9. Why did Jeff Conant fly 5,286 miles from Berkeley, CA. to visit us last month?

Hands across the Pond: Jeff Conant, a descendant of Roger Conant, founder of the American city of Salem MA, contemplates his family's ancient millstone during his 2016 visit to the UK. It's all that remains of the Mill House, East Budleigh 

This article by David Daniel, History Coordinator for the Otter Valley Association, was published in the OVA Newsletter, January 2017.   

Sir Walter Raleigh is well known but few outside East Budleigh may know of his contemporary, Roger Conant. Roger was born in the Mill House, East Budleigh, on 9^th April 1592 (since demolished but just above Hill Farm). He was the youngest son of Richard Conant, miller, who had married into one of the leading merchant families of Colyton. Bother Roger’s and Walter’s fathers were Church Wardens and both families have their crests carved on bench ends in All Saints’ Church.

As the youngest son of a family of eight, Roger couldn’t expect a share of his father’s estate. In 1610, or soon after, Richard followed his brother Christopher to London. Christopher became a member of the Grocers’ Guild and merchant. Roger became a salter, a trade concerned with preserving meat and fish, not to be confused with salt production. By 1618, the year Sir Walter was beheaded, Roger was well enough established to marry Sarah Horton in Blackfriars. Having lost their first child in 1619, their second child, Caleb, was born in May 1622.

So why did Roger, with his wife and baby son, set sail for New England in 1623 and eventually become the founder of Salem, Massachusetts?

Religious, political and trading conditions were changing adversely under James I. Roger was a puritan by inclination, as were some of his ordained brothers, though not a separatist (or dissenter). In 1622 three influential sermons on the subject of colonization were published. The plantation colonies of: Jamestown, Virginia (1607); and Plymouth, New England (1620) were beginning to succeed. The Plymouth Colony was well placed to supplement the century old cod fishing industry that Merchant Venturers were keen on extending throughout the year, providing opportunities for a salter. Forty vessels sailed to New England in 1623, the Conant family in one of them.

They spent their first year in the Plymouth Colony founded by pilgrim separatists who originated from Nottinghamshire but became disillusioned by the factions within the community. After a year in more congenial company in Boston Bay they moved northward to Cape Anne where Roger became the manager of the “fishing plantation” set up on speculation by “The Dorchester Company”. This Company failed and when the next boat arrived from England, Roger learned that a new Company had taken over. He was offered free passage home but instead led a small group of seasoned settlers to an abandoned Native American settlement, Naumkeag. Further funds and provisions were raised in England and in a 1626 Thanksgiving Ceremony it was renamed Salem. Roger's leadership provided the stability to survive the first two years, but he was replaced as Governor in 1628 by John Endecott, one of the new arrivals at the start of the mass migration, by order of the Massachusetts Bay Company.

From time to time descendants of Roger and Sarah Conant visit East Budleigh. Jeff (pictured) is the latest. He stayed at the King’s Arms, Otterton; took part in a quiz night; was shown around East Budleigh by members of the OVA and Fairlynch Museum; and enjoyed some hospitality in the Sir Walter Raleigh. Jeff is the Forestry Programme manager for Friends of the Earth and already knew all about our Beavers!

(Main history source: Roger Conant, A Founder of Massachusetts, by Clifford K. Shipton, © 1944, Harvard College, USA)

Article reproduced courtesy of the Otter Valley Association www.ova.org.uk 

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