7 March 1602 - 1673 (John)
1602 - 1654 (Joane)
Edited and Quoted from The Sovereignty and Goodness of God by Mary Rowlandson, Introduction, pgs. 1 - 24
John White and Joane West’s family was a farming family somewhere in Somerset county in the south of England about 1637. John White and Joan West, had been married in 1627. John White and Joane West were the parents of eight children.
Although John White's personal life in England is largely hidden from us, we know a great deal about the world into which their children were born. England in the 1630s was being swept by economic, social, and religious upheavals. A shift toward specialized, commercial agriculture led many wealthy landowners to "enclose" tracts customarily cultivated by the rural poor, forcing the latter to move from one locale to another in search of work and food. Many "middling" (neither rich nor poor) landowners also tried to profit from raising crops or livestock; while some succeeded, others faltered because their holdings were too small. Like their poorer counterparts, many of the "middling sort" moved elsewhere within England in order to improve their prospects. Prior to and apart from its North American colonies, then, England was a country where people commonly moved from one place to another.
England's "middling sort" placed a high premium on achieving and maintaining their personal independence. Perceiving both the rich and the poor as "idle" and, therefore, morally corrupt, many of them were drawn to Puritanism. John Calvin, the Puritans' principal source of inspiration, rejected both the Roman Catholic tenet that God granted salvation to those people who performed "good works" while on earth and Martin Luther's contention that "faith alone" would carry them to heaven. Both were wrong, Calvin argued, because they maintained that an individual's destiny was in his or her hands rather than in the hands of God. For Calvin, it was human beings' sinful nature and the wiles of Satan that repeatedly misled them into thinking they could control their own lives. Only in order to show the power of his grace did God from time to time "elect" a few "saints" for salvation. Defying the orthodoxy of the established Church of England, which followed Catholic teachings on salvation, many found in Puritanism a measure of assurance that their experience of divine grace might mean that they were among the few who would be saved. At the same time, their beliefs provided a code of conduct that enabled them to substitute a stern piety and self-discipline, in both religious and secular matters, for blind obedience to established authorities. Puritanism enabled them to see "godly" people as morally if not politically superior to the ungodly.
In the fellowship of others who had experienced God's grace and whose conversions had been validated by learned and committed ministers, English Puritans forged a powerful movement that addressed a range of economic and political as well as religious issues in early seventeenth-century England. Fearful that the Puritans threatened religious and political order, most English leaders, including King Charles I, supported the Church of England's efforts to root out dissenters from the ranks of its clergy. As a result many Puritans developed a heightened alienation toward their homeland. Joan White, Mary's mother, would later tell her fellow church members in Wenham, Massachusetts, that she "was brought up in a poor, ignorant place. While most Puritans remained in England in hopes of reforming their native land, a sizable minority crossed the Atlantic in what became known as the "Great Migration." Altogether about twenty thousand English, mostly Puritans and Puritan sympathizers, moved to Massachusetts Bay and the neighboring colonies of Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Haven, and the older colony of Plymouth between 1629 and 1642, when the outbreak of civil war in England largely halted emigration. Joan White would later say that "her heart was drawn to New England because good people [meaning Puritans] came hither.
Arriving in Salem, Essex County, Massachusetts, in 1639, Mary White and her family found themselves in a society that was young but already heavily populated. By then newcomers to the crowded maritime port and farming community were being granted land far from the town center. John White received a sixty-acre tract located about six miles outside of town. While the tract was sufficient to feed his immediate family, White knew — possibly from personal experience — how England's acute shortage of land often deprived the sons of hardworking families of a decent inheritance. Like other New Englanders, he sought to ensure that his progeny and those who came after would be amply provided for. Over the ensuing years, White acquired several additional tracts north of Salem, including one tract on a brook that he leased to the operator of a saw and grist mill. By enabling White and his neighbors to obtain such basic necessities as wood and flour without going to Salem, the mill reinforced their effort to form the separate town of Wenham.
Joan White played an equally critical role in forming the new town by helping establish its church in 1644. When standing before the congregation to give evidence of the workings of God's grace in her, a requirement for membership, she told how she was "for a long space of time living in the far woods" and could only occasionally attend church in Salem or in Ipswich to the north. Like other successful applicants, she cited numerous passages in the Bible that constituted landmarks on her way to the experience of grace, and then answered questions put to her by the minister, John Fiske.
In publicly relating her conversion experience, White acted in a capacity permitted few New England women in the 1640s. Since 1637, when New England's magistrates and ministers had banished a radical Puritan named Anne Hutchinson, along with her followers, most churches had ceased allowing women to speak publicly in any capacity. Hutchinson had boldly challenged the authority of New England ministers by claiming that all but two of them adhered to a "covenant of works." By this she meant that in judging the validity of prospective church members' experiences of grace, the ministers veered dangerously close to the Catholic doctrine of salvation by means of good works. Moreover, she proclaimed her views at meetings that had become popular with a large segment of the Boston congregation, both male and female. Brought to trial and pressed on her views, Hutchinson declared that she was assured of her own salvation because of a direct revelation from God. In other words, the individual was the only human able to judge whether or not he or she was saved, and the clergy had no special power or ability to bring to bear on such authorities. Such a view of grace was far too radical for most Puritans, including Hutchinson's more moderate followers. The fact that she was a woman declaring her spiritual authority in a public setting made her even more dangerous in the eyes of Massachusetts authorities . She and her closest adherents were banished from the colony, with most, including Hutchinson herself, moving to the more tolerant Rhode Island.
By the time the Wenham congregation was convened in 1644, then, it was one of the few in which women still related their conversion experiences in public and spoke regularly in church meetings. Among the most articulate of these women was Joan White. White is also noteworthy because her husband, like several other Wenham men, was not a church member. The Whites were not unusual in this respect. As in most societies throughout history, New England had a preponderance of women in its churches. Whereas men represented their families regularly in economic and political affairs outside the home, the church was the one public arena in which women had a role, however limited. John White's failure to join did not mean that he was unsympathetic to Puritan views. For example, like all Puritans, he passionately supported the cause of Parliament against the royalty during England's civil war (1642-48). While less fervent in his devotion, White apparently respected his wife's capabilities, for he not only attended a church in which she enjoyed privileges not available to him but also left her in charge of the household for two years (1648-50) while he returned to England to settle some financial affairs.
In 1653, fourteen years after arriving in Massachusetts Bay, John White and family moved again. Although the Whites had accumulated a considerable amount of land in Wenham, John White apparently thought it insufficient to ensure the continued prosperity of his family line. Leaving his twenty-year-old son, Thomas, in charge of the Wenham holdings, the Whites moved fifty miles west to another new town, Lancaster. Lancaster was a study in contrasts to Wenham. Besides being known for its disreputable inhabitants, the town's nearest neighbors were Native Americans. At the dawn of the seventeenth century, the native peoples of southern New England (the area of the present states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island) probably numbered more than one hundred thousand. But first visiting explorers and then colonists soon brought devastating epidemics of smallpox and other diseases to which Indians lacked sufficient immunity, reducing the population in some areas by as much as 90 percent. Hardest hit were the Indians of the eastern coast, where communities formerly numbering in the hundreds now held only a few dozen." One English visitor, arriving in 1622, remarked that the "bones and skulls" of the unburied dead "made such a spectacle ... it seemed to me a new found Golgatha." " While living in Wenham, Mary White might have seen an Indian or two from time to time along a road or in the larger towns of Salem or Ipswich. Lancaster was another story. The neighboring Nipmuc people of Nashaway had helped the town get started and continued to contribute to its economic well-being.
Arriving in the year of the name change, the Whites were among a large number of new families moving to Lancaster as its prospects seemed to be improving. After a decade in which the number of families was never more than about a dozen, it suddenly boasted thirty-five households by 1654. For John White, the motive of acquiring additional land was once again uppermost; within a year of his arrival, he was the largest landowner in town. How Joan White felt about leaving Wenham is less clear, but she may already have known that Lancaster had finally recruited a minister, Joseph Rowlandson, whom she surely had met when attending church in Ipswich. Whether Joan, who was the White family's spiritual mentor, helped incline her daughter, Mary toward the clergyman is uncertain. In any case, Mary White and Joseph Rowlandson were married in about 1656.
Joane West died in Lancaster, May 18, 1654 and John died in 1673.
Edited and written by Ruth H. Barker
Source: The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Together with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson and Related Documents, edited by Neal Salisbury, Boston, 1997.
Uploaded by Emily Barker Farrer, 2010