Searching For Francis West

How A Colonial Reprobate Became My Spirit Guide

by Curtis West

Like many family mysteries, this one starts with an attic. It was a large attic, occupying the entire third floor of my childhood home, and it was stacked to the ceiling with the refuse from my grandparent's house including towering dressers, chests, tables, hideously ornate Victorian lamps and a steamship trunk.

The trunk was a "wardrobe" of old, the kind that was taken on journeys abroad, a sort of traveling closet, covered with the stickers from steamship lines, railroads and hotels. It was my paternal grandfather's trunk, and its many drawers and compartments were stuffed with old family papers, letters and diaries.

One evening, when I was about nine, my father came to my room and said that it was time to go to the attic and settle some questions about the family history. He explained that he knew about my mother's family and his mother's family, but he was not absolutely clear about his father's heritage. He felt that the trunk upstairs just might hold the key to the puzzle.

Little by little, working in the evening after helping me with my homework, my father started to pour over the leather bound diaries, the old histories, and yellowing letters written in ink with an elegant and accomplished hand. In time, he cobbled together a direct line-of-descent, and came to realize that the West family had been in the country for some ten generations, ever since a gentlemen named Francis West arrived in Plymouth Colony sometime in the 1600's.

This was thrilling and exciting news for all of us in St. Paul, Minnesota. Everyone else in the family was really rather "new" to the country. My mother's parents had come from Sweden, arriving in 1893 and then 1903. My father's mother's side arrived from Germany in 1836 and then 1903. And while I appreciated my heritage to which I attribute my German industriousness and my Swedish forbearance, this newest discovery excited me down to the marrow of my bones.

I, of course, was not content with just the colonial angle. I had to wonder: who exactly was Francis West? Could we trace his family line back in England? Were we related to royalty? Was there a castle with a West banner rippling over the ramparts? Suddenly, life in St. Paul paled in comparison. I imagined myself an English Prince suffering a Prairie Exile while my English antecedents waited for me to come home to my ancestral lands. I could picture myself in front of the hearth in the Great Hall of the Family Manor.

Eager to discover what else could be established about the family line, my father contacted a genealogical research institute. They told him that for just $50, they would trace his family history. A few months later, we received a glossy hardcover book in the mail that was entitled "The West Family Register."

The book, while it did not confirm my royal lineage, nevertheless was a bit of genealogical gold, for it reported that Francis West was a Vice-Admiral West in the British Royal Navy, a friend of King George and by dint of good deeds and noble bearing, was awarded a land tract in Plymouth Colony. Further, the researchers informed us, for an additional $25, we could purchase a handsome ceramic plaque embossed with the West Family Coat of Arms.

My father could not resist this small symbol of ancestral pride, and the plaque was promptly purchased. But once it arrived, my father's natural humility prevailed and he hung it in the kitchen. Meanwhile, though I had given up on my pretensions to royalty, I was pretty taken with the fact that I was descended from a Vice-Admiral, whom I imagined as a cross between Captain Blood and Horatio Hornblower.

Why, I asked my father, was our Family Coat of Arms being kept in the kitchen? Certainly, I argued, it deserved a more prominent spot, like over the mantel or in the library?

My father was a sensible man and fast becoming a talented amateur genealogist. He told me that although he was certain that the first West in the country was a Francis West, he was not certain it was this particular Vice-Admiral Francis West. He wanted further proof and documentation before he laid claim to a direct relationship with His Excellency.

I, of course, needed no further proof, and was thrilled when I discovered I could order cufflinks with the "family" crest in addition to linens, shirts, a crest that could be sewed onto the pocket of a blazer, and (an item I particularly coveted) a wax seal for stamping letters shut with your family crest. I thought that was just the ticket and pictured the official correspondence that would bear my family stamp. However, all pretensions to my supposed pedigree came to naught, as my father refused to allow the purchase of any such items.

For several years, Francis West was forgotten until my father retired and renewed his genealogical endeavors at the Minnesota Historical Society. There to his delight he discovered several key texts related to New England families of the colonial era. I eagerly awaited any new findings. However, one day several weeks later, when he called to ask me for lunch, his voice was somber.

"I'm very, very sorry to tell you this," he told me over Filet of Sole at the University Club. "But at that time, there were several Francis West's in the colonies, and we are not descended from Admiral Francis West, friend of the King, owner of huge tracts of land, and near nobleman-but rather, we are descended from a simple English yeoman."

I pressed him for further information. He reported that so far he had learned that Francis appeared out of the English wood one summer day in 1633 and got on board a vessel headed for the New Land.

He was unmarried, and to pay for the passage, probably came as an indentured servant, a common practice to work off the price of passage.

I was devastated. We were not royal. We were not dashing adventurers of the sea. We were, most likely, descended from an indentured servant. "Now," my father said, always one to drive home a point, "Aren't you glad you didn't get those cuff links?"

Satisfied for the time being with his work on Francis West, my father turned his attention to writing his autobiography, and another ten years passed, and father never got back to his work on Francis before he died.

It was years later that I ran across my father's papers and notes on the family history and I decided to satisfy my own curiosity and honor the memory of my father. I made a vow to look again into the life of Francis West. Had he married? What was his profession? As I started to read more history of the colony, other questions arouse.

As church attendance in Plymouth Colony was compulsory, had he attended the services of Elder William Brewster, the leading theologian of the New Land?

As no one could stay in Plymouth Colony without "the leave and liking of the Governor or two of the Assistants at least", did this mean that Francis had met with William Bradford, the colonial governor and author of one of the first of American histories, "History of Plimoth Plantation"?

Had he known John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, whose love and marriage were romanticized by Longfellow in his poems?

Had he met Miles Standish, the military commander of the Colony and the only one in the colony to own a full-suit of armor?

Business brought me to Boston and I arranged to spend some time in The New England Geological Library in order to find out the answer to my questions. I met with the specialist on Eastern Seaboard families during the colonial era. Of course, he said, he knew Francis, he assured me, all three Francises-the Vice-Admiral Francis, the merchant Francis, and my Francis.

I was directed to some New England genealogies and colonial histories and I began to read. I learned that Francis had arrived in Plymouth Colony sometime between 1629 and 1639. The Colony had first been established by Puritan Separatists as a result of the Mayflower Voyage of 1620. Once the Mayflower families had established a beachhead, they actively promoted the New Land back to the folks at home. As a result, many decided to make the journey, and during this era, 1626 to 1643, dubbed the Great Migration, some 42,000 men, women and children headed cross the Atlantic to the colonies.

Francis was one of them. He was a carpenter by trade and eventually moved to a small community within the colony known as Duxbury, where he met young lass from the Isle Of Wright named Margery Reeves.

Although they weren't married, Francis and Margery had a difficult time keeping their hands off each other. As a result, someplace out there in Duxbury, in the soft grass of the salt marches, or behind a stack of hay, Margery and Francis pursued a passionate romance under the Puritan Harvest moon and, as these things will happen, Margery became pregnant.

This did not please the grim-faced Puritan Magistrates, and they dragged Margery and Francis into the court in Duxbury and charged them, in the language of the time, "with incontinence before marriage."

Fortunately, the Puritans in Plymouth were a sensible and practical group as compared to the witch burning hotheads in Salem, and they only sentenced Margery and Francis to sit in the stocks. However, the court was faced with a dilemma: while Plymouth had all the necessary instruments of Puritan discipline, including the stocks, pillory, whipping post, pound, and dunking stool, Duxbury had none.

An enterprising magistrate, demonstrating a Solomon like wisdom, noted that since Francis was a carpenter, and since it was for want of a carpenter that Duxbury had no stocks, these two events had come together like Divine Providence, and therefore it was if the Heavens themselves had provided the solution: Francis should build the stocks that he and Margery were to sit in.

Eager to know more, once I had finished in Boston I headed toward the small town of Duxbury, two hours south, to poke my nose into a small colonial saltbox in sight of the ocean that housed the modest but professional Duxbury Rural and Historical Society.

Again, the Society members assured me that they "knew" Francis, the "little reprobate", and we retired to the library where a Mrs. Nathaniel Winsor (a Mayflower dame she told me), brought to me various town histories and files where I might find other references to Francis. There in a yellowing typed manuscript, written by Henry Fish in 1928 and culled from other sources, I read yet another chapter in the life of my forebears.

Apparently, the dimensions for stocks were well known. They were published and agreed that the seat and the distance from the foot holes and the hand holds were carefully measured, to exact just the right amount of discomfort for those that sat in them.

However, Francis West, looking at the pile of timber, decided that if he was going to build them, he might as well make the opportunity for a bit of "customization" and so, ignoring the legal specifications, Francis knocked together stocks that provided ample opportunity for comfort, as he knew full well that he and Margery would be the first to sit in them.

Alas, the Puritan Magistrates were up to such tricks. They sent along some flunky to measure Francis's work, which was found wanting. He was ordered to dismantle his work and build it again!

I remember that afternoon well. I closed the book and put away the files. Outside, the air was cool and crisp. Autumn was coming. I had looked to my ancestors and hoped to find royalty. I had looked to my ancestors and hoped to find a dashing naval commander. Instead, I found a simple man and woman, who were not afraid to declare their love and act on their passions. Together, they had faced the disapprobation of the community and yet, it did not deter their love, for later, they were married. And during the worst of their tribulations, Francis had done his best to fight for their comfort and their dignity in the face of the petty dictates of self-important authority.

In my heart, I knew that my father would be pleased. This, I felt, was the end of "our" search for Francis West. A piece of history had been discovered and illuminated and its spirit of love and dignity and courage was now free to reverberate once again in memory and time.

© 2006 by Curtis West.


Curtis West’s essays and short stories have appeared in The Urban Pioneer, Whistling Shade, Transitions Abroad, The Seneca Review and The St. Paul Pioneer Press.