The following year, April, brought a marriage ceremony performed by Captain Standish, as assistant, which was of interest to many—that of Samuel Fuller, loved for his own admirable qualities as well as for being the nephew of their Doctor of happy memory. His bride was one of the girls who had helped in the new settlement of Scituate, founded by her father and other men from Kent, in England. In spite of all his pretty playmates in Plymouth, Samuel found this girl of old England was the one to receive his heart. But Jane Lothrop took him from Plymouth to the newer township.
In August a furious storm broke over Plymouth and the surrounding land and sea, inflicting great damage and terrifying the women and children. It wrecked many ships, killed cattle and blew roofs from many of the houses and knocked others to pieces in Plymouth, and uprooted quantities of great trees; the evidences of it were prominent for many years in the blemished beauty of the great pines which withstood the hurricane, still remaining the sentinels of Plymouth.
When Edward Winslow returned, he again served as Governor, and one of the weddings of that year was Mary Allerton’s. She was last but one of the Mayflower girls to marry—Damaris Hopkins’ marriage to Jacob Cooke completed the list. Mary’s courtship had begun in childhood’s days, when Thomas Cushman, in the house across the street, had waited for her to grow up—while growing up himself and pursuing his studies with the other boys in the Governor’s family. At the time of her marriage the rumblings of the Pequot war were beginning to be heard, which soon broke, owing to the mistakes of the Bay Colony, causing the old time fears to return to Plymouth women for the safety of their men and themselves. Under Captain Standish, the Plymouth men played their valiant part, and Thomas Stanton, the interpreter for Massachusetts, and Captain John Gallup did their full share to redeem the situation.
Richard Church had not long before come from the Bay Colony to visit Plymouth, but meeting Elizabeth Warren decided him to remain permanently, in spite of displeasure from the Bay authorities, who missed him. He was one of the Plymouth fighters in this Indian disturbance, as his and Elizabeth’s son, Benjamin, was in the greater, bloodier war of a later time—King Philip’s—when the Pilgrim’s good friend, Massasoit, was dead. Plymouth tried to settle down to its own affairs after this, and had plenty to attend to.
A lovely June day seemed ushering in another summer when an unknown experience marked that year as one to date by even as the one of the great storm. That morning some of the principal men were meeting to discuss important questions, and in the street and about the doorsteps many of the women were talking of their own or public affairs, when a violent though brief earthquake shook them from their balance, and catching hold of whatever was nearest, they heard the crashing and falling of things in their houses. The children were frightened and began to cry, and all the women who were indoors came running out, fearing the houses would fall. The men were no less concerned and the streets presented a lively scene. Another shock was soon felt but less severe, and that was the end. Indians came hurrying into the town with their experience to relate; the quake was felt far inland and at sea. What with the frightful storm, the alarming Pequot trouble and this terrifying experience, all within a comparatively short time, the nerves of the women must have been more on edge than for many a day.
The young people of Marshfield and Duxbury, married and single, clung closely to their friends and associations of Plymouth and their amusements were shared in common. Weekly lecture day, a diversion of sober character, was nevertheless gladly welcomed as a means of enjoyable intercourse, going or returning. Maple sugar making, Training day, corn husking, apple bees were occasions for merry gatherings, the sequence found in the frequent weddings. Dancing became popular, though frowned on in some quarters, but it could not be repressed in an age when the desire for physical activity and excitement was as natural as now. Some of those early dance names such as High Betty Martin, Constancy, Orange Tree, Rolling Hornpipe, The Ladies Choice, compare with our recent names of Hesitation, Fox Trot, One Step.
The Coast Road from Boston, though never more than a few feet wider than the old Indian trail, came to mean to the dwellers in the various townships of Plymouth such an artery of connection to the life of all as the Great North Road had been to the inhabitants of the little villages, Scrooby and its neighbors, long ago homes to the elder members of the Colony.
The coldest winter Plymouth has ever known has frozen the harbor to a solid mass over which ox teams and sledges have been driven for several weeks, an astonishing and interesting sight and one may walk over the ice to Duxbury as well as by the land. One afternoon bright with the lengthening daylight of the season, sees a pleasant picture in the old parlor of Governor Bradford’s house, for he is again Governor, by urgent request of the community. A cheery fire blazes up the wide chimney and there is gay chatter to the tune of the crackling logs. Mistress Alice Bradford, now a grandmother (her son, Constant Southworth having married Elizabeth Collier and having a little Alice) has invited several of her daughter’s special friends to spend the day. So we see Mercy, a delightful reproduction of her mother and father both, as hostess to nine merry girls: Mary Brewster, Betty and Sally Alden, from Duxbury, Mary Cooke, Mercy Fuller and Deborah Hopkins of Plymouth, Lora Standish of Duxbury and Desire and Hope Howland. Elizabeth Tilly had given charming companion names to her older daughters, her first born having been named in remembrance of Desire Minter, her dear friend. Desire was now at the age of her mother when she had married—that mother seeming always as an older sister, being still young herself in spite of the cares of a large family—but it was more than a year later before Desire decided to marry, and be the first bride, though not the eldest, of this pretty group. The girls of this generation never having experienced the world’s hardships and vicissitudes that had been their mother’s portions, having been carefully and lovingly brought up in comfortable, cheerful homes, were not anxious to leave them for the first time, even with love to point the way. However, Desire was beginning to listen to the importunities of her dashing young lieutenant—in later years known as Captain John Gorham, who was to lead the 2nd Barnstable Company under command of Major William Bradford, Mercy’s brother, into fame, at the Great Swamp Fight in Philip’s War. The swift knitting needles click in Desire’s hands as she stands by the frame-work of the western window, leaning to watch the progress of the sampler which is being worked by a lovely girl who is sharing the broad window seat with another, who has evidently completed her sewing, having just folded it and put it into a bag hanging from her arm. This young beauty is Betty Alden—eldest of the family of John and Priscilla. She too, is eagerly watching the stitches that are to tell the worker’s admirers and friends, from that day to this, that the sampler was made by Lora Standish, only and much beloved daughter of the Pilgrim’s Captain. That piece of handicraft is the only specimen of their work that we know of and may look at today as if we had seen it when its stitches were being placed, among the group we are picturing of Plymouth Colony’s first-born daughters—the first native generation of Colonial girls of New England. On a seat by the hearth, Mary Cooke and Mercy Fuller have a book between them and are reading aloud snatches of receipts for making perfumes, or poetry, or jokes—this is not a monthly magazine as we might fancy from our own experience, but a yearly periodical, welcomed by every household—Pierce’s Almanac, printed in Cambridge, its contents holding much that is similar but much that is different to the magazines we know. Leaning over the high back, smoothing the soft hair of Mercy Fuller, is Hope Howland. Bonny as her sister is, somehow Hope reminds us more of little Elizabeth Tilly of Leyden. Mercy Bradford is placing little cakes with a pitcher of cider on a big center table and lights one or two bayberry candles in wooden holders that stand upon its polished top and twinkle on it or in the shining pewter dishes and cups. At the window towards the street, Deborah Hopkins and Mary Brewster, granddaughter and namesake of our first Mary Brewster, are looking out—evidently some one is expected. The last rays of the winter sun, the flashing fire and the glowing bayberry flames, strive to light for one more instant this appealing picture. There is sound of footsteps in the cold air outside—stamping and laughing—the brothers and sweethearts have arrived to take the girls home but first to have some slight refreshment at the hands of Mistress Bradford and Mercy. Cloaks are brought and velvet hoods tied snugly over hair both light and dark, surrounding the pink cheeks and sparkling eyes of all the happy girls who have spent the day with Mercy Bradford and her mother.
The snowflakes of winter have turned to falling apple blossoms and spring has awakened the violets in the flower beds under the windows of William Brewster’s library. The fragrance of these and other blossoms is borne through the white curtained windows open to the warm air, mingled with the saltness of Duxbury marshes. The library comprises four hundred books, the largest and most valuable in America. Whether it is or no, matters not, the books are the solace of their owner, who while enjoying his farm life and appreciating the companionship of his son’s families and Isaac Allerton, Jr., his grandson, dwells much within himself. To keep the books dusted and the Elder’s chair in just the right place, Mrs. Love Brewster has often the assistance of her nieces, Jonathan Brewster’s daughters. This bright morning sees Mary, one of the girls in the winter’s frolic at Mercy Bradford’s, attending to these matters. A boy is deep in study by a bookshelf, and Mary, playfully sweeps her duster across his book as she works—it is her cousin, Isaac—preparing for entrance into the new College at Cambridge. Up the road a horse comes at a lively pace and Samuel Fuller has arrived to join with Isaac in reading the precious books, though his father left him some of his own. The owner of the library glances through the window and smiles and nods to the young people—Mary seeing him, runs out to enjoy with him the sunshine and to pat the horse tied near the door. Possibly William Brewster recalls from the past a spring morning when another lad rode a horse, to acquire knowledge from books—but he says nothing as Mary slips her arm in his.