THE DESCENDANTS OF EARLY SETTLERS
IN MASSACHUSETTS
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—The letter which you published relating to John Carver, the first Governor of Plymouth Colony in New England, is of much interest, but I do not think there is any clear evidence of the association of Carver with Norfolk or Norwich.
I have traced the Carver family to the parish of Sturton-le- Steeple, in Nottinghamshire, as early as the reign of Henry VIII. John Carver married Catherine, the eldest daughter of Alexander and Eleanor White, of Sturton. She was elder sister of Bridget White, who became the wife of John Robinson, the Pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers.
From documents to which I drew attention in 1920 it is clear that she was a young widow when Carver married' her. Between 1596 and 1598 she had married George Leggett, by whom she-had a daughter Mary, but her husband soon dying she married John Carver.
John and Catherine Carver went -with Robinson to Amsterdam, and thence to Leyden. They were both on the 'Mayflower.' Carver is spoken of by the colonists as " a man well approved amongst us " and as a " worthy gentleman." His early death was a great loss to the Plantation. The records of the First Church at Plymouth speak of him as one " who being of a considerable estate, spent the main part of it in this enterprise, and from first to last approved himself not only as their agent in the first transacting of things, but also all along to the period of his life, to be a pious, faithful and very beneficial instrument. He deceased in the month of
April in the year-1621." • - In the following June his widow, Catherine Carver, also died. They left no, surviving issue. The early records of the Pilgrim Church and Colony make no mention of any brother of Carver.—I am, Sir, &c.,
WALTER H. BURGESS.
Hon. Sec. of the Unitarian Historical Society. 4 Ladysmith Road, Plymouth.
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