SMITH (Post, Dort, Winsor,
Secord, Harris, Harris, McCall, Otis, Thacher, Gorham, Howland, Tilley,
Hurst)
OUR MAYFLOWER FOREMOTHERS: Story Index
Ancestry
of 8th GGM: HANNAH THACHER (1690-1780)
Granddaughter
of 1635 Immigrant, ANTHONY THACHER
Daughter
of LYDIA GORHAM-Our next Mayflower Foremother
THACHER’S WOE & AVERY’S
FALL
Anthony Thacher, 10th GGF
1635 Immigrant from Queen Camel,
Somerset, England to Plymouth County, Massachusetts
(1) IMMIGRANT ANTHONY THACHER (Faith
McCall’s great-great-grandfather)
(2) Col. JOHN THACHER (Faith
McCall’s great-grandfather)
(3) HANNAH THACHER (Faith
McCall’s grandmother)
(4) HANNAH OTIS (Faith
McCall’s mother)
 |
| detail from US Geological Survey Map-Thacher Island 1887 |
“With grave and reverent faces, the ancient tale recall,
When they see the white waves breaking
On the Rock of Avery’s Fall”
Thus ends The Swan Song of Parson Avery by John
Greenleaf Whittier. This fireside poem recalls the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635 with the wreck of the pinnace “Watch and Wait” carrying twenty-three souls
en route from Newbury to Marblehead around Cape Ann. It does not, however,
mention that only two people survived to tell its tragic tale --my 10th great grandparents, ANTHONY THACHER (a newly remarried widower) and his bride, ELIZABETH. The island upon
which their boat foundered, where twenty-one lives were lost to the sea, and
where Anthony and Elizabeth were rescued days later,
still bears his name, Thacher Island.
Reverend Joseph Avery, the subject
of Whittier’s poem, was called to minister to the fledgling community of
Marblehead shortly after the Thacher and Avery families’ arrival to Massachusetts
in 1635. Anthony Thacher described their deep friendship and shared mission:
‘…There was a league of perpetual friendship between my cousin
Avery and myself, never to forsake each other to the death, but to be partakers
of each other's misery or welfare, as also of habitation, in the same place.
Now upon our arrival in New England there was an offer made unto us. My cousin
Avery was invited to Marblehead to be their pastor in due time; there being no
church planted there as yet, but a town appointed to set up the trade of
fishing. Because many there (the most being fishermen) were something loose and
remiss in their behavior, my cousin Avery was unwilling to go thither; and so
refusing, we went to Newbury, intending there to sit down. But being solicited
so often both by the men of the place and by the magistrates, and by Mr.
Cotton, and most of the ministers, who alleged what a benefit we might be to
the people there, and also to the country and commonwealth, at length we
embraced it, and thither consented to go. They of Marblehead forthwith sent a
pinnace for us and our goods...’
Thacher’s “drowned pen and
shaking hand” later recorded the details of this tragic journey in a letter
written to Peter, his brother in England, where his own journey began only a
few months before. Drawing upon this letter and Cotton Mather’s colonial record
of ‘Particulars of Parson Avery’s End’, Whittier used his own pen to memorialize
the events of August, 1635.
THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY
By
John Greenleaf Whittier
When
the reaper's task was ended, and the summer wearing late,
Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, with his wife and children eight,
Dropping down the river-harbor in the shallop 'Watch and Wait.'
Pleasantly lay the clearings in the mellow summer-morn,
With the newly planted orchards dropping their fruits first-born,
And the home-roofs like brown islands amid a sea of corn.
Broad meadows reached out 'seaward the tided creeks between,
And hills rolled wave-like inland, with oaks and walnuts green;-
A fairer home, a-goodlier land, his eyes had never seen.
Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away where duty led,
And the voice of God seemed calling, to break the living bread
To the souls of fishers starving on the rocks of Marblehead.
All day they sailed: at nightfall the pleasant land-breeze died,
The blackening sky, at midnight, its starry lights denied,
And far and low the thunder of tempest prophesied.
Blotted out were all the coast-lines, gone were rock, and wood, and sand;
Grimly anxious stood the skipper with the rudder in his hand,
And questioned of the darkness what was sea and what was land.
And the preacher heard his dear ones, nestled round him, weeping sore,
'Never heed, my little children! Christ is walking on before;
To the pleasant land of heaven, where the sea shall be no more.'
All at once the great cloud parted, like a curtain drawn aside,
To let down the torch of lightning on the terror far and wide;
And the thunder and the whirlwind together smote the tide.
There was wailing in the shallop, woman's wail and man's despair,
A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks so sharp and bare,
And, through it all, the murmur of Father Avery's prayer.
From his struggle in the darkness with the wild waves and the blast,
On a rock, where every billow broke above him as it passed,
Alone, of all his household, the man of God was cast.
There a comrade heard him praying, in the pause of wave and wind
'All my own have gone before me, and I linger just behind;
Not for life I ask, but only for the rest Thy ransomed find!
'In this night of death I challenge the promise of Thy word!-
Let me see the great salvation of which mine ears have heard!-
Let me pass from hence forgiven, through the grace of Christ, our Lord!
'In the baptism of these waters wash white my every sin,
And let me follow up to Thee my household and my kin!
Open the sea-gate of Thy heaven, and let me enter in!'
When the Christian sings his death-song, all the listening heavens draw near,
And the angels, leaning over the walls of crystal, hear
How the notes so faint and broken swell to music in God's ear.
The ear of God was open to His servant's last request;
As the strong wave swept him downward the sweet hymn upward pressed,
And the soul of Father Avery went, singing, to its rest.
There was wailing on the mainland, from the rocks of Marblehead;
In the stricken church of Newbury the notes of prayer were read;
And long, by board and hearthstone, the living mourned the dead.
And still the fishers outbound, or scudding from the squall,
With grave and reverent faces, the ancient tale recall,
When they see the white waves breaking on the Rock of Avery's Fall!
~
In
the fierce, dawning hours of August 15th, Reverend Avery perished with his
wife, six children, and three servants. Although Anthony Thacher survived, he
lost all four of his children to the sea in that tempest: William, 15; Edith,
14; Mary, 13; and little Peter, 5. (Anthony's nephew Thomas was not aboard; he
had fortuitously decided to travel overland to Marblehead.)
Anthony’s heartbreaking letter expressed,
despite his anguish, a resolute and faith-filled spirit of survival:
Oh, I yet see their cheeks, poor silent lambs,
pleading pity and help at my hands. Then, on the other side, to consider the
loss of my dear friends, with the spoiling and loss of all our goods and
provisions, myself cast upon an unknown land, in a wilderness, I knew not where
nor how to get thence. Then it came to my mind how I had occasioned the death
of my children, who caused them to leave their native land, who might have left
them there, yea, and might have sent some of them back again, and cost me
nothing. These and such like thoughts do press down my heavy heart very much.
But I must let this pass, and will proceed on in the relation of God's goodness
unto me in that desolate island, on which I was cast. I and my wife were almost
naked, both of us, and wet and cold even unto death. I found a napsack cast on
the shore, in which I had a steel and flint and powder horn. Going farther, I
found a drowned goat; then I found a hat, and my son William's coat, both which
I put on. My wife found one of her petticoats which she put on. I found also
two cheeses and some butter driven ashore. Thus the Lord sent us some ' clothes
to put on, and food to sustain our new lives, which we had lately given unto
us, and means also to make fire; for in a horn I had some gunpowder, which, to
mine own, and since to other men's admiration, was dry. So taking a piece of my
wife's neckcloth which I dried in the sun, I struck fire, and so dried and
warmed our wet bodies; and then skinned the goat, and having found a small
brass pot, we boiled some of her. Our drink was brackish water; bread we had
none.
There we remained until the Monday following; when, about three o'clock in the
afternoon, in a boat that came that way, we went off that desolate island,
which I named after my name, Thacher's Woe and the rock, Avery, his
fall, to the end that their fall and loss, and mine own, might be had in
perpetual remembrance. In the isle lieth buried the body of my cousin's eldest
daughter, whom I found dead on the shore. On the Tuesday following we arrived
in Marblehead."
Anthony and Elizabeth would
eventually start a new family of their own, including my 9th
great-grandfather, JOHN THACHER who married LYDIA GORHAM, the granddaughter of
Elizabeth Tilley and John Howland, passengers on the Mayflower, 1620.
(Transcript of Anthony Thacher's letter can be found in numerous online books and sites; here's one:
'The Shipwreck of Anthony Thacher' taken from "A Book of New England Legends and Folklore in Prose and Poetry", Samuel
Adams Drake, Published in Boston by Roberts Brothers, 1884.
)
