Raising a 2 year old...

...400 years ago.  It's fun, funny, lovely and sometimes hair-raising and exasperating to be raising a 2 year old.  I know I sometimes post about the ridiculous stuff, the stuff that makes me think, "seriously!  Why am I havnig to deal with this?"  I'm finding it helps to take a step back (in this case a step WAY back) and put things into perspective.  Should I really bemoan a tantrum over pants with no pockets at Target, when A) I am able to go to a store that is 3 minutes from my house that provides me with just about everything I could ever need and definitely everything I don't need.  B) I have transportation to get me there. C) I have 3 healthy, (somewhat) educated children to accompany me there.  And so on.  The answer to the bemoaning question is definitely "no."  I imagine kids throughout the ages have whined, laughed, cried, sang, lied, hugged, spilled, cuddled.  But imagine dealing with all the hard stuff in circumstances where you aren't just trying to get the child to wear matching clothes or clean her plate or pick up his toys.  You're trying to survive and keep your precious charge alive with you. And you're on your own in a foreign place with your community dying around you.  I'd like to think that if I had to be that mother, God would equip me.  Well, actually, I know He would, I just don't know what that would look like.  The thought overwhelms me, especially when there are so many days when I take my eyes off God and try to equip myself to handle the life I'm living now, and I feel like I'm struggling to survive in what are relatively cushy cushy cushy circumstances.  I'm trying very hard this year to count my blessings and learn from what's hard.  To enjoy the smallnesses that can sometimes overwhelm, because someday I'll miss them.  And because the woman in the story to follow would surely tell me that she didn't go through all she went through so I could be content to bemoan blessings of abundance.

So with that introduction, please welcome my guest blogger for the day, Mr. Geof (who really needs a good blog name).  He's been knee-deep in genealogy research over the last few months, putting together lots of bits and pieces of family hisory that we've collected over the past several years and finding lots of interesting history.  Here's a part of my history:
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As the product of a family tree full of relatively recent (19th, some 18th century) and northern immigrants, the depth of Laura’s old Virginia roots has always intrigued me. To my knowledge, Laura doesn’t have a single ancestor who arrived in this country after it actually became a country. And most of them had been here for at least a hundred years by then.

I’m making I believe my second guest appearance on this blog to tell you the remarkable story of Laura’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great (that's 12) grandmother, Joan Phippen Pierce, and the role she played in the very early days of our nation 400 years ago this winter.

Joan and her husband Captain William Pierce were among what is referred to as the “Third Supply” of settlers to depart Plymouth for the Jamestown Colony in the summer of 1609. Capt. Pierce sailed aboard the Sea Venture with Christopher Newport, Thomas Gates and the as of yet unfamous John Rolfe, while his wife Joan and at least two daughters (Jane, about 9 years old, and Edith, age 2) traveled on a different ship. The fleet of nine ships was caught in a spectacular hurricane (that many believe was actually the inspiration for The Tempest). Eight of the ships made it through together, but the Sea Venture was separated and ended up nearly sinking, but landed at an uninhabited Bermuda. Captain Pierce and the other passengers of the Sea Venture spent the winter of 1609-1610 building new ships and also enjoying the endless bounty of food on the rich Bermudan islands. However, the remainder of the Third Supply had no way of knowing that their leadership had not perished in the storm.

Meanwhile, the approximately 450 settlers aboard those eight ships arrived in Jamestown in late summer of 1609. They arrived to find only about 75 settlers living in very poor conditions with little food and frequent hostilities from the nearby Powhatan. The 450 additional mouths to feed were not extremely helpful to the situation. The ensuing winter is one of the most horrific times in America’s entire history. Known as the “starving time”, only about 60 of all the residents of Jamestown survived until spring. While disease, particularly that pesky bubonic plague, was certainly prevalent, starvation was the main culprit. I’ll leave to the readers’ imaginations what horrors this led to, but trust me … whatever you’re thinking … it probably happened.

(Jamestown Colonists Dealing Out the Last Kernels of Corn During the Starving Time, 1609-1610)

Extraordinarily, Joan Pierce and her two daughters Jane and Edith somehow survived. I’d like to pause for a moment and just appreciate the magnitude of what she accomplished. I’ve got a 2-year-old. Somedays I wonder if we’re going to survive with our pantry full of cereal and macaroni and cheese. I picture little 2-year-old Edith Pierce doing the same stuff as our little Rella, only probably with markedly less cute clothes. She threw little temper tantrums, babbled about ridiculous things, announced that there were no woodpeckers in her bed (though perhaps there were!), and had accidents in her colonial pantaloons. And somehow this mom, Joan Pierce, made it through this horrible winter with her little girls in tact. I’m sure there are hundreds and thousands of similar stories of men and women surviving under conditions we can’t even imagine that helped establish our nation, but I must say I’m really proud that my children are descended from this extraordinary woman.

On May 23, 1610, a scene unfolded on the shores of Jamestown that 30 year-old Joan Pierce would never forget. Her husband and the other Sea Venture survivors, long assumed to be lost at sea and dead, arrived at the Fort quite healthy. While the joy amongst the Pierce family was surely long-lived, the implications for the colony were not so great. The new arrivals had only brought enough food for the Atlantic crossing, so they really just represented more mouths to divide already scarce rations amongst. Only two weeks after they arrived, the entire colony decided to pack up and return to England. They almost made it. While sailing out of the Chesapeake Bay, the party was met by a new fleet (The Fourth Supply) of settlers, this time with adequate supplies and leadership. They were turned around and returned to Jamestown Fort.

(Jamestown Fort, c. 1610)

Four hundred years ago this year.

Young Edith Parker (the 2 year old) grew up to marry Jeremiah Clements, a 1611 immigrant with his mother, who was the widow of a Virginia Company investor, Geoffrey Clements. They appear to have settled later at Wolfstelhome Towne, at present Carter’s Grove. Their son settled in Gloucester and the Clements family later relocated to Amelia (southwest of Richmond) and finally to Pittsylvania County in the mid-1800s. Laura’s great-grandmother was born a Clements in 1898.

Also interesting, Edith’s older sister Jane became the 3rd wife of John Rolfe after the death of his second wife, Pocahontas! So next time we’re at Disney, Fancy can tell Pocahontas that she is her great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- step-niece, or something like that. I’m sure that will be a special moment.

 And finally, interesting to probably only me, I find it really cool that Laura’s parents live only about 8 miles from the site of this drama. That means they have moved only about 100 feet every year!

Thanks for taking this break from the chronicles of our 21st century life to remember a spectacular life lived 400 years ago!

 (and Geof)