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| Great Comet of 1680 over Rotterdam by Verschuier |
The
most common feedback I get about In
Search of Barnabas Horton is how much readers enjoy the historical context
I created. Even as I started research on Barnabas, I knew I would develop a parallel
research track to include his environment. Our ancestors didn’t live in a
vaccuum and the vast majority left no personal papers. An understanding of the cultural,
economic, and political environment in which they lived brings our ancestors to
life in a way that a dry recitation of dates cannot. Context not only tells us what likely happened, but gives us an
idea as to why.
Below
is a sampling of successful historical contexts from In Search of Barnabas Horton.
Baking
Trade
Researching
this context was a natural fit for me. Not only do I enjoy baking with yeast,
but many years ago I spent time in France at the home of a good friend whose
father baked bread and pastries professionally. Having observed a professional
baker at work, I found it relatively easy to situate Barnabas in the trade. How
years of working heavy loads of dough, inhaling moist flour particles, and firing
ovens took their physical toll. Nighttime work disrupted marital life. But in
order to explain why Barnabas broke the law or why his apprentice likely stole
from him, I needed to understand the assize
of bread. I needed to understand how the guild economy functioned. Once I discovered the Langton family’s milling background, knowledge of the changing relationship
between bakers and millers during this time enabled me to speculate on why
Barnabas chose to wed Mary Langton over other available marriage partners.
Frontier
Life
Living
museums, like Plimoth Plantation, surround visitors with
sights and sounds of early colonial times. Like the baking trade, I found researching
Barnabas’s frontier life fun. Some of my favorite school trips had involved saw pit demonstrations and witch trial reenactments. Complex
questions soon emerged, however, that knowing how to churn butter could not answer. With a
life expectancy of roughly 50 years, Barnabas migrated with the mindset that he
would not likely live long in New England. So why move at such an “old”
age? [1]
Why did he take on so much civic responsibility? What could be said of interpersonal
relationships among Southold’s townspeople? What would original town records
reveal? As it turned out—plenty.
Enclosure
& Primogeniture
I
resisted delving into the English enclosure
process and hereditary laws, including primogeniture. They struck me as
tedious, complicated, and irrelevant to Barnabas. When an expert reader pointed
out weak spots in Chapter One concerning these issues, I regrouped to learn definitions such
as entailment and dower rights. Eventually, I gained
confidence to speculate why Barnabas’s great-great-great-grandmother, Anne,
wrote two wills months apart, to evaluate the impact of Libbeus Horton’s land
sales on his heirs, and to suggest why Barnabas himself eschewed primogeniture.
Arguably, there is more to explore within these generations in Leicestershire.
Not
every event will fit your timeline, however, or answer your questions. One historical event I tried to
include but ultimately omitted, happened the year Barnabas died—the Great
Comet of 1680. A global phenomenon, the comet’s sighting triggered days
of fasting and humiliation across New England. Puritan ministers believed earthly
events were direct messages from God to men. Calamities like King Philip’s War or
a poor harvest were “proof” of God’s displeasure. Successes were “proof” of His
approval. What better sign of Barnabas’s unruly children’s moral lapses than a
brilliant comet blazing across the sky, portending a great misfortune soon to befall
them? Unfortunately, Barnabas died five months before the Great Comet was sighted in New York.
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| City of Albany to Anthony Brockholls, Acting Governor of Province of NY; Munsell's Annals of Albany Vol.6:95. Note: "ye Domine" = the pastor (Dutch). |
[1] “Plantations
are for young men that can endure all pains and hunger.”Robert Reyce to John
Winthrop, taken from John Winthrop:
America’s Forgotten Founding Father by Francis J. Bremer (Oxford University
Press, 2005), 155.
