Controversy Over Arrival of lst Ways

[DaneBowen@aol.com]

Hi -

Our hardworking webmaster John Quartermann writes that he believes the Ways arrived in America a little later than the Mary and John's docking in Mass. in May 1630.  He invited me, however, to comment; so I shall do so: 


       First, I believe that the date March 30 is a typo.  In my own book, A. Dane Bowen, Jr., Ph.D., Henry Way (1583-1667 and Descendants: Pioneering Four Centuries Across America, Baltimore, Md., 2001, 488 pp., I give the date in different places as March 20, 1630, for the sailing of the Mary and John for America from Plymouth, England. One ready source I had at hand to check is Charles Edward Banks, The Winthrop Fleet of 1630, reprinted Baltimore, Md., 1999, p. 100.  He gives the date of March 20 (p. 100).
    I devoted a whole section of my book to "Controversy Over the Ways' Arrival" (p. 3 et seq.) and fully resolved that controversy in my own mind. The Quarterman book and others state the Henry Way must have arrived on the Lyon from Bristol in Feb. 1631 instead of on the Mary and John from Plymouth in May 1630.  The only evidence I have ever seen adduced for that is the entry in the Journal of Massachusetts Bay 's Governor John Winthrop to the effect that "Mr. Waye's son" was lost at sea in a gale on the Lyon while crossing from Bristol. 
    I am convinced that that Henry Way and his family came on the Mary and John in 1630 but that they first boarded it at its home port of Weymouth, named for being the River Wey's mouth.  The Ways of that area may have even taken their name from that river. In my book I reproduce copies of the original record of the registry of the baptism at birth of Henry Way's son Aaron Way at Bridport, Dorset, England, in 1613, and the remarriage of Henry Way at the same church, St. Mary's, in Bridport in 1615.  Charles Granville Way (1841-1912), one of the very first Way family genealogists, and one of the most diligent and hardworking, left a huge collection taking up nine linear feet at the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston.  He was convinced that Henry Way was the brother of George Way, "a glover" of nearby Dorchester, England and a large merchant-adventurer who invested in the Dorchester Company.  George Way was one of the few wealthy investors who stayed with the company when it was reorganized as the Massachusetts Bay Company.  Bridport is 12 miles from Weymouth and Dorchester is 15 miles from Weymouth. 
    Everything points logically to the Ways traveling from a nearby seaport such as Weymouth, even other seaports on the South coast of England as far away as Plymouth, rather than Bristol which is not on the South coast of England.  Note that it is not the name of Bristol but that of Dorchester that is taken first to Mass., then SC, and finally to Liberty Co., Ga. We know they had cattle and barnyard animals with them.  To settle, they chose Dorchester Neck separating Boston's inner and outer harbor because it was easier to pen up their livestock there without building extensive fences.  The Ways would have boarded their household effects and their animals at nearby Weymouth before it sailed on to make another stop at Plymouth.  Plymouth with its excellent harbor (it is a big naval base) was the last jumping off place, and the last place to take on that last bit of food and water, before leaving on a long sea voyage.  For that reason, the colonists of Roanoke Island, NC, the Mayflower, the Mary and John, and the ships originally colonizing Australia and New Zealand last left England at Plymouth. The Mary and John stopped there for the last bit of supplies and to pick up more West Country passengers such as our ancestors, the Mavericks.
       We know that Henry Way was a skipper and a master mariner.  We know people of this area, not around Bristol, had been fishing off New England for years and had settled Cape Ann and Salem years earlier.  Knowing the perils of the Atlantic in winter, Henry Way would not have taken his family on a dangerous winter voyage across the Atlantic.  The Lyon made a desperate winter trip to England and back from America because the settlers such as the Ways and Mavericks were starving in Massachusetts.
       Another entry in John Winthrop's journal refers to ocean fishing vessels of Henry Way in Massachusetts by July 26, 1631.  In carving out a new settlement in a complete wilderness, things did not move very quickly.  Henry Way was also a farmer who first had to construct a temporary shelter for his family and to attend his livestock. He had then to build a house, barns, fences, and clear land for crops. It is not likely he would have gotten substantial maritime fishing boats built by the above date had he only arrived in February 1631, but he could have if he arrived on the Mary and John in May 1630.
       Finally, a scholar who has thoroughly studied the matter reaches the same conclusion: The coeditor and publisher of the The American Genealogist, Dr. David Greene, published an article in that journal, Vol. 61, No. 4, July\Oct 1986, entitled "A Search for the English Origins of Henry Way of Dorchester, Massachusetts." In this study Dr. Greene points out that the Lyon was so small it could only carry 20 passengers and that when all the known passengers on it are accounted for "there is no room for Henry Way and his family."
       Henry Way's oldest son was also named Henry, following the custom of naming the oldest for the father so that property would already be in his name if the father died without a will. While he may have been the son killed by Indians in the winter of 1630-31, it is just as logical, or more logical, that he followed his father's trade in learning to be a seaman.  The Way son lost at sea on the Lyon had climbed up to adjust the sails and was blown overboard in a gale.  Henry Way's son Henry was certainly old enough to have done that.  Since the son named Henry did die before marriage, the next oldest, Aaron Way, is also the ancestor of the Ways of SC and GA and beyond, including my Great Great Grandfather Aaron Way, b. SC in 1824 and murdered in Texas in 1867. By then the name of Aaron Way had been perpetuated through two centuries of Ways for eight and nine generations. 


Dane Bowen in Alexandria, Va., researching Bowen, Bacon, Cannon, Carlton (Carleton),  Chaudoin (Chaudoins), Gye (Guy, Guye), Harris, Porter, Luker, Richey (Ritchie, Richie, Ritchey), Sanders (Saunders), Spence, Sloan, Way, Weaver, and Wells families.