Have passport – will do research

Kathryn Brewster Haueisen combines a degree in journalism and a career as a pastor to write about “good people doing great things for our global village.” [Love that sentiment.] She’s a descendant of two of the Mayflower passengers and a grandmother to three young people with Native American heritage. When I learned that she’d written about the Mayflower journey and what happened when the English met the Pokanoket people, I just had to invite her onto the blog. Over to you, Kathryn.

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Since Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures was my first attempt at writing historical fiction, I attended a few workshops to hone my skills. One presenter emphasized repeatedly how crucial it is to visit the places we write about. I was researching the background of the story before COVID-19 became a dreaded reality. I love to travel, especially to England, where the Mayflower journey began for the English culture. As I learned along the way, the Pokanoket people were the other culture.

In 2017 I visited many of the popular London tourist sites and then inserted a bit of tour guide trivia into a scene set in London. I also ventured north to the village of Scrooby, located about 50 miles south of York, along the old North Road that connected London and Edinburgh. This is where the Mayflower story had its roots. At least that is where the story started for William and Mary Brewster, two of the central figures in my retelling of the religious and political events that serve as backdrop for the famous voyage.

I am twelve generations removed from this couple. Before becoming the spiritual leader of the Pilgrims, Elder Brewster served as bailiff at Scrooby Manor. Not much of the grand old manor remains today, but in the 1500s, it was a thriving stop over for royal messengers and high-ranking officials traveling between London and Edinburgh. The Bishop of York, who owned the estate, played a role in the Mayflower story. 

There is little to see in Scrooby today, but the church where William and Mary married in 1591 is in good condition, still in use, and only a few yards across the lawn from the remnant of the manor. Walking around the church yard and village gave me a sense of what it might have been like for my ancestors to take their afternoon strolls.

I didn’t expect to ever get to Leiden, where the Brewster’s and several dozen other Separatists lived as refugees from 1608 until they sailed in 1620. They left England to escape almost certain imprisonment and perhaps execution as religious heretics. They joined other English refugees in Amsterdam for a year; then moved down the road to Leiden in 1608. However, in 2018 my husband wanted to sail on a genealogy research cruise from England to New York. I eagerly agreed, as long as we built in time to also see Cambridge and Leiden. 

William studied briefly at Peterhouse, part of Cambridge University. Though I couldn’t go inside Peterhouse where he lived and studied, I wandered around the grounds and took a tour of the Cambridge University system. What I learned on that tour helped immensely in writing about that part of William’s life.  

I fell in love with Leiden. Many details in the completed manuscript are the result of an afternoon I spent at the American Pilgrim Museum, run by renowned historian and Pilgrim expert, Dr. Jeremy Bangs. I walked the same places the Pilgrims did. I was astonished to discover a plaque over an archway of an alley named after William Brewster. The plaque states this was the site of the Brewster home and William’s printing business. He got in trouble with the authorities for publishing anti-Established Church of England documents and smuggling them back into England. Strolling around the University of Leiden, I envisioned William, and his dear friend Pastor John Robinson, walking there and perhaps discussing their plans to establish a new religious colony. 

My goal in writing this book was to include the perspective of the Natives who encountered the new English settlers wandering around the shore of Cape Cod after they arrived in November. To research that part of the story I visited Plimouth Plantation in Massachusetts. The living museum recently changed its to Plimouth * Patuxet, to honor the Native name for the place we know today as Plymouth. After spending a day wandering through the museum and both the English and Wampanoag villages, I had an eye-opening interview with the head of the Native village. 

Before I signed off on the final manuscript, I told Green Writers Press Publisher Dede Cummings we needed another Native to review it. I’d already spoken with several Natives, and paid a Native sensitivity editor to review portions of the book; but no one from the Native community had actually seen the entire manuscript. 

A friend in Rhode Island put me in touch with three generations of descendants from the great Pokanoket leader – Massasoit Ousa Mequin. They corrected some of my misinformation and filled in gaps in my research. They then wrote the forward to the book. Of all the places I visited, and all the backstory I learned along the way, meeting this family remains the highlight of the entire endeavor. We are convinced our ancestors knew one another and worked together to ensure the safety and wellbeing of both cultures. 

Today, we, their descendants, share this same philosophy. In the forward they wrote, “We truly believe that this book has been written in good faith and in holding to the renewing a dream that our ancestors aspired to, that both our people can prosper in this land in peace and fellowship.” Aquene (Peace), Sagamore Po Wauipi Neimpaug, Sachem Po Pummukoank Anogqs, and Tribal Historian Po Menuhkesu Menenok.

That workshop presenter was right. The best way to write authentically about history is to first visit places where it happened and speak with people who live there today.  

Many thanks, Kathryn. I’m sure many readers will be fascinated with your novel.

Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures by Kathryn Brewster Haueisen ~~ For thousands of years two distinct cultures evolved unaware of one another’s existence. Separated by what one culture called the Great Sea and known to the other as the Atlantic Ocean, the course of each culture’s future changed irreversibly four hundred years ago. In 1620 the Mayflower delivered 102 refugees and fortune seekers from England to Cape Cod, where these two cultures first encountered one another.  The English sought religious freedom and fresh financial opportunities. The Natives were recovering from the Great Dying of the past several years that left over two-thirds of their people in graves. How would they react to one another? How might their experience shape modern cross-cultural encounters?

The book is available now wherever books are sold, including www.bookshop.org, www.amazon.com, and the distributor, http://www.ipgbook.com  .

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M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel, TIME AND REGRET was published by Lake Union. Mary’s other novels, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads or on her website www.mktod.com.