"Names"

Originally published in the Mayflower Quarterly, Autumn, 2021

 

By Patricia Claus

 

Names. In the end, that’s all we have of many of our ancestors — if we’re lucky.

For all of us in this group of cousins, we are so very blessed to have at least the names of ancestors to love, to thank for the fact that we are alive, and on whom we can bestow our gratitude for all we have today.

The ability to find the names, not only of our ancestors but also of the ships that they came over to America on, is a precious thing which ties us inexorably to this nation.

Before I discovered that I was indeed a Mayflower descendant, as I was just beginning my genealogical journey back into New England’s history, I discovered that my Witherell ancestors, the Reverend William and his family, including his pregnant wife, came over to Massachusetts from Sandwich, England on the ship “Hercules.”

I cannot begin to tell you how utterly thrilled I was to discover the name of that ship. And of course the name of the port they left from. Although they weren’t “Plymouth” and “Mayflower”, I was transported back in time just finally being able to know the names of these people, ships and places. I could not stop looking at this ship’s passenger list. I must have looked at it continually for fifteen minutes, then again sometime later – as if to make sure that I hadn’t made a mistake, that they were really there.

When my husband came home from work that day, I rushed to tell him of my supposed great discovery, thinking he’d be impressed. “Well, that’s not exactly the Mayflower, is it?” he replied sarcastically.

But I didn’t feel deflated. I knew that this information, these names, had instantly given me an identity which I had not had prior to that. Something no one could ever take from me, no matter what.

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This urgent need to name things, to anchor ourselves to the past, is part of what makes us human... this is why the theft of the book “Of Plimoth Plantation,” the chronicle of the history of Plymouth Plantation, so painstakingly and lovingly written down by William Brewster over decades after the first comers set foot on Cape Cod, was almost an act of ethnic cleansing, in my opinion.

 

It wasn’t the fact that the British troops took over Old South Church and made it a stable and riding arena -- although they did just that.

It’s that they took the first, and only, primary record of the Plymouth Colony, written by one who had lived through the horrors of the first winter and the subsequent years of building a town himself, and took it back to their country, stripping our ancestors of their “creation myth” -- which was of course not a myth at all, being the very literal story of their history on this continent. 

 

“Of Plimoth Plantation” is much like the Edda, the collection of stories which described the formation of Iceland. But there was, of course, much mythology interspersed with these epic poems, no matter how truly epic the settlement of that desolate island absolutely was.

Those in power in England – it is still unknown exactly who -- took the names of all these people -- who were not aristocrats, whose family names were not inscribed in stone anywhere, whose ancestors did not have their names on brass plaques in their churches -- and tried to erase them from history itself.

Only by chance -- or as some would say, the grace of God — did an American ambassador to Britain espy this volume sitting on the bookshelves of the Archbishop of Canterbury and discover the historical treasure that had been spirited away from Massachusetts to sit, dusty and nearly forgotten, in another land for more than one hundred years.

And only through the dint of repeated diplomatic overtures, undertaken over decades, did the United States finally recover this book of names and events, this inestimable treasure recounting the lives of our ancestors who founded the Plymouth Colony. Now in the archives of the Massachusetts State House, where it will reside forever, we know that the names of our ancestors will truly not be forgotten. 

Equally of import to me is the name I came across in the amazingly complete genealogical information found in the French-Canadian genealogical archives. Before I began doing my French-Canadian ancestry, I had inexplicably dreaded not being able to find the names of my ancestors there. 

But thanks to the painstaking recording of the names of every one of the parishioners in the very first years of Canada, when the priests didn’t even have their own churches but had to travel from cabin to cabin much like itinerant workers, we have this treasure trove of information today. 

 

These men would write down the name of each baptized person, each engaged person, and each one who died, in complete detail - and carry this folio in their saddlebags to the next home, where they would again either celebrate another baptism or wedding, or perhaps funeral. Adding yet more names.

How much do we descendants owe these priests, who sacrificed every semblance of a normal life in the earliest, roughest years of Canada, as they recorded the names of these mostly humble people, the fur trappers, loggers and farmers along the St. Lawrence?  And now it has all been digitized.

But perhaps the most miraculous of all is that these priests recorded the names of all of the Natives that they baptized, married and buried as well. Doing their level best to transcribe these long names in a language that they hadn’t even heard until recently, they wrote down the names of the parents – and sometimes even grandparents -- of the native women who married the French settlers.

And amongst them I found the name of not one, but three, of my Native ancestresses who married the French soldiers who came to Fort Louisbourg in what is now Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, two of their original names were not recorded - just their new Christian baptismal names. But that one name that survived is a living link into my past, and one that simply transports me back into time whenever I think of it.

“OXINOUROUDH,” the priest wrote, all in caps, incredibly even recording the French translation of her name, “Ouestnordouest,” or “WestNorthWest.” A Native Abenaki girl who had ended up on Isle St. Jean, what was later to become named Prince Edward Island, who had somehow married one of the French soldiers stationed at Louisbourg.

How utterly perfect - her name was the very direction that all of my European ancestors took in settling the New World, up into Canada. Even years later, I can still not wrap my mind around the fact  that we know her name. And I may never be able to fathom how fortunate we are to know it, and to know even this slightest bit about her, especially since she lived at a time when even in England, women’s full names were often not recorded, even when they married. 

Names. We are so very fortunate to know them all, and to know that they are recorded forever. And we are lucky to have each other and to be able to do whatever we can to support this amazing organization, which exists to ensure that they will never be forgotten.