AROUND THE TOWN AND OVER THE POND - 10: 'AN AMERICAN PEACE LOVER'

Continued from 

https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2024/06/around-town-and-over-pond-09-climbing.html

AROUND THE TOWN AND OVER THE POND

A walk around Budleigh Salterton to interest transatlantic visitors. Every so often there’s a diversion which may inspire you to visit places like East Budleigh, Exeter, Sidmouth, Colyton or even places in the United States and Canada.    

The walk is set out in parts. Here’s the tenth part:

Still at the Raleigh Wall.

10. AN AMERICAN PEACE LOVER 

Summary: Roger Conant idealised

The First Church in Salem  Image credit: 

www.firstchurchinsalem.org

At the First Church in Salem Roger Conant is respected today not just as one of the founding members. ‘We celebrate him regularly as the founder of Naumkeag, his relationship to the indigenous people of Cape Ann, and for his role in the peaceful transfer of power to John Endicott,’ writes Diane Smith.

 

Frontispiece of A History and Genealogy of the Conant Family in England and America by Frederick Odell Conant, Portland, 1887

In the rest of America Roger Conant is not as well known as Raleigh. Yet he founded one of the country’s great dynasties. According to Frederick Odell Conant’s book about the Conant family a total of 3,457 actual descendants of Roger bearing the name of Conant were alive in 1887. There are many thousands more living today all over the US.  

 

 A 1912 postcard showing Budleigh Hall 1912

One of them was a wealthy Rhode Island industrialist named Hezekiah Conant who made a fortune in the textile business. His summer residence, constructed in 1888 in the Massachusetts town of Dudley, was named Budleigh Hall.

Budleigh Hall. Image credit: www.reslife.nichols.edu 

Renamed Budleigh Towers, the building was used as a hall of residence by Nichols College, the educational establishment in Dudley which Hezekiah Conant funded. After a disastrous fire it was rebuilt in 1932 with the original name, ‘Budleigh’ proudly displayed as part of the building’s distinctive classical architecture.  It’s located, as described in the College Catalog, ‘atop a small hill affectionately named “Budleigh Hill.”’

 

Dudley’s Conant Memorial Church   

Hezekiah Conant also paid for the construction of Dudley’s Conant Memorial Church, completed in 1891.

 

An illustration of how the ‘Peace Window’ would have looked, with some of the original Tiffany stained glass. Image credit: Chris Mayen

His pride and joy was the Peace Window that he commissioned in glass made by the firm of Tiffany in New York.  It depicted the events of 1625, when Roger Conant is said to have courageously intervened to avoid bloodshed in the dispute between West Country fishermen and an armed force from Plymouth Colony led by Captain Myles Standish.

 

‘Blessed are the Peacemakers’ © John Washington

Sadly the ‘Peace Window’ in the Conant Memorial Church was destroyed in a storm in 1946. It was never restored, having been too badly damaged. But in 2022 thanks to the work of Budleigh artist John Washington the scene of Roger Conant’s intervention in that confrontation of four centuries ago in America was brought to life in this painting, entitled ‘Blessed are the Peacemakers’.

Much research was carried out by John to reproduce the landscape of Cape Ann, where the incident took place, along with details such as costume. The painting now hangs in All Saints Church, East Budleigh, where Roger Conant and his family worshipped. Hezekiah Conant would have been delighted. If you scroll through John’s website you can find his commentary on this work along with other projects that he has undertaken.  www.johnwashingtonartist.com

 

A photo of Hezekiah Conant from the 1887 publication by Frederick Odell Conant 'A History and Genealogy of the Conant Family in England and America, Thirteen Generations, 1520-1887, containing also some genealogical notes on the Connet, Connett and Connit Families'

A letter that Hezekiah Conant wrote in 1890 after the installation of the ‘Peace Window’ gives us an insight into his feelings about his ancestor.  

‘The memorial window, representing Roger Conant separating the combatants, is appropriate and not objectionable, it seems to me, and I prefer it to any picture of celestial beings. It represents an event in history, and it also shows a characteristic of that eminent person. I do not know that he was strictly a Puritan, yet he was a religious man, and a person who commanded the confidence and respect of the community in which he lived, and his character has no stain. And though he never was canonized by any ecclesiastical authority, yet when he prevented this quarrel he certainly was entitled to the reward promised by Christ himself, who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”  

In his ‘Records of the Conant Family’ which was included in the souvenir booklet, Hezekiah Conant wrote that ‘the scene depicted by the painter shows Roger Conant’s influence for good among his fellow-colonists, as also his Christian forbearance and love of peace’. Among the admirable elements of Christianity, he wrote, is ‘a disposition to promote peace on earth and good-will among men.’

The frontispiece of John Wingate Thornton’s The Landing at Cape Anne and photo of the author. Image credit: Wikipedia

He went on to quote from John Wingate Thornton’s 1854 book The Landing at Cape Anne or The Charter of the first permanent colony on the territory of the Massachusetts Company: ‘Conant was moderate in his views, tolerant, mild and conciliatory, quiet and unobtrusive, ingenuous and unambitious, preferring the public good to his private interests; with the passive virtues he combined great moral courage and an indomitable will. His true courage and simplicity of heart and strength of principle eminently qualified him for the conflicts of those days of perils, deprivation, and trial.’

 

The title page of Lorenzo Sabine’s Report on the Principal Fisheries of the American Seas

 A year before the publication of Thornton’s book, the American civil servant and author Lorenzo Sabine had  published his Report on the Principal Fisheries of the American Seas. There he had drawn attention to the contrast in character between Myles Standish – ‘the renowned Indian-slayer’ as he calls him – and ‘the Christian hero’ Roger Conant.

 

The marble statue of Roger Williams in the US Capitol by the 19^th century American sculptor Franklin Simmons. Image credit: Architect of the Capitol

More recently, other descendants of Roger Conant have portrayed him as enlightened and ahead of his time, similar in nature to the English-born Puritan minister and New England settler Roger Williams who is celebrated as a staunch advocate for religious freedom and the separation of Church and State’ and for his fair dealings with the Native Americans. 

‘Plymouth’s colonists, under pressure from starvation and uncertain leadership gave in to fear and that fear lead to fanaticism and intolerance,’ writes a modern descendant Joseph Bolton. ‘The slightest offense was punished with beatings, the most infamous being when John Oldham was compelled to run a gauntlet of his fellow Plymouth neighbors hitting him with their muskets.’ 

The Banishment of Roger Williams by the American painter Peter F. Rothermel. Williams, a Puritan minister was found guilty of spreading ‘diverse, new and dangerous opinions’ and banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635.

‘Roger Conant, much like his philosophical fellow traveler Roger Williams, found the fanatical intolerance of his fellow Puritans distasteful,’ continues Joseph Bolton.  ‘Like Roger Williams, he chose not to add to the civil strife by confrontation but instead left to start a new colony built on peace and nonviolence.  For Roger Conant, it was a move north along the shore to Nantasket and Cape Ann. There he and his fellow settlers found a community based on civil cooperation, not confrontation. It also was where everyone was free to worship as they pleased.’ 

‘Unlike others, Roger Conant did not seek power for his own ends and in an example of humility, he stepped aside without protest for John Endicott,’ continues Joseph Bolton.

‘It was here that Roger gifted the future United States with an example of the peaceful transfer of power and of public service guided by a humble desire to serve and not be served.’

Roger Conant's descendant Gary Canant with a Vietnamese  army officer at the Truong Son National Cemetery, Vietnam. Image credit: Gary Canant

Another descendant, Gary Canant sees his ancestor’s peace-making role as the inspiration for his own decision in 2007 to make a journey back to Vietnam where he had served in the US Army.

In July 2024 Gary planned to celebrate his 80^th birthday by making the long journey from California to East Budleigh, not just to search out his East Devon roots but to pay tribute to his inspirational ancestor, Roger Conant the Peacemaker.

 

A mid-19th century depiction of Williams meeting with Narragansett leaders. Image credit: Wikipedia

Roger Williams is also celebrated for his fair dealings with Native Americans.  Following his banishment, he travelled 55 miles on foot through the deep snow, from Salem to Raynham, Massachusetts, where the local Wampanoag tribe offered him shelter at their winter camp. Sachem Massasoit hosted him there for three months until spring 1636. Williams formed firm friendships and developed deep trust among the Native American tribes, especially the Narragansetts. 

 

Like Roger Williams, Thomas Morton was another European settler noted as a friend of Native Americans. In his book The New English Canaan, published in 1637, he described how in America he had encountered “two sortes of people, the one Christians, the other Infidels; these I found most full of humanity, and more friendly then the other.” 

The seal of the City of Quincy in the US state of Massachusetts, adopted in 1889. The depiction of a ‘Hill by the sea’, is a reference to the name of ‘Ma-re Mount’ which Thomas Morton gave to his settlement. Image credit: Wikimedia

Persecuted by Puritan Separatists like John Endecott and Plymouth Colony’s Governor William Bradford, Morton is famous for establishing the short-lived New England settlement of Merry Mount.  News of Morton’s May Day festivities infuriated the Plymouth Puritans, especially as the Merry Mount colonists were evidently encouraging sexual relations between Europeans and Native Americans.

 

May Day at Merrymount: an illustration from 'A popular history of the United States, from the first discovery of the western hemisphere by the Northmen, to the end of the first century of the union of the states'. (1881) Image credit: Wikipedia

Governor William Bradford, in his ‘History of Plimoth Plantation’, recorded his disgust on learning that they had ‘set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing about it many days together, inviting the Indian women for their consorts, dancing and frisking together (like so many fairies, or furies rather) and worse practices’. It was, he wrote, ‘as if they had anew revived & celebrated the feasts of ye Roman Goddess Flora, or ye beastly practices of ye mad Bacchanalians’.

Additionally, the growing prosperity of Morton’s Merry Mount colony was seen as threatening the Puritans’ trade monopoly.

Thomas Morton of Merrymount arrested by Captain Myles Standish of the Plymouth Colony, a book engraving by C. J. Perret in A story of the Massachusetts Bay colony (1910). Image credit: Wikipedia

When even more extravagant May Day celebrations around an 80-foot maypole took place the following year a military offensive against the colony was led in June 1628 by Captain Myles Standish.

Sadly, on this occasion, there was no Roger Conant to act as peacemaker between the two groups. Not that there was any serious resistance from Morton and his companions, being as they were, in Governor Bradford’s words, ‘over armed with drink’.

The maypole was chopped down. Morton was arrested and put in the stocks in Plymouth before being put on trial and marooned on one of the deserted Isles of Shoals, off the coast of New Hampshire. He could have starved to death on the island had it not been for friendly natives from the mainland who supplied him with food. Eventually he was able to escape to England.

For centuries, historians tended to follow Governor Bradford and the Plymouth Puritans in villifying Thomas Morton. Charles Francis Adams Jr, whose edition of ‘The New English Canaan’ was published in 1883 by the Prince Society, wrote him off as ‘a born Bohemian’ and ‘a lawless, reckless, immoral adventurer’.

In our modern, more liberal era there are those taking a more favourable view of Morton. Wikipedia’s profile of Merry Mount’s founder describes him as a ‘social reformer known for studying Native American culture’, and in recent times there have been plenty of more colourful opinions. 

‘Today, people might call him America’s first hippie,’ reads an article published by the New England Historical Society. ‘Had it not been for his May Day party with a giant Maypole, Thomas Morton might have established a New England colony more tolerant, easygoing and fun than the one his dour Puritan neighbors created at Plymouth Plantation.’

 

Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota, United States. This colossal national monument shows (left to right) the sculpted heads of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Image credit: Wikipedia - Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de

You may even agree with the sentiments expressed by the novelist Philip Roth in The Dying Animal:  

'Our earliest American heroes were Morton’s oppressors, Endicott, Bradford, Miles Standish. Merry Mount’s been expunged from the official version because it’s the story not of a virtuous utopia but of a utopia of candor. Yet it’s Morton whose face should be carved in Mount Rushmore.'

Governor Patrick's Proclamation of May 1st as Thomas Morton Day in Massachusetts. Image credit: Jack Dempsey/Ancientlights.org

In 2011, Governor Deval Patrick proclaimed May 1 Thomas Morton Day in Massachusetts, recognizing Morton’s achievements.  You can see the proclamation above, as reproduced online by Dr Jack Dempsey, who has produced a modern edition of 'The New Canaan'. For many Americans, the event was long overdue: it had been planned, as Dr Dempsey writes, ‘in honor of this intrepid and good-humored Englishman who made a success of his trading post by treating Native Americans with respect’.

Nobody has ever suggested that Roger Conant encouraged maypole dancing or  ‘dancing and frisking together’ with Indian women like Thomas Morton. Yet it seems that he and his fellow-settlers in Naumkeag – the original Indian name for Salem – enjoyed relations with Native Americans as cordial as those for which Europeans like Roger Williams and Thomas Morton were known. 

In John Wingate Thornton’s The Landing at Cape Anne, we find a description based on how ‘Governor Conant and his associates, in the fall of the year 1626, removed to Naumkeag, and there erected houses, cleared the forests, and prepared the ground for the cultivation of maize, tobacco, and the products congenial to the soil’. Naumkeag was the original Indian name of Salem. 

 

          

The First Thanksgiving, 1621 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris  (1863–1930). Image credit: Wikipedia   

This work by the American painter Jean Leon Gerome Ferris has been ridiculed by many experts for its historical inaccuracy and generally romanticized view of how the Mayflower Plymouth Pilgrims treated the local Wampanoag tribe, and should certainly not be taken as portraying how the Old Planters may have behaved.     

Thornton goes on to quote from a document which gives a more reliable insight into the harmonious relationship which existed between the Old Planters and the Native Americans already living in the Naumkeag area. The document was a statement made by Humphrey Woodbury, one of the children of John ‘The Salem Planter’ Woodbury.

Born around 1615, apparently in Somerset, from where his father had joined Roger Conant in New England, Humphrey recalled this relationship: ‘When wee settled the Indians never then molested us in our improvemts or sitting downe either on Salem or Beverly side of the ferry, but shewed themselves very glad of our company & came & planted by us & oftentimes came to us for shelter saying they were afraid of their enemy Indians up in the country: & wee did shelter them when they fled to us & wee had theire free leave to build & plant where wee have taken up lands.’   

There is ample evidence, writes Ben Shallop in his book The Founding of Salem, that the Massachusett tribe ‘welcomed Roger Conant and the new settlers, as the two peoples quickly developed a mutually beneficial arrangement’. Ben quotes a similar statement by William Dixey, a settler who arrived in Salem in 1629 with John Endicott:   

'When we came to dwell heare, the Indians bid us welcome, and shewed themselves very glad that we came to dwell among them, and I understand that they had kindly entertained the English yt came hether before wee came, and the English and the Indians had a field in common, fenced in together, and the Indians fled to shelter themselves under the English oft times, saying they were afraid of theire enemy Indians in the country: in particular, I remember some time after we arrived, the Agawam Indians complained to Mr. Endecott that they were afraid of other Indians, called, as I take it, Tarrateens; Hugh Browne was sent with others in a boate to Agawam for the Indians’ relief, and, at other times, wee gave our neighbour Indians protection from their enemy Indians.’

Roger Conant: A Founder of Massachusetts. Photo of author Clifford K. Shipton www.colonialsociety.org

Humphrey Woodbury's statement is quoted by Roger Conant’s biographer Clifford K. Shipton, who goes on to cite the following most gory account of the ‘enemy Indians’ who apparently terrorised the Old Planter’s indigenous neighbours. However he gives no source for the account:

‘These are a cruell bloody people, which were wont to come downe upon their poore neighbours with more than brutish savagenesse, spoyling of their Corne, burning their houses, slaying men, ravishing women, yea very Caniballs they were, sometimes eating on a man one part after another before his face, and while yet living; in so much that the very name of a Mowhack would strike the heart of a poore Abergentian dead, were there not hopes at hand of releefe from English to succour them.’

Tourists pass the statue of Roger Conant in Salem. Image credit: John Andrews

The tradition of Roger Conant as one of the European friends of Native Americans lived on when Sir Henry Kitson Hudson was commissioned to create a statue of Salem’s founder which would stand prominently in the city.

 

‘I have tried to depict in the countenance the kindly nature of this man,’ Hudson told the Boston Globe newspaper in an interview published on 2 September 1910. 

Not everyone would agree that he succeeded. 

But Hudson was clear, as he explained: Roger Conant was ‘one of the very few among America's early settlers who was ever looked upon by the Indians as their true and staunch friend’.

News cutting from the Boston Globe 2 September 1910

‘Moreover’, Hudson continued, ‘he was a sort of anomaly in his time - not only a man of peace but essentially a peace-lover, and these facts alone differentiate him from the strict Puritan element.  He loved peace, he ever strove for it, yet, once convinced of the justice of his quarrel, he would fight - fight to the last ditch, and win out against odds to all appearances overwhelming, because, before he began to fight he knew that he had right on his side. I've tried to show all this in my figure of Roger Conant.’

‘Roger Conant appears to have possessed a perfect genius for getting on with the Indians of the Agawam tribe, which dwelt in the neighborhood,’ commented the author of the Boston Globe article. 

‘Not only were they passively friendly but they seemed actually glad to have the white men settle on their lands, since they lived in mortal fear of their fierce neighbors, the Tarratines, and hoped to have the aid of the settlers in repelling their attacks.’

Kitson’s view of Roger’s character is necessarily subjective. And the author of the Boston Globe article gives no evidence to support his view of relations between the ‘Agawam tribe’ and ‘the Tarratines’. 

Ipswich Riverwalk Mural depicting so-called Agawam Indians by Alan Pearsall and photo of historian Mary Ellen Lepionka. Image credit: www.historicipswich.net   

https://capeannhistory.org/index.php/about/

An article entitled ‘Who Were the Agawam Indians, Really?’ by Gloucester historian Mary Ellen Lepionka even challenges the use of such names. You can read the article at https://historicipswich.net/2021/04/21/who-were-the-agawam-indians-really/

 

Alan Pearsall’s portrayal on the Ipswich Riverwalk mural of the Agawam camp along the Ipswich River, which became the site of Ipswich, Massachusetts.  Image credit: www.historicipswich.net

Elsewhere, however, the same historian accepts without dispute the fact that Roger and the Old Planters with their women and children lived in harmony with their indigenous neighbours, and, in her words, ‘survived through Native agency and planted side by side with the Indians over the next 50 years.’     

It is clear that Roger Conant was very different as a character from the somewhat intolerant and aggressive individuals who sailed on the Mayflower in 1620. Understandably, in the complicated and often sad story of Pilgrims and Puritans, emigrants and explorers, colonists and settlers, planters and preachers, refugees and others who’ve dared to face the uncertainties of life in another land, identities can be easily confused. 

Image courtesy of Dr Donna Seger

Here’s the front cover of the November 1941 Royal Neighbor magazine with the caption ‘Pilgrim Fathers Statue Salem Mass.’ I’d like to think that Roger’s reaction, had he been around to read it, would merely have been a wry smile. 

Click on the link to continue in Part 11 at 

https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2024/06/around-town-and-over-pond-11-pacifist.html