My maternal side traces its American roots back to 1621. Two relatives, William & Susan, came to America on the Ship "Fortune". Williams brother was already in American. My mom came from mostly Dutch, English and Welsh stock with a little Norman French.
According to research done in the late 1800's, Roger Williams (Future governor of Rhode Island) was the captain of the ship and there were 35 passengers. They landed at Plymouth Massachusetts on November 7, 1621. According to family archives, they stayed the winter and the next spring hired an Indian for a guide and walked in a south-westerly direction for 48 days to what is now near Bristol, Rhode Island. William died there June 4th 1672 and Susan died May 3, 1671.
I apparently had a relative who was a historian that taught at Brown University and wrote a book in the 1890's about the family history so if you want to believe what you read, The book has a lot of detail, including transcripts of letters that were passed down with a family bible printed in 1585 describing the journey across the ocean and what life was like in the early years. One anecdotal story was about a relative in the 1700's that escaped from Indians after being taken prisoner. He witnessed the Indians burning other captives alive the night before but they got too drunk to burn everybody. He was probably going to get it the next day. He escaped and ran for 3 days east out of the wilderness to get away.
They had some coin. The letters from the bible relate how much gold coin and jewelry they brought with them. (Not a huge amount, but they were probably considered rich)
My dad's side were all illiterate Irish escaping the potato famine of the 1830's.
