- James Pike is first found in the Charleston Records of 1646-7, an Englishman and Puritan. Member of one of the two groups of disapproving and reforming Englanders involved in the early settlement of the New England colonies. The Pilgrims founded their colony in Plymouth in 1620, the Puritans followed only a little later; at Salem (originally called Naumkeeg) in 1626, Charlestown in 1628 and Boston 1630. Pilgrim and Puritan alike, had reasons for leaving England for the New World.
The Pilgrims were separatists, who rejected the authority of the Church of England and left their homeland seeking freedom of conscience and worship. They went first to Holland in 1607(to Amsterdam and later Leyden), lived and worshiped there before proceeding to America 13 years later. Their intended destination was an area south of Hew York, for which they held a patent from one of the Southern Companies. Their chance settlement in Plymouth, without any charter to the land, meant someone had to be sent back to England (and was in 1621) for a patent from one of the Northern Companies.
The Puritans, less alienated, continued as communicants of the established church, but found some of its doctrines and practiced in need of reform. They came to America for the freedom and opportunity to make those reforms. Although the Massachusetts Bay Company stockholders had seen their enterprise as a trade and colonization scheme, they quickly changed direction on realizing the potential for a religious and political refuge. Their companies patent to the Bay Area was part of a grant made to the Northern Company. Governor Winthrop’s history of the colony states that few puritans arrived after 1641 because the English Parliament was then undertaking religious and governmental reforms which gave them hope of finding a satisfactory religious life in the Mother country. After 1691 the Plymouth Colony was merged with the larger Massachusetts Company and colony.
James Pike may have been one of those who arrived after 1641, with the first record of him here dating to 1646-7. He and his early descendant were all of Puritan origin, duly recorded as being in full communion wioth the church. Eventually the Pilgrim heritage was added to the family line through intermarriage with the Bliss, Peck and Wilmont families of Southern Massachusetts. Thomas and Doritly (Wheatlie) Bliss came to Rehoboth, MA in about 1636. Joseph and Rebecca (Clark) Peck of Beccies, England came to Rehoboth in 1630. Thomas Wilmot came to America in 1638, resided at Braintree and Rehoboth, and married Elizabeth Bliss.
Only a fraction of early passenger lists survive, and James’ name is not among them. Though each new publication of a discovered list opens the question again, it is probable that we shall never know what vessel brought him to America, nor the time nor place of his “goodbys to an English past for an only-to-be-guessed-at New England future.
We also know very little about his early life in Charlestown. The earliest record placing him there is the that of the birth of his first-born. “Spight, James, sonne of James Spight, born January 11, 1646, or by the revosed calendar, January 1, 1647.” Next, the recordbook of the First Church in Charlestown shows him admitted to the church on March 3, 1647. James continued to me a member of the Charlestown church in 1683, thirty years after moving to Reading. Thirdly, the Records of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay in New England show him made “freeman” at Charleston on May 26, 1947. Freeman status was conferred by the General Court of the colony, and was a prerequisite to voting privileges. It was dependent on regular attendance and good standing in the church and the taking of the oath and allegiance to the government. By the time James acquired voting rights (actually from 1630 on) the right extended only to electing the governor’s assistants. These men, in turn, elected the governor and his deputy. The fourth and final record of James in Charleston is even more cryptic. In Wyman we find “Spigh, Spight, Spike, James, Charlestowne” Reeding m (married in this publication) JS was paid 8s9d 1652.
Wyman ties together several of the variant spellings of the Pike name in this entry. James’s surname was also spelled Pyke, Peeke, Pick and Pieck and otherwise in early records. Seventeenth century spelling was strictly by “eer”. Some of the confusion as to the number and names of James’ children may be related to the variations in the spelling of the surname.
Wyman, Thomas Bellows “Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown” David Clapp and Son, Boston 1879.
If you have trouble converting James Pike to James Spike, try recalling the 1940’s popular song, Marezy dotes and dozy dotes and liddle lambzydivey, a kiddle e divey too, wouldn’t you?” Lilly Eaton in his Genealogical History of the town of Reading (Alfred Mudge and Son 1874) notes that “It will be a literary curiosity that the Clerk spelled his Pastor’s name in four different ways, and that neither were correct.
FROM: "Some Descendants of Jame Pike of Charlestown and Reading, Massachusetts and the the Times in Which they Lived." by Ruth G Pike https://archive.org/details/somedescendantso00pike
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1621 - 1699 (78 år)
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