Up a Tree

Time to switch back to the Reagan side of the family tree, though the connection will still be to Colonial America.  I want to emphasize that I am not claiming in any of these posts that either side of the family was part of the original communities we learn about in secondary school history classes -- Jamestown, Plymouth, the Massachusetts Bay Colony. No, the various American colonies were pretty well established by the time our family's folks started to showing up.  I'd also point out that when we think about the early days of colonization, I know that I tend to think almost exclusively in terms of the English colonies. I'm apt to forget that other nations had quite a head start on establishing outposts in what would come to be the United States, most notably Spain. And of course, we shouldn't forget that pretty much everywhere Europeans dropped in, even as far back as the Norsemen, aka Vikings, people already lived here. Which leads us into today's tale. I had tr...

I don't know about you, but over the years since my secondary schooling, I came to create a distinction between the Pilgrims and the Puritans based pretty much on one thing -- when they arrived in the New World. I knew both were involved in the quest for religious liberty but couldn't tell you much about their religious backgrounds and how much difference, if any, in their theological stances. In fact, even after pursuing a good deal of reading in the history of Christianity in seminary and after, I never paid much attention to those two groups. I've found that many folks probably think the two are basically the same. I read in one source that Ronald Reagan (or his speechwriters) mixed them in one of his orations, calling John Winthrop a Pilgrim, though he was a Puritan leader who came to this country ten years after the Pilgrims.  My chronological  arrangement is somewhat sound. That first group of immigrants who landed in the wrong place and stayed (they had intended to g...