The Mary and John in 1630

["John S. Quarterman" <jsq@matrix.net>]

>   In 1629: Mary and John arrives, at Nantasket .

Oops, that should have said 1630.  Apparently I made a typo in the
timeline database because the ship sailed on March 23 1629/30, but
since it arrived on May 30, i.e., after March 25, which was the old
new year's day, it arrived in 1630.

The significance of this date is that that ship was carrying the earliest
American ancestors of the Midway Quartermans.  They were not Quartermans;
there were no Quartermans in Massachusetts, and our ancestor Robert
Quarterman first appears in South Carolina in 1695.

For that matter, most of the passengers on that ship were probably not
our ancestors, since Henry Way came over the next year.  However, that
ship was the one whose passengers founded at the beginning of June 1630
the town of Dorchester, Massachusetts, which is where our ancestors resided:

 ``We found out a neck of land joining to a place called by ye Indians,
   Mattapan; so they settled at Mattapan. They began their settlement here
   ye beginning of June, A.D. 1630, and changed the name to Dorchester.''
   http://www.nssdp.org/ship.htm

Just after they descended from the ship, they sang this hymn:

	Thou Lord hast beene our sure defence,
	  Our place of ease and rest;
	In all times past, yea, so long since,
	  As cannot be exprest.
	Refresh us with thy mercy soone,
	  And then our joy shall be:
	All times so long as time shall last
	  In heart rejoyce shall we.

	O let thy worke and power appeare,
	  And on thy servants light:
	And shew nto thy children deare,
	  Thy glory and thy might.
	Lord let thy grace and mercy stand
	  On us thy servants thus:
	Confirme the workes we take in hand,
	  Lord, prosper them to us.

	--Good Old Dorchester, by William Dana Orcutt, 1891, p. 28.

John S. Quarterman <jsq@matrix.net>
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