Here is the first suggestion of what was afterward to become Andover, but no action was taken by Bradstreet until 1638, when in late September, "Mr. Bradstreet, Mr. Dudley, Junior, Captain Dennison, Mr. Woodbridge and eight others, are allowed (upon their petition) to begin a plantation at Merrimack."
This plantation grew slowly. The Bradstreets lingered at Ipswich, and the formal removal, the last of many changes, did not take place until September, 1644. Simon Bradstreet, the second son, afterward minister at New London, Conn., whose manuscript diary is a curious picture of the time, gives one or two details which aid in fixing the date.
"1640. I was borne N. England, at Ipswitch, Septem. 28 being Munday 1640.
"1651. I had my Education in the same Town at the free School, the master of w'ch was my ever respected ffreind Mr. Ezekiell Cheevers. My Father was removed from Ipsw. to Andover, before I was putt to school, so yt my schooling was more chargeable."
The thrifty spirit of his grandfather Dudley is shown in the final line, but Simon Bradstreet the elder never grudged the cost of anything his family needed or could within reasonable bounds desire, and stands to-day as one of the most signal early examples of that New England woman's ideal, "a good provider."
Other threads were weaving themselves into the "sad-colored" web of daily life, the pattern taking on new aspects as the days went on. Four years after the landing of the Arbella and her consorts, one of the many bands of Separatists, who followed their lead, came over, the celebrated Thomas Parker, one of the chief among them, and his nephew, John Woodbridge, an equally important though less distinguished member of the party. They took up land at Newbury, and settled to their work of building up a new home, as if no other occupation had ever been desired.
The story of John Woodbridge is that of hundreds of young Puritans who swelled the tide of emigration that between 1630 and 1640 literally poured into the country, "thronging every ship that pointed its prow thitherward." Like the majority of them, he was of good family and of strong individuality, as must needs be where a perpetual defiance is waged against law and order as it showed itself to the Prelatical party. He had been at Oxford and would have graduated, but for his own and his father's unwillingness that he should take the oath of conformity required, and in the midst of his daily labor, he still hoped privately to become one of that ministry, who were to New England what the House of Lords represented to the old. Prepossessing in appearance, with a singularly mild and gentle manner, he made friends on all sides, and in a short time came to be in great favor with Governor Dudley, whose daughter Mercy was then nearly the marriagable age of the time, sixteen. The natural result followed, and Mercy Dudley, in 1641, became Mercy Woodbridge, owning that name for fifty years, and bearing, like most Puritan matrons, many children, with the well marked traits that were also part of the time.
The young couple settled quietly at Newbury, but his aspiration was well known and often discussed by the many who desired to see the churches increased with greater speed. Dudley was one of the most earnest workers in this direction, but there is a suggestion that the new son-in-law's capacity for making a good bargain had influenced his feelings, and challenged the admiration all good New Englanders have felt from the beginning for any "fore handed" member of their community. This, however, was only a weakness among many substantial virtues which gave him a firm place in the memory of his parishioners. But the fact that after he resigned his ministry he was recorded as "remarkably blest in private estate," shows some slight foundation for the suggestion, and gives solid ground for Dudley's special interest in him.
A letter is still in existence which shows this, as well as Dudley's entire willingness to take trouble where a benefit to anyone was involved. Its contents had evidently been the subject of very serious consideration, before he wrote: