xxxvi Journal of Proceedings.
and his obligations to various books and memoirs too numerous to
particularize in each instance :—
Some few years ago the late Col. J. Lemuel Chester read a very
interesting paper at the meeting of the Essex Archaeological Society, on
"The influence of the County of Essex on the settlement and family
history of New England." That the original founders of New England,
that germ of a great nation which subsequently spread itself over the
whole of a continent, were originally of English birth and descent, is a
well-known fact, but it is not so well recognized that in the settlement
and the early history of the colonies the single county of Essex had
more to do and exerted more influence than all the rest of England
combined. Col. Chester gives a list of the earliest settlers in New
England, being those who were made freemen of the Colony of
Massachusetts Bay between the years 1631 and 1(541, comprising about
500 names of the heads of families, and representing the real strength of
the colony. Of these 500 no less than 185 names are not only Essex
surnames, but were borne by men whose origin, in most instances, has
been traced directly to that county. But little trace will be found of
them in the records of the College of Arms ; these men, with one hand
on their Bibles and the other on their muskets, were not of gentle blood.
For traces of their ancestry we must consult not pedigrees and county
histories, but the moss-grown tombstones in our village churchyards,
and the musty venerable pages of decaying parish registers. The
emigrants in the "Speeedwell" and the "Mayflower" were only brave
English yeomen who took their own lives in their hands and faced with
dauntless courage all the certain dangers and uncertain terrors of long
voyages and inhospitable shores in search of "larger liberty of speech."
We may trace the influence of Essex men and women, in the names of
settlements in America—Billericay, Braintree, Chelmsford, Colchester,
Dedham, East Ham, Hadley, Harwich, Haverhill, Maldon, Newport,
Springfield, Topsfield, Waltham, and Wethersfield, are all easily called
to mind. No part of Essex can claim a closer connection with the early
emigrants to the New World than that which is the scene of to-day's
explorations, and Mr. Winters has given in his "Memorials of the
Pilgrim Fathers from original sources," a most interesting record of
that cluster of Pilgrims that resided for years in and around the
sequestered village of Nazing, until, overcome with the heat of persecu-
tion, they crossed the stormy Atlantic in search of a quiet home and
liberty in the unknown wilds of the far west. The most celebrated
emigrant was, of course, John Eliot, commonly known as "the apostle
to the Indians," who was born in November 1601, probably at Nazing,
although his baptism does not occur in the parish register. His father,-
Bennett Eliot, of Nazing, was a man of some substance as a landowner
in Nazing, Hunsdon, Ware, Eastwick, Widford and surrounding
parishes, which accounts for his being able to give his son John a good
education. In his Will, dated November 5th, 1621, he directs that the
above lands and tenements were to be held in trust "for the space of
8 years, quarterly to pay unto my sonne, John Eliot, the some of
8 pounds a yeare of lawful money of England for and towards the
maintenance in the University of Cambridge, where he is a scholler."
John matriculated as a pensioner in Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1619,
and took his B.A. degree in 162;!. On leaving college he went to reside
with the celebrated Thomas Hooker, who at that time kept a school at
Little Baddow, near Chelmsford. John Eliot was the first of the
Nazing Pilgrims who ventured to cross the Atlantic. The ship which
carried the sixty persons forming his company was the "Lyon," Captain