Mayflower Bastard: A Stranger Among the Pilgrims

by Dave Lindsay

Book Overview

David Lindsay, researching old records to learn details of the life of his ancestor, Richard More, soon found himself in the position of the Sorcerer's Apprentice-wherever he looked for one item, ten... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312262035
• ISBN13: 9780312262037
• Release Date: November 2002
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

A Tough Assinment, Well Done

I picked this book up several years after taking particular note of Richard More's headstone in the Old Burying Ground in Salem. I was intruigued by the idea of learning more about this relatively anonymous Mayflower passensger whose life spanned the ancient beginning through the Salem Witch Trials. I wasn't terribly disappointed. Though Lindsay imposes some unnecessary parallels between his own life and that of More, he nevertheless does a very nice job splicing together an interesting and cohesive narrative about More's life. I can imagine the daunting task of trying assemble enough information to make this work. Although More wasn't an unknown, he is certainly no fixture in American history books, so the information Lindsay provides seems to be the product of some extraordinaryly intense research. And at the same time, he does not succumb to the temptation to include some of the less verafiable leads he mentioned outside the text, like the appearance of William Shakespeare. I was a bit put off by his address of the reader as 'you,' as though I was actually part of the Salem congregation that helped impugn More for his adultery. It was distracting and unecessary, although it was perhaps an attempt to bring some additional flavor to what he may have feared was too dry a text. Lindsay should have ignored this impulse. On the whole, it will be a very enjoyable read to anyone with a particular interest in the Mayflower or the earliest days of the colonies. It was nice to learn about a "regular guy."

Real People on the Mayflower

More often than not when people hear the word "Mayflower", a certain attitude surfaces in conversation. To those who bristle with ill disguised anger at the thought of someone else being a descendant of a First Comer, let him or her read this work. If another person gushes with adoration at the same thought, let him or her read the same. The fact is these First Comers were regular people who took a major risk in starting life anew in a place no one knew anything about. One may as well be a First Comer at Mars Colony #1. The major difference being that at present we know more about Mars than these Mayflower ventures knew about any part of the New World let alone the inhospitable coast of 17th century New England.This is the story of a five year old boy who was all but literally cast into the arms of the pilgrims and lived and grew up in earliest New England.It is an interesting read and throws light on various aspects of life in New England, the Plimoth Colony and the town of Salem in particular. Richard More arrived at Plimoth in 1620 and lived there until very late in the 17th century (1696). He was not only a First Comer but a Long Liver as well. He was regarded as being very ancient and a representative of Ancient Times. The story of the Salem Witch Trials is dealt with and not pawed over in morbid fascination.This was an interesting and useful read. I recomment it.

kirkus reviews

"Richard More is a distant cousin of Lindsay's...a First Comer on the Mayflower who grew up to be a bigamous debauchee, and this is his tale: a mostly jolly entertainment that finishes on a reflective note. Lindsay has cobbled together More's life from extant records-adding surmises and conjectures as necessary-and squared it with the times:from landfall in 1620 to the era of witches' nooses in Salem. Product of a dalliance, More got shipped aboard the Mayflower at the age of five by his disgruntled father-in-name-only. Wonderfully, wryly told, Lindsay's tale charts More's wayward course. Put into the hands of a Saint-a particularly vibrant Puritan-for his first seven years at Plimouth Colony, he disappears from Lindsay's sights until surfacing aboard the Blessing, out of London for New England in 1635. Well on his way to becoming a dispossessed soul, More falls in with the fishermen of Maine outposts, who "drank like the damned and shared their wives as they did their boats." When he finally settles in Salem, he marries and starts to raise a family and gain a position in town. Problem is, he marries and starts to raise a family in London as well, which he takes pains to hide, as bigamy is a hanging offense. All this is painted against a rich historical backdrop of tobacco and bells, feuding between Separatists and Strangers, the Quaker and Antinomian controversies ("as usual, theology was not the real issue at stake, because no one was studying it"), the whole dissembling of the New England ideal, pretending to one course while following another. Like something out of Henry Fielding, a bad seed gets worse (More eventually wears the scarlet letter) in a quizzical story that keeps momentum and drollery all the way to its humanist end." -Kirkus Reviews