speaks of both prayer and
praise. The Puritans were an intelligent people, reading and writing;
this letter is a specimen of the correspondence carried on between the
earliest settlers and their kindred whom they had left in England. They
were an affectionate people, "remembering their loves" to one another;
and praying, for one another, as this mother did for her son and his
wife. This short letter has the word "love" four times.

They were a persistent people, those who came hither did not shrink from
the hardships around them. They came to stay, and sent back for their
friends. Samuel desired Christopher to follow him. Many of their
families were large, there were at least nine members of this Puritan
household. Samuel was born probably about 1610; he had emigrated from
England in 1635 or 1636. His name is found at Ipswich, Mass., about 1637
where land was assigned to him. Ipswich had been organized in 1635 with
some of the most intelligent and wealthy colonists. His father died
after Samuel's emigration to America, in 1639. His wife's name was Mary;
their oldest child, so far as we have record, was Isaac, born at
Wethersfield, Ct., Feb. 3, 1642. He probably journeyed through the
wilderness from Ipswich, Mass., which is twenty-six miles north of
Boston, to Wethersfield, Ct., about one hundred and fifty miles, in 1639
or 1640.

Between 1630 and 1640 many of the best families in England sent
representatives to America. It is said that Oliver Cromwell was at one
time on the point of coming. Between February and August, 1630,
seventeen ships loaded with families, bringing their cattle, furniture
and other worldly goods, arrived. One ship of four hundred tons brought
one hundred and forty passengers, others perhaps a larger number. Among
them were Matthew and Priscilla Grant, from whom Gen. Grant was of the
eighth generation in descent. Bancroft says, "Many of them had been
accustomed to ease and affluence; an unusual proportion were graduates
of Cambridge and Oxford. The same rising tide of strong English sense
and piety, which soon overthrew tyranny forever in the British Isles,
under Cromwell, was forcing the best blood in England to these shores."
The shores of New England says George P. Marsh, were then sown with the
finest of wheat; Plymouth Rock had but just received the pilgrims; the
oldest cottages and log-cabins on the coast were yet new, when Samuel
Boreman first saw them. The Puritans were a people full of r