THE GREAT MIGRATION

Remember, remember always, that all of us, you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

the beginning

Jamestown, 1607. The first permanent settlement in the New World is established. And the men who sailed 3,000 miles across the ocean to found the future Colony of Virginia are vastly unprepared for the task.

Harsh conditions, ineptitude and an inability to get along with the native people already living there led to an extremely high mortality rate (about 90%) in their first few years.  The English government, however, was was determined to gain a foothold across the ocean (like Spain and France already had) and their promise of free land (land that didn’t actually belong to the English crown) ensured that others would come.   Bold men seeking their fortune continued to make the journey year after year and a prosperous colony was eventually established in Virginia.

Jamestown ~ Getty images

New England's history was quite different. It was first colonized by the Puritans, a sect of religious dissidents who felt the Church of England needed to be reformed. In September 1620, seeking to escape religious persecution in England, 102 Puritans traveled to the New World on a cargo ship called the Mayflower. They landed off the coast of Massachusetts, where they established Plymouth Colony, the first settlement in New England.

This daring venture was the beginning of what came to be known as the Great Migration, a wave of 13,000 - 20,000 men and women between 1629 and 1640, who braved the dangers of a vast ocean to settle in a new land they called the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Woodcut of the first meeting house in Boston

While many of the settlers in Virginia were wealthy men who became the owners of large plantations, a substantial number were indentured servants who, in exchange for passage to America, agreed to work a determined number of years for their benefactor.

In contrast, the immigrants to New England were mainly men and women with families.  These Massachusetts Bay immigrants shared distinctive characteristics.  They had a high level of literacy.  They were skilled artisans and craftsmen. They were mostly middle class.  And most (not all) sought religious freedom rather than wealth.

our great migration families

We have 32 families that came to America in the period known as the Great Migration, 4 from the southern states, 29 from the northern.  All of these families were ancestors of the Covingtons and the Parrishes.

1625 Eppes (South)

1630 French, Howlett, Symonds, Richardson

1633 Poythress (South)

1634 Cole, Phelps, Daniel Clarke

1635 Heywood, Loomis, Adams, Dalton, Hill, Patten,

1636 Littlefield, Wall (South)

1637 Paine, Knight, Eaton, William Clarke

1638 Benson, Haseltine, Stickney, Swan,

1639 Bishop (South), Beane, Moore

1640 Palmer, Ballard, Brigham, Davis, Holmes

Nana’s Covington ancestors hail from the South: Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Mississippi.

Her Parrish ancestors settled in the North: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island and New York.

For our family, these two very different histories culminated in the melding of North and South when Stephen Wall Covington married Esther Matilda Parrish on 1 May 1887.

Grandma and Grandpa Covington on their wedding day

Note: The Wall name from the family that immigrated to Virginia in 1636 carried over 200+ years down to Stephen Wall Covington (GGF) born in 1865.

Our Southern Roots run the deepest. Members of the Eppes family arrived in Virginia in 1618. We begin that story next.