Budleigh Past and Present

  A talk about Roger Conant, founder of Salem, Massachusetts, is being given in the church where his family worshipped over four hundred years ago.  Ian Blackwell is a published author who is noted for his books on the Italian Campaign of World War Two rather than on 17th century history.  However he and his American wife Bonnie have lived for nearly thirty years in Roger Conant's birthplace of East Budleigh, and Bonnie has a special connection to Salem.  Both her parents can trace their roots to the Mayflower, and her father's family lived in Salem for many generations. Her great-grandfather was associated with the city's Peabody Essex Museum and her uncle was involved with the Salem Historical Commission.  In researching the book, as far as possible, Ian has gone back to primary sources written at the time the Conant family lived in East Budleigh, for example documents held by the Devon Heritage Centre and the National Archives.  He has also m...

Image credit:   www.firstchurchinsalem.org This was the Sermon written and presented to those gathered for the Founders’ Day Service at the First Church in Salem on 7 August 2022 by Diane Smith, Chair, Archives Committee:   Founders Day is a very special day. The coming together of this church is a significant moment in the history of this country, but equally important is what our founders accomplished for us. Here we are today, you and me, together to play our part in the continuation of what people like Roger Conant, Captain Trask, Thomas Gardner and others began 393 years ago. Today, we’ll focus on just a few things. For example, one of our members, one who took his lovely bride in marriage right here in this church, just published a history focused on our Founders, we had visitors from Tennessee who trace their family tree back to one of our Founding Pastors, a film crew from California spent some time here in our meetinghouse reflecting on the role of The F...

Wolfgang Koch, the church member who delivered a greeting about Roger Conant from the latter’s home village of East Budleigh    Founders’ Day Service at The First Church in Salem on 7 August 2022. The First Reading was presented by church member Wolfgang Koch: Most of us are familiar with the fact that in the fall of 1626, Roger Conant led a band of people, a fishing company known as the Dorchester Adventurers, from Gloucester to Naumkeag. He and others from that group are among our founders. Of the 30 or so people listed in our Records Book who gathered on August 6, 1629 to sign and declare our covenant, the names we call out today are: • William Allen, • Peter Palfray, • Captain Trask, • John Balch, • Thomas Gardner, • John Woodbery • And again, Roger Conant At Naumkeag, historians have found evidence that these colonists were among those who built houses, interacted with the indigenous people of the area, and cleared and prepared the land for the plantin...

The First Church in Salem  Image credit:  www.firstchurchinsalem.org  Over the last few years members of the Roger Conant Club have been researching the life and times of the founder of the American city of Salem. The Club’s interest in East Budleigh’s ‘other hero’ has been enthusiastically welcomed by his descendants and by Salem residents on the other side of ‘the pond’. Among the latter are members of the First Church in Salem, founded by Roger and his West Country friends nearly 400 years ago, on 6 August 1629. As you can read from the Order of Service below, it is one of the oldest Protestant churches founded in North America. It embraced Unitarianism in the early 1800s, and today the Church remains a self-governing congregation that follows its own by-laws and democratically elects its own officers. Diane Smith, Chair of the Archives Committee of the First Church in Salem, invited the Roger Conant Club to contribute to the Founders’ Day service held last month...

Photo of Her Majesty the Queen during her visit in 2015 to HMS Ocean in Devonport at a ceremony to rededicate the ship.  Image credit: Joel Rouse/ Ministry of Defence News of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II has been met with sadness around the world. Here in Budleigh messages have been received from Americans who feel a special link with our area thanks to memories of their ancestor Roger Conant, born in East Budleigh in 1592. Noted as a peacemaker in American history he is celebrated for founding the city of Salem in 1626. Among the thousands of his living descendants many meet in Conant family reunions in different parts of America. Some have visited or are planning visits to East Budleigh especially in the run-up to Salem’s 400 th anniversary. From California, Luli and Frank sent this message, following their visit to East Budleigh in June this year. ‘ We send our condolences about the loss of your Queen Elizabeth. The news of her passing evoked such sadness and shoc...