May 5 - 10, 2025
On Monday, May 5 we drove to Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park Cranberry Acres in Carver, MA, for 4 nights. It was a really nice park with a lot of very nice cabins. Being weekdays in early May it was really quiet, and we had a nice site. It was 50 amp full hookups for $48.75 per night. They had a special - stay three nights and get the fourth free.
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Welcome to Massachusetts
One thing we started noticing in New York that there were more Dunkin Donuts stores, even sometimes across the street from each other. We also noticed that there was an increased police presence, and that explained everything! Even in Connecticut and Massachusetts there are Dunkin Donuts signs at almost every interstate exit. I looked it up and they started in Massachusetts. |
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Site 205
The reason they call it Cranberry Acres is because there are fields of cranberries all over the area. |
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| Although traditionally the rock is where the Pilgrims first set foot on America, neither William Bradford or Edward Winslow, both excellent chroniclers of the trip, ever mentioned a rock. It wasn't until 120 years later that 95 year old Thomas Faunce said the rock was the first place they landed. He had known some of the original Pilgrims. |
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| In 1921, after several moves of the rock through the years, it was brought here and a portico was built over it. |
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| It's a nice story but I don't know how much truth there is in it. I was surprised at how few people there were there. I guess this is the time of year to come. |
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| The Mayflower II |
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| We were there! |
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| Should I stay or should I go? At that time King James I is head of the Church of England. A group of religious separatists met in secret, hiding from the eyes of the Church. Back then you were not allowed to have any other church except the government sponsored one, so their actions were illegal. After years of persecution they left England and went to Holland, where they could worship without fear. But life in Holland was hard, and they started discussing finding a new place to live. England was in an economic depression and they didn't want to go back there, so they decided to come to America. They set sail on the Mayflower and the Speedwell, but the Speedwell started leaking so they went back to shore. She was repaired but still leaked, so was left behind and everyone sailed on the Mayflower starting September 6, 1620. |
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| The chart room, where the navigators planned and plotted their course. |
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| Obviously the Captain had the best quarters. |
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| The second level was where the Pilgrims stayed for the voyage. They cooked, slept, and passed the time here. Some of them were sick, and the children were bored, so I'm sure they were glad to see land again. |
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| More of the deck where they stayed. The ship looks so small to us. It's hard to believe that many people came on one ship. |
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This was the hold, where most of the passenger's household goods, tools and supplies, as well as the ship's store of food, cordage, canvas, etc. were stored. With 102 people plus crew on board it must have been completely full.
After 66 days they landed in what is now Plymouth on November 11, 1620. They intended to settle near the Hudson River, and had permission from the king to go there, but winds forced the ship to stay in the harbor. It was also getting late in the year to be settling. Some people weren't very happy and were making "discontented and mutinous speeches". So they quickly drafted the Mayflower Compact and the male passengers signed it. |
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The men went to look for a possible townsite, but it was another month before they decided where to build. In the first bitterly cold winter half of the people died.
As an aside, the settlements of Plymouth and Jamestown were very different.
The Jamestown settlers were from Europe, where you worked but the kings and queens took what they wanted, you got the rest, but they took care of you. They were used to that, so when they got there they told the Native Americans that the king now owned the land. The king was supposed to send them supplies, but the British Empire had a lot of colonies and they didn't supply them. So they looked to the Native Americans and told them they needed to take care of them. They didn't work and for the first couple of years the Native Americans they did supply them with food. But after two years the Native Americans said enough is enough and you have to take care of yourselves. There were 490 colonists the winter of 1609-1610. In the spring there were 60 left. So they started Indian wars and kidnapped Pocahontas. She got her chief father to supply them for another two years.
The Mayflower colonists didn't like the European way of doing things so they wrote the Mayflower Compact. They based it on the Bible, which is the form of government we have today. They didn't want the government telling them what faith (church) they were going to follow to they elected a pastor, governor, and city leaders every year. At first everyone worked and contributed food, etc., but people started getting lazy thinking they would still eat even if they didn't work. Governor Bradford put a stop to it and said if you don't work you don't eat. Productivity increased seven-fold. When they were looking for a place to live they didn't want to take someone else's property. They found a place that looked deserted and built there. Along came a Native American that spoke broken English. He went and got Squanto, who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery along with 26 others by the Spanish. Some Catholic monks came long and bought them all and freed them. Squanto went to England and learned the language there, then returned to his home. He became the Pilgrim's mentor. They asked him about buying some property so he took them to Chief Meso, and they got a title deed for the property they wanted. Other countries had slavery for thousands of years but they decided they didn't want to do that. They considered it stealing when you take a man, and the Bible says not to steal. So they passed a law that said that if anyone stole a man it was considered as a capitol punishment and they were put to death. They also taught boys AND girls to read so they could read the Bible. They had the highest literacy rate in the world.
What a difference between the socialists (Jamestown) and the capitalists (Plymouth). |
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| So back to did I stay or go? Some went back and some stayed. |
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This Samuel Fuller was the brother of Edward Fuller, my 9th great-grandfather. Edward was a signer of the Mayflower Compact, and had a son also named Samuel, my 8th great-grandfather. Edward and his wife died the first winter and Edward's brother Samuel took in their son Samuel and raised him.
Now you know more than you ever wanted to know about the Mayflower, Plymouth and Jamestown.
We're now in Littleton, MA, but it's been raining for the last 24 hours, so I'll take pictures and post info on the campground in the next blog. We'll be here for a week so it will be a while before we're...
Roving on...
For this is what the LORD says, He who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and not create if as a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited): "I am the LORD, and there is no one else." Isaiah 45:1 |
