I learned recently that I have 15 ancestors buried in the Bridge Street Cemetery in Massachusetts. All my life I have known that my ancestral roots went back to the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but was surprised by this many. My 7th Great Grandfather, my 8th Great Grandmother, Great, (how many?) grand aunts and great grand uncles. The earliest birth date for any of these 15 is 1638. Other cemeteries were listed on the site that I have not yet pursued. One listed was Bloody Brook Mass Grave---just the name tells a story with few detail, and the results.
There are some in the Windsor, Connecticut Colony and Hartford. I haven't looked at this cemetery site very closely. It has just came up on Family Search, Maps indicates early relatives all across the nation, some even in the south.
I can't help but reflect on how these individuals made the decision to sail into what was totally the unknown, and that one thing they would know was that life would be hard, that there were many dangers in that land across the ocean. Their ships were such small sailing vessels. It was like placing a tea cup at the place of embarking and expecting the cup to arrive in a harbor far to the west, with not even a chip on its surface. I have seen the one of those ships on display at Plymouth in Massachusetts. What courage they had to have, what dedication to their cause! I am sure there are more ancestors during this same time period who died on the voyage across the Atlantic and their graves were the watery deep.
Since I have two family lines that go back into the 1600's, I realize that those graves that are located in the southern part of our nation might well be my Quakers rather than the Puritans. The Quakers early years were in the Carolinas and Virginia, often islands off shore.
There is a date in July that is celebrated as Pioneer day, referring to those who crossed the country coming to the west. I have always felt a tad disconnected on that day, but thinking of these ancestors of the 1600's, one can't get more sense of pioneering than the legacy they left for many of us descendants still living in the land they sought and somehow survived.
