Budleigh Past and Present

I've always been intrigued by the fact that two men who played such an important role in American colonial history were both born in the same East Devon village. Most people know a bit about Sir Walter Raleigh and if you don't you can browse http://budleighbrewsterunited.blogspot.com/2009/07/onion-not-potato.html and http://budleighbrewsterunited.blogspot.com/2009/05/more-about-sir-walter-c-1552-1618.html to discover my fascination with this great Elizabethan. Roger Conant also was born in East Budleigh, just a few miles north of Budleigh Salterton, but almost half a century after Sir Walter. On this side of the Atlantic he may not be as well known as the man who is supposed to have introduced England to the potato and tobacco, but Massachusetts people know him as the founder of Salem and his statue is one of the best-known landmarks of that city. Yet even Americans are sometimes mistaken on biographical details of this Devon-born pioneer of the first European settlements in ...