A Great Day

[maryphil]

I've just been out to lunch with a couple of ladies from Ohio. I did research for them and they wanted to meet me and discuss various things about Cranfield, where their ancestors lived before they went to the US in 1637.
The surnames they were interested in were Wheeler, Odell, Sugar, Puryer, Bulkeley and lots of other families who married into the Wheeler family.
What they did ask was something that got me thinking - How would their ancestors have travelled to the port that they sailed to America from. To my shame apart from saying horse and cart because in those days there were no railways. I am not sure exactly what other modes of transport there would've been in the early sixteen hundreds apart from horseback and sedan chair. They wondered if they would've used the rivers. Also what ports would they have used.
Has anyone got any ideas or have read anything on these lines?

[Phoenix]

Just been to a talk on that very subject!

It would depend on class: my ancestors would have walked! If you don't have a mountain of possessions, you could manage twenty miles a day (must depend on terrain and time of year!)

Pack horses would transport goods round the country: we had networks in place to transport wool all over the place.

Lots places that I think of as inland would have had navigable rivers if ships are smaller, and early artificial waterways were being built at that period.

[JBee]

Was just reading a story about men trying to cross a river without a way across when a boat transporting wood came down the river and they begged a lift across to the other side.

If they got to the sea there were lots of fishing boats that sailed from port to port.

When emigrating they probably sold what little they had to make the journey so probably had little to carry in comparison to today.

[Olde Crone]

Surely, if they know their ancestors arrived in 1637 they must also know what ship they arrived on? There weren't that many and the exit port should be easy to identify.

OC

[Shona]

Agree, it would depend on how much money they had how they travelled.

The least well off would have walked and carried their own luggage. Hand carts, a donkey or pack horse may have been used for luggage if a person had a little more money. Some people travelled by cart, others rode. From about the mid 17th century, stagecoaches ran between most major towns, but they were really expensive and not very comfortable. Wealthy people were carried in sedans.

Conditions were pretty atrocious as the tracks and ways weren't maintained in any systematic manner - they were regularly impassable in winter and early spring. England was heavily forested and there were no road signs as we know them now, although waymarkers did exist.

It was the poor condition of the Great North Road in Hertfordshire that lead to the establishment of the first turnpike road in England in 1656. The money raised at the turnpike was used to improve and maintain the road. It was originally meant to be an 11-year trial, but its success lead to more turnpike roads. The typical toll at the turnpike was 1d for a horse and 6d for a coach. People on foot didn't pay.

http://www.turnpikes.org.uk/

Ships left from many ports in the UK to sail for the USA and Canada, but London and Bristol were the biggest ports at the time.

Plymouth is famous its association with the Pilgrim fathers, but they only put in there because the Speedwell was leaking. Their British port of departure was Southampton and they also stopped over in Dartmouth when the Speedwell first got into trouble.

In the early part of the 17 th century, ships left from the following ports:

Barnstaple
Bristol
Gravesend
Ipswich
London
Plymouth
Sandwich
Southampton
Weymouth
Yarmouth

The site below has some passenger lists for the period in question. I had a look, but couldn't see the names mentioned.

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Great_Migration_Ships