,” according to the court record. I guess that old goat still had some kick left in his legs. I wish the court record included more of a transcript because the cause of the confrontation is left to the imagination. Stephen was fined five pounds and ordered to pay Tisdale 40 shillings.
In another unusual legal confrontation, the court was forced to order Stephen in 1639 to fulfill his agreement to continue care for a female servant who had become pregnant out of wedlock. The child’s father had been executed for the murder of a native before the birth, and Johnson describes Stephen as “furious” to learn that the servant, Dorothy Temple, was pregnant while her lover hung on the gallows. Stephen refused to comply, and the colony jailed him four days for contempt. He managed to negotiate his freedom by persuading another colonist to accept 5 pounds and assume the two years remaining on Dorothy’s indenture.
Stephen appears also to have been a bit of an entrepreneur, investing in real estate in nearby Yarmouth in 1638 and construction of a fishing boat in 1641. Biographer Johnson also reports a civil dispute involving some sort of failed business deal. Johnson also cites Stephen’s quasi-adoption of a troubled teen in 1642 as another sign of his strong character. That youth, Jonathan Hatch, went on to marry and help found the neighboring town of Falmouth, possibly under the influence of Stephen in his few years left after Elizabeth’s death.
In his 1848 history on Lives of the Colonial Governors, author Jacob Bailey Moore offered this final assessment on Stephen’s historical place: "Of the Pilgrims who remained in 1634, Stephen Hopkins, Miles Standish, and John Alden were the most prominent individuals. Hopkins was the one of the principle magistrates...Stephen Hopkins was not only one of the first men among the Pilgrims, but he had extraordinary fortune in being concerned with many of the first things that happened to the colonists, whether for good or for evil.” And Stephen’s profile on WikiTree provides rich detail with references about all aspects of his life.
While her father spent time strengthening the colony, my grandmother Constance Hopkins likely focused on becoming a young lady. Only four of the 18 adult women aboard the Mayflower survived that first winter. Of the four teenage girls, 15-year-old Constance was the only one not orphaned by 1621. In her fictional treatment of teenage life in the new colony, Patricia Clapp portrays Constance as a typical flirty young girl and constructs several romantic scenarios in imagining her emergence into an eligible wife.
During the next few years, additional ships arrived to re-stock the colony with residents both male and female. Plymouth and surrounding New England would rank as the first example of a true colony for families in contrast with other ventures focused on harvesting resources rather than creating a new homeland. Arrival of the Anne in 1623 brough the young man destined to become her husband four years later. My grandfather Nicholas Snow was six years older than Constance, and he appears to have worked as a carpenter. He owned books and he held some minor positions in Plymouth such as highway surveyor.
For a while it appears that Stephen served as patriarch of an extended family that included Nicholas and Constance. But the couple decided to move in 1643 to the town now known as Eastham on Cape Cod. Nicholas served the community there as constable and surveyor, while also managing his farm with the help of their children, including my grandmother, Elizabeth, born February 25, 1640.
Author and descendant J.A. Snow has written a series of novels about the Snow family, drawing on genealogical research all the way back to the Fifteenth Century. The third book of the series, Pilgrim Girl, covers the couple from the arrival of Nicholas in 1643 until their deaths. Constance died on October 15, 1677, at the age of 71—about a year after the death of Nicholas, both of them in Eastham. She is buried in Eastham’s Cove Burying Ground, along with my other Mayflower grandfather, Joseph Rogers.
Joseph was about 18 when his father perished during that first winter at Plymouth. At that point, he became the ward of one of the most important men in American history, William Bradford, who would serve as the colony’s governor for most of its first three decades. Records show Joseph taxed as a freeman by 1633 in Plymouth following his marriage to a woman named Hannah with her last name lost to time.
His family moved around, and by 1639 he was serving as a constable in Duxbury after operating a ferry on the Jones River there in 1636. By 1647, he also had moved to Eastham where he was appointed a lieutenant in the militia. He died in January of 1678, at the age of 75. His second son, Thomas Rogers, married Constance’s daughter, Elizabeth Snow on December 13, 1665, to complete my circle of Mayflower passenger ancestors, joining the Hopkins clan with the Rogers family.
Nearly 400 years after my Mayflower grandparents came ashore and started building their colony, I visited the recreated Plymouthvillage in 2017 and walked down the single dirt avenue separating rows of small houses recreated by the museum there. I went inside the house identified as home to Stephen and Elizabeth. I marveled at the small spaces that would have been divided among the family and servants. And I wondered what Stephen would think of me, could he visit my house in Houston, Texas. Of course, he’d be stunned with the technological advances since his first steps onto the Massachusetts shore. But what about my character? Would he be as proud to consider me a descendant as I have been to think of him as my ancestor?
It is strange that I may know more about Stephen Hopkins than my own father, and certainly all of my other grandfathers, except for Peter Hobart (1604-1679) who followed Stephen to Massachusetts in 1635 and JohnLibby (1610-1681) who came to Maine that same year as a fisherman. But my readings about those family lines will allow me to file additional posts in the future so that my descendants can continue to learn about their deepest roots.
