This is Math Boy's report for third grade, due tomorrow. I put my blog time into helping him with it, so now I'm going to use it (with his permission) for my blog. It's only fair, right?
Anyway, the assignment was to decorate a clothes pin in the national costume of one's ancestors. Or, one could decorate it as a Pilgrim, in honor of Thanksgiving.
Since Math Boy's ancestors had a brush with the Puritans back in the 1600's (and did NOT come out on top), he picked Pilgrim. In real life our family was on the losing end of the English Civil War; the family home was burned, many family members killed; our first English ancestor in America made his way to America to escape the Puritans. He landed in Massachusetts and headed immediately south to Virginia, which was more secular than New England and comprised of mixed faiths. I had Math Boy smooth over that in order to present a non-political, upbeat report...but now I wish I hadn't.
Nationality Report: Pilgrim
By
Math Boy
I picked Pilgrim because my first ancestors in America came because of the Civil War in England. The Puritans were heavily involved with the war. (1)
England is part of Europe, and the English colonies in America were in North America. They spoke Early Modern English. It is the same language that Shakespeare used. (2)
My doll represents a real person.
His name is Richard Mather. He was born in 1596 in England.
He is wearing a skull cap and square collar. His clothes are black and white because he was a Puritan minister. Not all Puritans dressed in black and white, but ministers did. Black dye was expensive so only rich people could afford it. (3)
Because he was a Puritan, he had trouble with the Church of England. He lost his job because of his beliefs. Two friends who were both Puritan Ministers, told him he should join them as Pilgrims in the New World—in America.
“On 3 June 1635, Richard, wife Katherine, and children Samuel, Timothy, Nathaniel, and Joseph, all set sail for the New World aboard the ship James.”(4) They were heading for Boston but before they arrived, they got caught in the largest hurricane in colonial history. The sails of their ship got torn up by the winds. They broke all three anchors trying to stabilize the ship. Everyone was sure that the ship would sink and they all would die, but they didn’t. The storm washed their ship to Hampton Beach, New Hampshire but instead of sinking the ship, the storm moved away.
Richard and his family made his way to Boston. Of the six sons, four grew up to be ministers. One son -- Increase Mather (born 1639) -- became a very famous Puritan Minister. “Increase was involved in the notorious witch hysteria of Salem, Massachusetts.” (5)
Increase’s son, Cotton Mather, was born in 1663. Like his father, he was “noted for fostering the Salem witch trials.” (6) However, “Cotton Mather also has a scientific legacy due to his hybridization experiments and his promotion of inoculation for disease prevention.” (7)
1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War
2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Modern_English#Elizabethan_English
3.http://people.opposingviews.com/puritan-beliefs-clothing-2391.html
4.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mather
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Increase_Mather
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_Mather
7. ibid.
Photo Attribution:
"Houghton AC6.Ad198.Zz683t no.5 - Richard Mather" by John Foster (illustrator), Increase Mather (author) - *AC6.Ad198.Zz683t no.5, Houghton Library, Harvard UniversityHoughton Library at Harvard UniversityLocationCambridge, MassachusettsCoordinates42° 22′ 23.48″ N, 71° 06′ 57.36″ WEstablished1942Websitehttp://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/houghton/Authority controlVIAF: 155530939LCCN: n80097499GND: 2037118-4BnF: cb11880590hULAN: 500307208WorldCat. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Houghton_AC6.Ad198.Zz683t_no.5_-_Richard_Mather.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Houghton_AC6.Ad198.Zz683t_no.5_-_Richard_Mather.jpg"