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?