Puritan Great Migration Ships

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(alphabetical listing here)

Chesapeake Colony Ships; Great Migration Ships; Middle Colony Ships; Southern Colony Ships

Great Migration Ships

"Great Migration Ships" listed by port of arrival and date of departure.

Alphabetic list by ship name below.

• Note: Many ships have the same name, but they are not the same.

• ships may have made more than one voyage and even several a year.

• Ships have sourced and documented passenger lists attached.

• CPT/MST: Master of ship.

• The passenger list, even if recorded, is not extant on most lists. Therefore, alternative sources have been used to reconstruct list of passengers and crew.

Early ships to New England

New England, Connecticut Colony, Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts Bay Colony, Province of New Hampshire, and Colony of Rhode Island

Puritan migration to New England (1620-1640)

• from 1620 - 1640; thereafter sharp decline for a time.

• Great Migration usually refers to English migrants of this period:

• primarily Puritans going to Mass. or West Indies, especially sugar rich Barbados, 1630-40.
• traveled in families instead of alone.
• chiefly motivation: religious freedom.

English and Dutch Separatists Ships

• 1623: Pilgrims divide their land.

• People mentioned in Division of Land came on:

• Mayflower (1620)
• Fortune (1621)
• Anne (1623)

• few may have arrived on the Swan (1622) or Little James (1623) but they were small, carrying mostly cargo.

Other New England Ships

Higginson Fleet

• Puritans -- much larger than Pilgrims -- establish Mass. Bay Colony in 1629 with 400 settlers.

• want to reform Church of England with new church in New World.

• by1640: 20,000 arrive

Winthrop Fleet

• Fleet of 11 ships under John Winthrop
• carried approx. 700 Puritans; livestock; provisions from England to New England - summer 1630.

1630 Winthrop Fleet of eleven:

1. Arbella
2. Talbot
3. Ambrose
4. Jewel
5. Mayflower
6. Whale
7. Success
8. Charles
9. William and Francis
10. Hopewell
11. Trial

Other ships

Barbadoes

• initially visited by the Spanish late 1400s - 1500s
• from 1511: first appears on Spanish map.
• Spanish explorers may have enslaved locals.
• 1536: Portuguese visit, but leave it unclaimed. Left wild hogs for a meat supply.
• 1624: first English ship, Olive Blossom, arrives. Claims Barbados for James I.

1627: first permanent settlers arrive from England (first English, later British colony).

St Christophers (St. Kitts)

Saint Kitts (aka Saint Christopher island -West Indies).

west side of island borders Caribbean Sea

eastern coast faces Atlantic Ocean.

1623: first English colony established, followed by French colony 1625.

Providence Island

Providence Island colony

Date: established in 1631 by English Puritans

Location: Isla de Providencia. abt 200 km (120 mi) east of Nicaraguan coast.

Somer Islands

• Data for ships not entered ... work in progress. Can you help?

Other

Sources

• Alexander Brown, "The first republic in America", Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1898 - 688 pages. (Google eBook)

• The Original Lists of Persons of Quality, Emigrants, Religious Exiles, Political Rebels, Serving Men Sold for a Term of Years, Apprentices, Children Stolen, Maidens Pressed, and Others who Went from Great Britain to the American Plantations, 1600-1700: With Their Ages, the Localities where They Formerly Lived in the Mother Country, the Names of the Ships in which They Embarked, and Other Interesting Particulars, from Mss. Preserved in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty's Public Record Office, England. Great Britain. Public Record Office. Chatto and Windus, 1874 - 580 pages (Google eBook)

• "Topographical Dictionary of 2885 English Emigrants to New England 1620 - 1650" by Charles Edwards Banks, Edited and Indexed by Elijah Ellsworth Brownell, Southern Book Company, Baltimore, 1957

• Pilgrim Ship Lists Early 1600's, Anne Stevens.

• Ships Passenger Lists by Year of Arrival, olivetreegenealogy.com

• The Winthrop Society, a hereditary organization of descendants of the Winthrop Fleet and later Great Migration ships that arrived before 1634.