Citation
  • Plummer, John, "Identifying George P-?- of the Recovery, 1633 or 1634" (NGSQ, Volume: 77, Dec, 1989, Number 4, pp 249-255).
Data
  • Category: Research
Detail
  • Author: Plummer, John
  • Publisher: NGSQ, Volume: 77, Dec, 1989, Number 4, pp 249-255
Content
  • Text: The date which appears on the Recovery's passenger roll, 31 March 1633, is misleading. The vessel had not left by 30 April 1633, when one of it's passengers witnessed a lease in England. [9] The subsequent voyage would have taken only two months or so; yet no reference has been found to any passengers, in the New World, until nearly a year and a half later.

    On 1 September 1634, Mr. Thomas Newberry and Robert Elwell are both mentioned in records of colonial Dorchester. [10] Two days later, three passengers (Newberry, John Hardy, and John Pope) were made freemen of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. [11] Frequent mentions are made thereafter to Recovery passengers. It would seem that the clerk who entered the passenger list wrote 31 March 1633 in error for 31 March 1634. Under the Old Style dating then in effect, the year 1634 would have begun only one week earlier.

    Correcting the date of the Recovery's voyage also helps to clarify two other records that have perplexed researchers. First, Stephen Terry, another of the passengers, appears in a colonial Dorchester record 3 April 1633. [12] This date can be reconciled with his appearance on the Recovery list only if the ship's roster was actually compiled on 31 March 1634; it would seem that he left the colony for England in the spring of late 1633 and returned on the Recovery the following year (early 1634). Second, the "Recovery of London" is almost certainly the ship that Coldham places at London on 8 March 1633/34, [13] a mere twenty-three days before the corrected date; and it is surely this voyage of the Recovery which is referred to in the diary of William Whiteway of old Dorchester in Dorset, who wrote: "April 17, 1634, Mr. Newburgh [sic] of Marthwoodvale and many others set saile from Waimouth towards New England." [14] Mr. "Newburgh" was more precisely, Mr. Thomas Newberry, whose name led the list of passengers aboard the Recovery.

    Accepting the premise that the passenger list should have been dated 31 March 1634, then the ship sailed into Massachusetts Bay in late June or July 1634; [15] and it was very likely one of the fourteen said to have arrived that June. [16]

    Town records of new Dorchester offer the earliest documentation of colonial residence for many Recovery passengers. [17] Not only do there appear the perviously mentioned Newberry, Elwell, and Terry; but there are also found a number of shipmates. ... Dorchester is the place that most--perhaps all--of the Recovery passengers first resided in the New World.

    Most, if not all, of the twenty-six passengers on the Recovery appear to have originated in England's contiguous counties of Dorset, Somerset, and Devonshire. In fact, references to them are concentrated at the point where the three counties meet-as well as around the ports of Weymouth (from which they sailed) and Dorchester (eight miles inland from Weymouth). This area also had a concentration of Puritan ministers with connections to Massachusetts.

    Among the other passengers, Newberry was evidently well-known to the diarist of Dorchester who recorded his departure in April 1634; [44] and Pope, prior to leaving England, had married a daughter of Nicholas Clap of Ottery Venn in Devonshire, [45] whose brother was a Crewkerne parishioner of the Reverend Warham. [46]

    Sources:

    9. Lyon J. Hoard, "The English Ancestry of Hezekiah Hoar of Taunton, Massachusetts," NEHGR 141 (January 1987): 33.
    10. Fourth Report of the Record Commissioners: City Document No. 9: Dorchester Town Records (Boston: City of Boston, 1880): 7; this source is hereinafter cited as Dorchester Town Records.
    11. Rev. Lucius R. Paige, "List of Freemen, "NEHGR 3 (January 1849):93.
    12. Dorchester Town Records, 1.
    13. Coldham, "Genealogical Gleanings in England," 172.
    14. Quoted in J. Gardner Bartlett, Newberry Genealogy (Boston: The author, 1914), 35, and in Charles Henry Pope, A History of the Dorchester Pope Family (Boston: the author, 1888), 14. Both Bartlett and Pope are documented, but the Pope's documentation falls short of present-day standards. For example, Pope merely says that the original manuscript diary is in the British Museum. One has to turn to Bartlett to find the diary more specifically cited as part of Egerton Mss. 784. Pope also states that he examined only a copy of the diary made by Mr. James Phinney Baxter of Portland, Maine.
    15. A comparative timetable can be reconstructed for a contemporary voyage; one ship, apparently the Neptune of Coldham's list, left Weymouth ten days after the Recovery and arrived in July 1634. See Coldham. "Genealogical Gleanings in England," 172; Pope, History of the Dorchester Pope Family, 14; and John Winthrop, The History of New England from 1630 to 1649, James Savage, ed., 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1853) 1:160.
    16. Winthrop, History of New England, 1:160.
    17. Dorchester Town Records
    44. Pope, Dorchester Pope Family, 14.
    45. Pope, Pioneers of Massachusetts, 368.
    46. Pope, Dorchester Pope Family, 39. The International Genealogical Index (IGI), compiled by the Genealogical Society of Utah, carries an entry (unverified by the present writer) for the baptism of Patience, daughter of John Pope, dated 13 May 1632 at Honiton on Otter, Devonshire.
Personal Names
PersonClaimDetailEvidence
Thomas NewberryNameMr. Newburgh [S705]
research
Thomas NewberryNameMr. Thomas Newberry [S705] [S706]
secondary
Events & Attributes
PersonClaimDateDetailAgeEvidence
Thomas NewberryFlourishedMar 31, 1633/34Weymouth, Dorset, England [S662] [S705]
was the first to sign the passenger roll for the ship Recovery
research
Major Benjamin NewberryEmigrationApr 17, 1634Weymouth, Dorset, England [S705]
research
Thomas NewberryEmigrationApr 17, 1634Weymouth, Dorset, England [S662] [S705]
research
Major Benjamin NewberryImmigrationabt Jun 1634 [S705]
research
Thomas NewberryImmigrationabt Jun 1634 [S705]
research
Thomas NewberryResidenceSep 1, 1634Dorchester, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States [S662] [S705] [S706]
granted 30 acres
secondary
Major Benjamin NewberryShip [S705]
research
Thomas NewberryShip [S662] [S705]
research