The Mayflower Anyone?

I was so excited last week to discover that we're related to William Brewster a passenger on the Mayflower in 1620. William, his wife Mary, and their two children, Love and Wrestling (awesome names) were some of the first people to settle Plymouth, Massachusetts. William & Mary Brewster were my 10th great-grandparents. See where this fits in our genealogy at bottom of this post.


An imaginary likeness of William Brewster. There is no known portrait of him from life.

Biographical Summary

William Brewster was born about 1566, the son of William Brewster. He was educated in both Greek and Latin and spent some time at Cambridge University, although he never completed a full degree. He went into the service of William Davison, then Secretary of State, while his father back home maintained a position as the postmaster of Scrooby, Nottinghamshire. Under Davison, Brewster first traveled to the Netherlands. After Davison's departure as Secretary of State, Brewster worked himself into his father's postmaster duties and maintained Scrooby Manor. Brewster was instrumental in establishing the small Separatist church with Richard Clyfton, and they often held their meetings in the Manor house. Brewster and the others were eventually found and forced out, and fleeing prosecution and persecution they headed to Amsterdam in 1608, and moving to Leiden, Holland in 1609. Brewster became the church's Elder, responsible for seeing that the congregation's members carried themselves properly, both helping and admonishing them when necessary.

Chest thought to have been brought to America
by William Brewster on the Mayflower.
Photo courtesy of the Pilgrim Hall Museum.



In Leiden, Brewster working with Thomas Brewer became working a printing press and publishing religious books and pamphlets which were then illegally conveyed into England. Brewster also employed himself teaching University of Leiden students English. By 1618, the English authorities were onto him and his printing press, and had the Dutch authorities in pursuit of him. Thomas Brewer was arrested and held in the University of Leiden's prison, but Brewster managed to evade the authorities and went into hiding for a couple years.

When the Leiden church congregation decided to send the first wave to set up and establish a colony that everyone could eventually move to, their pastor John Robinson decided to remain behind in Leiden with the majority of the congregation, intending to come later. The smaller group that went on the Mayflower desired the next highest ranking church official, Elder Brewster, go with them; so he agreed. He brought his wife Mary and two youngest children, Love and Wrestling, on the Mayflower with him.

Brewster continued his work as Church Elder throughout his life at Plymouth Colony. His wife Mary died in 1627, and he never remarried. He lived to be nearly 80 years old, dying in 1644. Shortly after he died, William Bradford wrote a short but concise biography of Brewster, just a couple pages, in his history Of Plymouth Plantation. From MayflowerHistory.com

More from Wikipedia.com

Elder William Brewster (c. 1566 - April 10, 1644), was a Pilgrim colonist leader and preacher who came from Scrooby, in north Nottinghamshire and reached what became the Plymouth Colony in the Mayflower in 1620. He was accompanied by his wife, Mary Brewster, and his sons, Love Brewster and Wrestling Brewster. Son Jonathan joined the family in November 1621, arriving at Plymouth on the ship Fortune, and daughters Patience and Fear arrived in July 1623 aboard the Anne. (We're descended from Jonathan Brewster).

Origins

He was the son of William Brewster and Mary Smyth and he had a number of half-siblings. His paternal grandparents were William Brewster and Maud Mann. His maternal grandfather was Thomas Smyth. Brewster may have been born in Doncaster.

Scrooby Manor was in the possession of the Archbishops of York. Brewster's father, William senior, had been the estate bailiff for the archbishop for thirty-one years from around 1580. With this post went that of postmaster, which was a more important one than it might have been in a village not situated on the Great North Road, as Scrooby was then.

William Junior studied briefly at Peterhouse, Cambridge before entering the service of William Davidson in 1584. In 1585, Davidson went to the Netherlands to negotiate an alliance with the States-General. In 1586, Davidson was appointed assistant to Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of State Francis Walsingham, but in 1587 Davidson lost the favour of Elizabeth, after the beheading of her cousin (once removed) Mary, Queen of Scots.

Dissent

Cambridge was a centre of thought concerning religious reformism, but Brewster's time in the Netherlands, in connection with Davidson's work, gave him opportunity to hear and see more of reformed religion. While, earlier in the sixteenth century, reformers had hoped to amend the Anglican church, by the end of it, many were looking toward splitting from it.

On Davidson's disgrace, Brewster returned to Scrooby. There, from 1590 to 1607, he held the position of postmaster. As such he was responsible for the provision of stage horses for the mails, having previously, for a short time, assisted his father in that office. By the 1590s, Brewster's brother, James, was a rather rebellious Anglican priest, vicar of the parish of Sutton cum Lound, in Nottinghamshire. From 1594, it fell to James to appoint curates to Scrooby church so that Brewster, James and leading members of the Scrooby congregation were brought before the ecclesiastical court for their dissent. They were set on a path of separation from the Anglican Church. From about 1602, Scrooby Manor, Brewster's home, became a meeting place for the dissenting Puritans. In 1606, they formed the Separatist Church of Scrooby.

Emigration

Restrictions and pressures applied by the authorities convinced the congregation of a need to emigrate to the more sympathetic atmosphere of Holland, but leaving England without permission was illegal at the time, so that departure was a complex matter. On its first attempt, in 1607, the group was arrested at Scotia Creek, but in 1608 Brewster and others were successful in leaving from The Humber. In 1609, he was selected as ruling elder of the congregation.

Initially, the Pilgrams settled in Amsterdam, and worshipped with the Ancient Church of Francis Johsonson and Henry Ainsworth. Offput by the bickering between the two, though (which ultimately resulted in a division of the Church), the Pilgrams left Amsterdam and moved to Leiden, after only a year.

In Leiden, the group managed to make a living. Brewster taught English and later, in 1616-1619, printed and published religious books for sale in England though they were proscribed there, as the partner of one Thomas Brewer. In 1619, the printing type was seized by the authorities under pressure from the English ambassador Sir Dudley Carleton and Brewster's partner was arrested. Brewster escaped and, with the help of Robert Cushman, obtained a land patent from the London Virginia Company on behalf of himself and his colleagues.

In 1620 he joined the first group of Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower on the voyage to North America. When the colonists landed at Plymouth, Brewster became the senior elder of the colony, serving as its religious leader and as an adviser to Governor William Bradford.

As the only university educated member of the colony, Brewster took the part of the colony's religious leader until a pastor, Ralph Smith, arrived in 1629. Thereafter, he continued to preach irregularly until his death in April 1644.

Brewster was granted land amongst the islands of Boston Harbor, and four of the outer islands (Great Brewster, Little Brewster, Middle Brewster and Outer Brewster) now bear his name.

Found on Wikipedia

Descendants

William Brewster married Mary, whose maiden name is unknown. (I know from doing genealogy on ancestry.com that Mary's maiden name was Wentworth. How cool it that? We know something Mayflower.com and Wikipedia doesn't know!) During much of the 20th century she was thought to be the daughter of Thomas Wentworth, however there is no compelling evidence to support this. More recent speculation suggests her maiden name was Wyrall, but again the evidence is weak at best.

The children of William and Mary were:

Elder Jonathan Brewster (August 12, 1593 - August 7, 1659) married Lucretia Oldham of Derby on 10 April 1624,[4] eight children:[5]
William, born 9 March 1625
Mary Brewster, born 16 April 1627
Jonathan, born 17 July 1629
Ruth Brewster, born 3 October 1631
Benjamin Brewster (17 November 1633 - 14 September 1710)
Elizabeth Brewster, born 1 May 1637
Grace Brewster (1 November 1639 - 22 April 1684)
Hannah Brewster, born 3 November 1641
Patience Brewster (c. 1600 - December 12, 1634) married Thomas Prence of Lechlade, Gloucestershire, 4 children
Fear Brewster (c. 1606 - before 1634) so called because she was born at the height of the puritans' persecution. Married Isaac Allerton of London, 2 children.
Unnamed son (born and died 1609)
Love Brewster (c. 1611 - c. 1650) came over on the Mayflower married Sarah Collier of London, 4 children
Wrestling Brewster (c. 1614 - between 1627 and 1644)
(possibly) Captain Edward Brewster - traveled to Virginia with Thomas West, Lord Delaware.
Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy is one of his descendants through Jonathan Brewster.

Ancestry.com

Where we fit in!

Reginald Kemp – 1923 – my father
Leon Kemp – 1891- Father to Reginald Kemp – my grandfather
Lillian Comstock – 1859 – Mother to Leon Kemp – my great-grandmother
Harry A. Comstock – 1832 – Father to Lillian Comstock – my great-great-grandfather
W.A. Comstock – 1799 – Father to Harry A. Comstock – my great-great-great-grandfather
Amanda Comstock (her maiden name as well as her married name) – 1811 – Mother to W.A. Comstock –4th great-grandmother
Samuel Comstock – 1756 – Father to Amanda Comstock – my 5th great-grandfather
Samuel Comstock – 1712 – Father to Samuel Comstock – my 6th great-grandfather
Naomi Noyes – 1676 – Mother to Samuel Comstock & Wife to William Comstock, Samuel’s Father – my 6th great-grandmother
Ruth Pickett – 1654 – Mother of Naomi Noyes – my 7th great-grandmother
Ruth Brewster – 1631 – Mother of Ruth Pickett – my 8th great-grandmother
Jonathan Brewster – 1593 – Father of Ruth Brewster – my 9th great-grandfather
William and Mary Wentworth Brewster – 1566 (William) Father & Mother of Jonathan Brewster and passengers on the Mayflower – my 10th great-grandfather & great-grandmother.