He was curious, like you, Deborah, with a love of books and learning. He was fascinated with religion, not just God Himself, but in the rights of men to worship as they believed.
William began to attend secret meetings with a small congregation who called themselves Separatists, but King James vowed to destroy all reform movements and imprison those guilty of religious disobedience. People were fined, jailed, and hunted, betrayed by their neighbors and shunned by their friends. William and a small group of reformers fled England for the Dutch Republic, where religious freedom was permitted.
At eighteen, he was a stranger in a strange land, with no family and few friends. He worked at the most menial of jobs and eked out the barest of existences, but he was a weaver of fine cloth—a skill that has been passed down through our family. I can weave, and you can too. His blood runs in our veins, his courage, his talent, and his curiosity too.
He could have remained in the Netherlands, but that was not to be. He was compelled to seek a different life. He helped to secure a charter and a boat called the Speedwell, but alas, it did not speed well. It was not seaworthy at all, and the Separatists and the small group of tradesmen they’d hired all boarded the remaining ship, the Mayflower, and left everything else behind.
They made it all the way across the sea, crowded and sick, with icy water streaming down on them from quaking beams and rolling waves. Great miracles were wrought on their journey, but miracles do not make life easy. Most often, miracles just make the next step possible.
It was December when they arrived, and they had no shelter but the ship. William had disembarked with a small group and gone ashore to explore the area. He was gone for many days, and when he returned, he was told his wife, Dorothy, was dead. She had been fished from the water and was laid out on the deck.
She’d drowned in the harbor. She could see land, she’d reached her destination, but she had no desire to continue. Some say it was an accident. Others say she threw herself overboard. She’d left her young son John behind in Holland with her parents and feared she would never see him again. Perhaps she thought William would not return either. I think of her sometimes when I am at my lowest. She lost hope, but we must not. God willing, we will be together again.
That is the hope that kept William striving, a better world for his children. That is what keeps me striving too. Like Isaiah says of the Lord, William Bradford was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. But he did not succumb to that grief, and neither will we.
Mother
It was after that letter from my mother that the dream started. Vivid dreams were not new to me. In my dreams I could fly and swim and run without touching the earth. My sleep was never filled with fear, only freedom. But in this dream, I was drowning, my skirts pulling me down to the ocean floor, my lungs screaming for breath.
I would wake up tangled in my bedclothes, sobbing for another chance, and furious with my mother. She rarely wrote more than a few lines, once or twice a year, letting me know she was well and asking after my welfare in return, but for whatever reason, she thought I needed to know about a woman who drowned in the harbor, a story that gave me nightmares ever after.
Dorothy May Bradford was not my ancestor. My mother descended from Joseph, a son of William Bradford’s second marriage, and Dorothy May’s blood did not run in my veins. Her tragic death was not a burden I should carry. Yet every once in a while, she came to me, and we drowned together in my sleep.
She cried for her son and begged him for forgiveness. I’m sorry, John, forgive me, John.
I fought to wake, but she never did, and if she ever changed her mind, it was always too late.
In February of 1775, Boston was controlled by the redcoats—the derogatory term for the British soldiers—but the countryside was bristling with activity. It had long been the law that every town have its own militia to protect from Indian attacks, and every boy over the age of sixteen was required to serve, to have his own gun, and to know how to shoot it. But those militias took on new life and purpose. A general agreement had been reached throughout the colonies that a local government would be established, and supplies and arms were being hoarded and military leaders were being elected.
In April, the British general Thomas Gage sent seven hundred British troops marching out of Boston toward Concord, about twenty miles northwest of the city, both to destroy the stores being held there and to arrest a handful of the Sons of Liberty holed up in nearby Lexington.
They were met with forty armed men—farmers mostly—in an open field, and a battle ensued. The redcoats routed the farmers and then proceeded to destroy the supplies, but on the way back to Boston, every Massachusetts man for miles grabbed his gun and took to the trees. They picked off the redcoats, one by one, as they marched through the countryside, making the mission a bloody one. Eighty-eight colonials died, but the British lost more than two hundred fifty soldiers.