His
Dartmouth Letter To Edward Southworth, One Of The Most Valuable
Contributions To The Early Literature Of The Pilgrims Extant,
Clearly Demonstrates That He Was Suffering Severely From Dyspepsia
And Deeply Wounded Feelings.
The course of events was his complete
vindication, and impartial history to-day pronounces him second to
none in his service to the Pilgrims and their undertaking.
His
first wife is shown by Leyden records to have been Sarah Reder, and
his second marriage to have occurred May 19/June 3, 1617, [sic]
about the time he first went to England in behalf of the Leyden
congregation.
Mrs. Mary (Clarke)-Singleton Cushman appears only as a passenger of the
MAY-FLOWER on her channel voyage, as she returned with her husband
and son from Plymouth, England, in the SPEEDWELL.
Thomas Cushman, it is quite clear, must have been a son by a former wife,
as he would have been but a babe, if the son of the latest wife,
when he went to New England with his father, in the FORTUNE, to
remain. Goodwin and others give his age as fourteen at this time,
and his age at death is their warrant. Robert Cushman died in 1625,
but a "Mary, wife [widow?] of Robert Cushman, and their son,
Thomas," seem to have been remembered in the will of Ellen Bigge,
widow, of Cranbrooke, England, proved February 12, 1638
(Archdeaconry, Canterbury, vol. lxx. leaf 482). The will intimates
that the "Thomas" named was "under age" when the bequest was made.
If this is unmistakably so (though there is room for doubt), then
this was not the Thomas of the Pilgrims.
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