This history is largely based on a combination of interviews with people who lived during the times described in the 20^th Century, and the historical reading I have done in an attempt to put people’s lives in perspective. In addition to finding out who our ancestors were, I wanted to know what environment they lived in. What influenced their thinking and their decisions? To that end I have collected and read the history books about the times referenced here. Therefore, I’ve tried to document my sources, although some information comes from what we all learned, or should have learned, in grade school and high school.

If you question specific information presented, I offer you this challenge: read at least 3 history books written by professional historians (rather than politicians or religious leaders with an axe to grind) on the subject you challenge. This does NOT include grade school or high school history books; which are too often influenced by local politicians and religious leaders who are terrified that our children might be scarred by the truth.

God forbid that our children learn the Christopher Columbus didn’t discover America. We don’t want our children to know that the Founding Fathers, who fought for freedom against British tyranny, were largely slave holders, and therefore had a limited view of what freedom actually meant. I could write a book just on the untruths in our grade school and high school history books, but other people have already done that.

Rather I challenge you to read college level material, that is, material that assumes you are adult enough to face the truth about our ancestors. They were not perfect any more than we are. Forgive them for this, and love them anyway. Forgive those who have fed you historical pabulum. Get ready to sink your teeth into steak.

Finally, it is common for cousins to grow up playing together, or with older cousins babysitting the younger cousins. Their aunts and uncles and their own parents, as all siblings do, visit one another to keep the family contact intact. When these cousins grow up, get married, and have children of their own, first cousins may know the names of their cousins’ children, i.e., their second cousins. By the time they and their cousins have become grandparents, however, these connections are for the most part lost. Most people do not know the grandchildren of their cousins.

Commonly, that also means most of those grandchildren do not even know each other exist, much less their names, birth dates, or where they live. They could easily work in an office together, or meet in a social setting and never realize they were related. In the case of siblings who move out of state, this is especially true. Families lose contact with one another all the time. There are many reasons for this. You will find some of them in this history. Two obvious reasons are distance, and time. Sometimes we get so caught up in day to day problems, and earning a living, that traveling great distances becomes prohibitive.

Perhaps with the advent of the web, and of email, some of this will change. But some people need something in common to talk about. Hopefully, this history will provide a starting point.

The things we do, the decisions we make, rarely occur in a vacuum. We are affected by the political, economic, religious, and geologic events that surround us. Such events may directly affect us or peripherally affect us. They may affect us in ways that are obvious, or in more subtle ways that we may not recognize. They may affect us immediately, or at a date so much later that we do not readily connect the effect to the original cause.

Beyond that, the same is true of our immediate family members. The things we do and decisions we make are affected by how we react to our parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. The way we interpret our experiences also has to do with our age at that experience. How a ten-year-old interprets an experience may well be quite different from how his or her 15-year-old sibling, much less his parents or grandparents experience the same moment that they all shared. A five-year-old may be quite frightened of a grass snake, the ten-year-old fascinated by it, and the father of both may want the snake in his vegetable garden to eat the pest insects. Each person’s experience is based on a different level of knowledge and prior experiences.

In presenting a history of our ancestors, it is necessary to know the larger picture in which their decisions were made. What were the political, economic, and religious climates that led them to the New World? A well known economic example of cause and effect is the potato famine in Ireland, when a potato blight destroyed their food mainstay, and many thousands of Irish immigrated to America rather than starve to death in Ireland. They found in America jobs in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, jobs building railroads across the country, and jobs on farms. Many saved money and sent back to their native land for other family members.

But the Irish are only one of many peoples who came to America. Their reason is only one of many reasons people left their native land for America. But always, America was, and is seen as, the land of opportunity for those with the will to make the best of that opportunity. This history will attempt to provide some of that historical perspective, to help you better understand not only who, but why.

In addition, when people arrived on the American soil, they faced not only opportunities, but new problems along with many of the old problems they had hoped to leave behind. Religious freedom was not automatic in all the English colonies. The taxes were different, but still there were taxes. And not everyone was English. There were French in the north, Dutch in Manhattan, Swedes along the Delaware River, Spanish to the far south in Florida, and more nations of Native Americans than nations of Europeans. The people mistakenly called Indians had their own mix of politics, religious differences, economy, wars, and the like that needed to be learned and understood if the new arrivals were to survive.

Europeans saw themselves as people from different countries, speaking different languages, having different religious, political, and economic goals. Interestingly enough initially they recognized the American natives as also having those same differences. It has only been with the passage of time, and the need to lump all Native Americans together, that they came to be referred to generically as "Indians". This would be as incorrect as ignoring the differences between the English, Dutch, Swedes, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Germans, etc. and referring to them only as Europeans. However, as European governments sought settlements in the Americas, it became a matter of political, as well as religious, propaganda to ignore the differences between various American nations. Also by referring to these separate nations as "tribes", the concept was introduced that these peoples were somehow "simpler", and less intelligent

After all, Native Americans did not have gunpowder, nor did they have large sailing vessels. Their clothing in some cases were animal-skins. Their bows and arrows were reminders of a time when Europeans were still tribal, when England was still a bunch of unconsolidated kingdoms like all the other European regions, experiencing the Hundred Years War, and the Forty Years War, etc. As the Europeans with their new technology, their diseases for which the Native Americans had no immunity, gained control of large regions of the East Coast, it was easier to justify stealing native lands, and depleting their peoples by considering them to be merely ignorant savage Indians. Kings, and the religious leaders who supported their politics, could then claim that the Christian God intended "the heathens" be conquered and converted. As you will see, the Europeans were at least as savage, and in many ways more so.

However, Quakers and William Penn and his followers understood this, and tried hard to avoid the prejudices of other settlers. You will be given a great deal of information to help you understand the prejudices inflicted upon you by grade school and high school history books (as influenced by religious leaders, politicians, and other people needing to alter the facts). More misconceptions come from TV and movie producers, who are prone to creating drama in an hour and a half, by the "creative writing" of their story scripts.

Part of the source of this problem stems from the building blocks of knowledge assembled over time. It has simply taken a long time for historians to learn that Christopher Columbus was not the 1^st European to land on this continent, and in fact he never did. He landed on islands south of Florida, but never found the mainland. Vikings had a settlement in Nova Scotia, and Irish monks had also been here prior to Columbus. Historians now are looking at evidence that Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Africans all traded along the Americas coastlines well before the Vikings, in fact before Christ.

Columbus simply rediscovered the area at a time when European countries had consolidated to sufficiently large kingdoms that could spend the money to send ships across the Atlantic in search of new wealth. He never actually saw, nor set foot on, the continent. He believed he had found islands off the coast of India. The new wealth could be any trading goods (the shortcut to India was, after all, in search of spices) or resources. Wealth was needed to fund the various European wars. England had the Hundred Years War, and the Forty Years War, and many other wars to pay for.

Hence the colonialism which all European powers indulged in. Find a new land, conquer it; claim it in the name of your King. Use the wealth from its resources for your King and country. And as a Christian, by the way, it’ll be OK to enslave the population, so you can convert them to your religious sect and serve your King.

Many of your ideas about people today have their historical sources as rational-izations used to take people’s land, and either kill or enslave them. It becomes convenient to repeat the rationalizations of our ancestors, because we don’t want to appear to dishonor their memories. But as now, our ancestors did both good and bad things. To know both, and how to tell the difference, allows us to honor our ancestors as they deserve, i.e., with honesty.

In addition to other mentioned reasons for this history, there are medical issues to be known and faced. For the men in the Brown family, at least the last 3 or 4 generations are known to have had problems with prostate cancer. Prior to the early 1900’s medical science was on a par with witch doctors, and perhaps not that advanced. Not much was known about cancer, so medical science such as it was used catch phrases to describe any illness they didn’t know how to accurately categorize.

This writer’s father Stanley Alvin Brown; Grandfather David Chalkley Brown, several uncles (Jake and Gene), and at least one of grandfather’s brothers (Great uncle Kirk) were treated for and mostly died of prostate cancer. Any descendant of the Brown family with sons needs to be aware of this. One hundred years ago there were no cures. Twenty-five years ago there were few cures. Today, early detection and quick medical treatment offer some hope of surviving prostate cancer. Any descendents of the Brown side of the family need to seek regular testing after they pass the age of 40, to detect prostate problems as early as possible.

These are known health problems running in the Brown family. There are some 5000 diseases that medical science now knows to be transmitted genetically to some degree or another. For example approximately 15% of colon cancer patients find their family has a history of it. This is also true of prostate cancer, and our family history demonstrates this.

People of Mediterranean ancestry may inherit a form of hemolytic anemia, which can show up in their jaundiced babies. Native-Americans, Asian-Americans, and African-Americans often are lactose intolerant (Mediterranean and European peoples used cows for milk much earlier, and have developed a greater tolerance for cows’ milk. Oddly, goats milk is much closer to human milk, but is less popular). African-Americans have a 1 in 12 chance of carrying the gene for sickle-cell anemia, which protects the young from dying of malaria, but kills the middle-aged. Eastern European Jews, and French Canadians are high risk for Tay Sachs disease. These are only a few well-known examples of genetically transmitted out of the 5000 mentioned.

It is my hope that Brown family members will interview their parents and grandparents to add to this list of known Brown-family health risks. Doing so helps all family members to reduce their own vulnerability. Anyone descended from David Chalkley Brown should, after age 40, be taking the steps to be tested for prostate cancer risk.

Communicating to your family doctor about chronic family diseases will lead to controlling our lifestyle to reduce the risk. Certainly tobacco use, drug use, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart problems, and many other diseases are indicators of potential problems that, if a person wishes to take care of their health, can be controlled by a combination of family support, diet, medication, and other interventions.

A note about dates: the Gregorian calendar was adopted in England in 1752, prior to that the Julian calendar was used. The year is really 365.242 days long. By the 18^th Century (i.e., the 1700’s) even using the Gregorian calendar’s complex leap year rules, the English calendar was off by 11 days. Furthermore in 1751 Britain decided that New Year’s Day was no longer March 25^th, but would be, like the rest of the Christian world, on January 1^st. So 1751 would be 282 days long. The still existing 11 day discrepancy was officially corrected by an English royal decree that in 1752 Sept. 2 would be immediately followed by Sept. 14^th, making 1752 a mere 355 days long.

Just to add to the complication, for the first half of the First Millenium, few European countries agreed on when the New Year began. It could be anything from March to September. The first scholar to calculate when Christ was born, Dionysius Exiguus. used March 25 to start his calculations. From this, the Julian calendar was developed.

When viewing English dates in this history, it is important to note that some historians copied dates as they found them, in the "Old Style", i.e., Julian style where March is the 1^st month. In some cases genealogists or historians after 1752 may have made an effort to "translate" the dates to the Gregorian calendar in order to make more sense to their readers. It is impossible to know which dates are "corrected" with any certainty, therefore dates here will be shown as found in the source cited. However, the reader will understand that dates for the same person may seem to conflict prior to 1752.

Nevertheless, when viewing the dates on cemetery stones, or gravestones, dated before 1752, an inscription of 1^st mo. 4^th day 1751 could mean March 4^th, 1752 rather than January 4^th. You must take this into account when comparing gravestone dates with other written material you may encounter during your research.

It was mentioned earlier that Columbus rediscovered America at a time when European Kingdoms were sufficiently consolidated to amass enough power and money to take advantage of the discovery. Actually several things occurred to enable this. Columbus simply took advantage of his times.

Mediterranean sailors had long known the world was round, regardless of what a bunch of religious leaders claimed the Bible said. Any sailor who had ever climbed to a crowsnest, or to the upper spars of a mast while far from land could see the curve of the earth. Combined with the round shape of the moon and the sun, and the fact that as you sailed towards that curve, the curve didn’t change, there was only one conclusion to draw.

However, arguing with Christian fanatics who insisted the Bible be taken literally could lead to death at their hands. Religious leaders of the period were prone to killing those who disagreed with their interpretation of the Bible. And sailing was already a dangerous business.

Another problem was time. The division of time into defined, countable units is fundamental to many human functions. Farmers needed calendars to predict planting and growing seasons. Sailors needed to know how long they had been sailing in a given direction. But early clocks were notoriously inaccurate, often off by hours.

The Greeks in the 8^th century BC were using the stars to indicate agricultural growing seasons: "When the Pleiads, Atlas' daughters, start to rise begin your harvest; plow when they go down" (Hesiod 71). Eventually this led to the invention of the astrolabe. This device allowed sailors, out on the sea away from landmarks, who were familiar with the positions of the stars during various seasons, to determine where they were, based on the stars they could see. However, it didn’t work if the skies were cloudy. Furthermore it wasn’t really a timepiece.

By the 1300s mechanical clocks had appeared that sounded a bell on the hour. However, they didn’t provide the minutes, therefore you may suppose they were not very accurate. By the 1400s, clocks using coiled springs that unwound at a controlled speed, could drive hour and minute hands on a clock.

For sailing purposes, this was a huge advance. Knowing how many knots your ship was traveling, factored by a much more exact idea of how many hours and minutes on a given course, gave a ship’s captain a huge improvement in his ability to navigate out of sight of land. This could shorten sailing distances, and times.

Sailing close to land was risky for a variety of reasons. Sailing far from land also had problems, if you couldn’t accurately tell where your ship was. But a ship’s captain with an astrolabe and a clock that could reasonably tell hours and minutes was less likely to lose his ship.

Several millennia prior to Columbus, the Phoenicians, Greeks, Egyptians, and Africans had been sailing the Mediterranean Sea. Within "the Med", the fastest route from one port to another was usually straight. However the Phoenicians had sailed to the British Isles for tin. And every port along the Med, as well as the coasts of Africa had ships sailing eastward to the spice routes. Almost certainly daring ship captains explored many water routes looking for trade opportunities.

The discovery in the past decade of Egyptian mummies buried with tobacco and cocaine residues suggests that one or more of those sea cultures had at some ancient time been trading with the Americas, where tobacco and cocaine originated. Every school child has noted the similarity between Egyptian pyramids and those of South America. If the Vikings were processing iron ore in Nova Scotia, and leaving artifacts in Minnesota, well before Columbus arrived, it makes sense that other explorers may have preceded them.

While the Christian conservatives of the day may have officially suppressed such information because it didn’t conform to their religious interpretations, it seems likely that people in the sailing industries of the time discussed the lands to the far west of Europe. Certainly they would have shared sailing stories and legends. And, of course, there was the legend of Atlantis to provide a reason for earlier explorers to search westward.

Columbus would have known the stories, and he had the tools to pursue the route westward to the riches of the spice trade. He thought the world was smaller in diameter, and was certain a western route to India would be faster than the eastern route being used. He discovered the islands off the southern tip of North America by accident. We called Native Americans "Indians" because he thought he had reached India. By the time Europeans knew better, the word had lost its original meaning of "people of India".

In 1714, the British Parliament offered a reward to anyone who could invent a clock accurate enough for use in navigation at sea. Thousands of sailors had died because they were unable to find their exact position at sea. Exact time was required to calculate longitude. Unfortunately pendulum clocks did not work well at sea, because natural ship rolling jarred the pendulums around. For every minute lost by a clock, there was a navigational error of 15 miles.

British sailors died because they were lost or smashed against rocks when they were unable to figure out their exact position. Ships taking passengers or freight between England and the Americas all shared this risk. Navigation was more an art than an accurate process. Sailing in bad weather, defined as "can’t see clearly for any great distance", was highly dangerous. But no less dangerous than staying out to sea in a bad storm. Therefore arriving safely and on time were not necessarily synonymous.

In 1761, after 4 attempts, a British citizen named John Harrison succeeded inventing a small clock accurate enough to use for navigation at sea. He was able to reduce the size to what we now call a pocket watch. It lost only 5 seconds in 6 and ½ week span of time. Sailing became even more accurate.

Wrist watches would appear during World War I, because pulling out and putting back pocket watches during synchronized trench attacks wasn’t very synchronized. It was far more efficient to attach the watch to the wrist with leather or cloth straps, and remove the cover so infantry officers could quickly and easily tell time and watch their clock’s second and minute hands for the exact time to launch a scheduled attack. They soon became more popular than pocket watches.

This is an account of the Browne/Brown family who settled a tract of land, which in 1701 was claimed as part of Pennsylvania, but later established by the courts to be largely in Maryland. This tract was known as the Nottingham Lots, and was granted by William Penn to Quakers for a purpose described later in this history. The brothers Browne who came to own 3 of those lots, and their descendants, are the subjects of this history and its associated Family Tree.

The English name Browne or Americanized Brown comes from the Old English name Brun. ^I1 Later spelling includes Brune. (Domesday Book, London 1783-1816; cites Domesday of 1086). In olden time, people had a "given" or first name, which had meaning within the language. (Every parent with a baby book will find the original meaning of the name they wish to give their child, as well as the name’s cultural source).

In addition people had a surname which helped describe more about them, such as where they were from, or what they did for a living, or some physical characteristic. This was common throughout Eastern and Western Europe. Smith was a smithy, Shoemaker made shoes, Taylor made clothes, London was from London, Long was tall, and so forth.

Brun described "the brown skinned people" and is thought to be associated with either the Roman merchants who came to settle and trade in the British Isles or the Roman soldiers garrisoned to protect them. Julius Caesar had, in defeating the Germanic tribes along the Rhine in Europe, made punitive raids across the Straits of Dover into Britain in the 1^st century BC. Roman legions had been conquering Western Europe, Africa, and western Asia. It should be noted, however, that the Phoenicians were trading British tin well before the Romans, and for that matter so had the Greeks.

Rome began to colonize South Britain and by the 1^st century AD had a military presence so strong that a local tribal leader, Queen Boadicea organized an insurrection there, slaughtering a Roman town whose citizens were retired Roman soldiers (61 AD) In response, Rome launched a massive campaign squashing the rebellion and killing her and her daughters. By 84 AD. Rome had annexed North Britain, but in 117 AD. the Roman Emperor Hadrian built Hadrian’s Wall across Britain, so he could abandon North Britain to the "barbarians", i.e., Celts (Scottish tribes – the "C" is sounded as a "K"). (The Outline of History, H.G. Wells).

Whenever military units are stationed in another country for an extended time, some soldiers will meet local women, and nature will take its course. Roman merchants considered themselves to be patricians. While it is less likely their children would have intermarried with the island natives, that did happen for political or economic reasons which were quite acceptable in those days (and as my brother-in-law Jim Giffing has pointed out has been the norm prior to the Romantic Ages).

The concept of romantic marriage, i.e., marriage for love is a relatively recent idea. Roman cities such as Bath were built by the military units garrisoned locally. Frequently, soldiers were encouraged to retire and live locally. It was cheaper than shipping them back to Rome, and provided for a local militia with experience as military bases were cut back or closed.

The Roman population in England in the year 200 AD was significant. In Roman London the population was around 20,000. The London amphitheater of the time seated between 6,000 and 7,000 people. While not all Londoners were Romans, the fact of the amphitheater clearly indicates the pervasive Roman influence both economically and culturally. It is thought by some archaeologists that women gladiators fought in the arena. (Nick Bateman, Hedley Swain; Museum of London Archaeology, Discover Magazine Dec. 2001). This would be in keeping with the local tribal culture of the times. Women could be leaders and warriors, as we saw with Queen Boadicea.

It seems most likely the name Brun refers to these brown skinned soldiers who stayed in Britain, or to the Roman merchants and farmers they protected. Certainly the Northern Celts, and other northern Europeans tended to be fair skinned with lighter colored, straight hair.

The Romans certainly traveled, and traded throughout the British Isles, wherever the natives were willing to trade. Although the "barbarians" to the north (the Irish tribes known as Scot, who would eventually consider themselves separate from the Irish) warred regularly with the Romans, the southern Irish were willing to conduct commerce with the Romans.

According to English sources, the origin of the name Browne is Irish and the family coat of arms contains a gold shield with a black two headed eagle. The crest is a black griffin's head. The family motto is "Fortiter et fideliter", meaning strength and fidelity. The name is officially mentioned in a political way by the Earl of Pembroke, in 1172, when he lands in county Galway, Ireland with the warrior leader Strongbow, during the various wars of consolidation of the kingdoms of both Ireland and England. However, it is clearly an ancient name in the British Isles, going back well before that time.

While I won’t go into the history of the English/Irish wars here, it is sufficient to note that from a political viewpoint, regardless of birthright, those who supported English rulers were considered to be English, and those who supported Irish rulers to be Irish. Thus a movement of English into Ireland, and Irish into England was in part motivated by the winners’ (of various conflicts) persecution of the losers, as well as the winners’ rewards of land and title to their supporters. James and William Browne considered themselves to be of Irish-Scotch ancestry, yet our history of the family starts in England.

Throughout history Browns have tended to tan easily and have black, curly or wavy hair. If we go back a little further in history, we find that southern Italy was settled prior to the Roman Empire by Greek traders (also given to tans, and black wavy hair) who settled along the Italian coastline. The Mediterranean Sea offered a perfect location for the development of the shipping industry, and it is known that the Phoenicians were trading for British tin well before either the Greeks or the Romans. It is likely those Greek sailors and merchants had intermarried with local southern Roman families for the same political and economic reasons. Throughout history sailors, traders, merchants and soldiers have married and raised families in the city-states, and later in the towns in which circumstances placed them.

Whenever you hear someone speak of the "purity of race", knowing your world history means knowing that there is no such thing. Nor, from a biological viewpoint, should there be. In the few circumstances where genetic pools have been deliberately limited, such as the Pennsylvania Dutch of Lancaster PA, genetic defects have been magnified to the point where large percentages of the population in that limited genetic pool have inherited genetic disease caused by the in-breeding of the population. Dr. Holmes Morton has identified at least 80 genetic disorders among those people.

In Geauga County Ohio, the Amish represent about 12 % of the population, but represent close to half the cases of severe mental and/or physical retardation. Anyone who has studied biology, and in particular genetics, understands that a limited gene pool brings out inherited genetic disorders, because marrying relatives increases the risk that both parents will pass to their child any defective genes carried by both.

You can take your pick of which brown skinned people our name derives from, but it is likely part of our genetic makeup to travel, to explore, to make new beginnings. This same trait tends to minimize the risk mentioned above. Any so-called "pure race" would actually kill itself off via genetic diseases in a few hundred years. We Browns, mongrels if you will, just keep on going.

The Teutonic people on the north coast of Europe, in ancient times, bent bone and other materials into fishhooks. Their word for this was "angul" from the Teutonic word meaning "to bend". Later the word was applied to a valley in the Teutonic lands that was shaped like a fishhook. People from that area were known as Anguls.

Between 400 and 500 AD, these Anguls began to invade the British Isles nearest northern Europe, i.e., the southern coast of Britain. They called the land they conquered from the Picts and Celts Angul Land, meaning the land of the Anguls. Eventually, this became shortened to England.

Meanwhile Celts, and possibly Picts, from the southern part of the Isle were also moving south across the sea to parts of northern Europe, we now call Brittany France. These people, who called themselves the "Tatooed People (in the Celtic language, Pritani) would mix with Frankish peoples there, who give France its name. The distance between the northern coast of Europe and the southern coast of the Isles is not great, and no doubt fisherman moved quite freely between the two coasts. (The correct pronunciation of the word "Celt" is that the "C" sounds like a "K", i.e., Kelt).

Eventually some of these Bretons moved back to the Island, and added their language and culture to the population. From these people come the other name of the Island, Britain. Later, as the Britains conquered the Kelts to the north and west, the Kings of the Welsh, Ireland, and Scotland would commit allegiance to the British King, and all would be a part of Great Britain.

The Scots were originally an Irish tribe of Celts called Scot. However, as the various Viking traders and settlers, and later invaders, landed along the northern and northeastern coasts of the Island, this mix of peoples and cultures blended to form a new tribe and culture of peoples. They kept the name Scot, but no longer considered themselves Irish Kelts. It is in this way that the mixing of peoples all over the world creates new national cultures, and politics.

When you review the historic movement of peoples from ancient times to the present, it becomes clear that the history of mankind is one of movement of peoples and tribes. Whether farming or trading settlements or outright invasions, there is no tribe or nation that does not owe its current bloodline and identity to that history of movement.

These centuries will be covered in a general way. Most people, other than the wealthy royalty and wealthy businessmen (primarily traders), lived rurally. There were far more farmers than town folk. Towns were where people went to trade, for the most part.

Towns and cities existed either inside or alongside fortifications. Towns tended to be away from water based transportation. Cities tended to be sea-ports or on large rivers, and grew much larger than towns because they could handle quantities of shipping.

The New Testament was written some 2000 years ago, also at a time when people would not have understood any references to what we consider modern science. The Romans and the Jews considered Christians to be a sub-sect of the Jews for the next two hundred years or so. This is why the New Testament follows the Old Testament, and we call the combination the Judeo-Christian bible. The Bible, as we know it, was not compiled until about three hundred years after Christ died.

The Bible, as we know it, was developed by Jewish followers of Christ. They were considered by the Romans who governed the area, as a Jewish sect. The Old Testament is entirely taken directly from Jewish teachings. This is why it is both a history of the Jewish peoples, and their legends, oral history, and religious and political rulings. Historians have found many of these stories and legends to be adopted directly from the stories and legends of other cultures with which the Tribe of Judah came in contract during their migrations.

The New Testament, of course, came from the selected writings and teachings of Christ’s twelve disciples. The four gospels were not even written until several decades after Christ died. The epistles were written during the years immediately after Christ died, by followers who were proselytizing their new beliefs. Early followers of Christ were not called Christians, but Nazarenes. In the following three hundred years, the population of followers of this new sect grew substantially. However, so did the various interpretations of the sect’s teachings.

In 312 Constantine the Great took reign as co-Emperor of Rome along with Maxentius. The teachings of Jesus Christ had spread into Persia and Central Asia. In 312, Constantine, not yet a Christian, decided to use the followers of Christ to consolidate his office. He put the Christian symbol on his troops banners and shields and fougnt Maxentius for Rome. He won. Then he claimed he had won because the Christian God was on his side. Recognizing their opportunity to end their years of being persecuted, the Christians supported his exclusive claim to the office.

However welcome the Christian support was, Constantine quickly realized the political nature of the differing versions of this 300 year old religion. To maintain his new office, he needed to reconcile all the various sects’ teachings. In 325, he called all the sect leaders to a "diet" or meeting in Nicea, near Constantinople (a city he was building).

Not yet a Christian, he nevertheless presided. It is not necessary to discuss what was debated, and by whom. Suffice to say that end result was known as the Nicean Creed, supported by the Emperor. This Creed would define Christian teaching, including altars, a priest-hood with levels of leadership, and defined rituals.

It is well to note, that at no time was a Pope involved in Nicean Diet. In a bold political move, Constantine had ended variations in sect teachings, and adopted the concepts of priesthood and rituals already familiar to most people under Roman rule. He had guided the Christians in writing a Bible that could be used as an unchanging source of orthodoxy for all Christians, regardless of their cultural heritage. By the time Constantine died in 337, he had converted to the new religion.

He had claimed the Christian God guided his victory in 312. After 325 the Christians could claim the support of the Roman Emperors. Over the next 800 years, the Latin speaking Western Church, and the original Greek speaking "Orthodox" Church largely grew in membership. The Orthodox Church, operating out of Constantinople, maintained ecclesiastical leadership via bishops known as Patriarchs. The Western Church concentrated its power in one Patriarch, known as the Bishop of Rome, or the Pope.

By virtue of the history of Peter, the first Bishop of Rome, acknowledged leader of the Christians, this Bishopric was considered the leader of the others. He would eventually take the title Pontifex Maximus, previously held by Roman Emperors. However, in 1054 the Latin and Greek speaking branches of the Christian Church would separate over the issue of teaching the concept of the Trinity of God. During these centuries other smaller Christian sects reappear, splitting from Rome over similar religious points, and beliefs. Among these were the Abbyssinian, Egyptian, and Nestorian Christian churches.

Without going into the history of every passage in the Bible, it can be seen that the Nicean Diet of 325 had created the basic tools of any religious faith. It had created a Creed, an organization or priesthood, meaningful symbolic rituals to be performed, and a single authorized document about that faith.

The Bible documented the history of its readers from Judaism, to a sect eventually called Christianity. Remember most of the first converts were Jews by faith and culture. It provided a transition from an angry and terrifying God who punished His people, to a loving Father who forgave his children their transgressions, and asked them to love one another, especially when it was difficult to do so.

For the known world of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle-East, where Roman soldiers, and before them, the Greeks and a host of others, had invaded and conquered for centuries, this was powerful stuff. Don’t make war with one another, conquer through love. It was also practical. It was a lot cheaper and easier to trade with other nations, especially Christian nations, than to fight wars with them. And for barbarians who chose to invade, a united Christian Empire could, if needed, supply men and material to battle barbarian "heathens" or non-believers.

However, people will only kill, or die, for their faith if their leadership deliberately restrict any discussion of the meaning of the word "faith". Given the definition (go ahead, take a moment to look it up), no-one will ever know for sure if their faith is the one designed by God, until they meet Him face to face. Therefore leaders of any faith must carefully control any discussion in that area, to ensure total obedience to leadership commands to die, or to kill, in the name of the faith.

Fortunately the Bible has sufficient passages between the Old Testament and the New Testament to "prove" either directly or indirectly whatever any religious leader wants to prove. This is also true in the Koran, by the way. Hence all the different sects of Christianity and of Islam.

Both have liberal sects, tolerant of other religions and well aware of the definition of the word "faith". Both have moderate sects, generally also tolerant of others. Both have conservative sects, and ultra conservative sects whose leaders think nothing of killing "non-believers", or even ordering their followers to commit suicide. Islamic suicide bombers come to mind. As does Jim Jones, who ordered his Christian followers to take cyanide poisoned drinks in Ghana, and David Koresh (his alias) who set fire to his compound in Waco, rather than go to jail for all the underage girls he had raped, as part of his religious beliefs.

All such religious leaders must find ways to rationalize their orders, especially since both Christianity and Islam recognize the Ten Commandments. Apparently, religious leaders receive word directly from God, when ordering the breaking of the commandment "Thou shalt not kill". Or so they claim. No-one ever seems to ask the question "If God can talk to you about this in private, why can’t he talk to both of us about it at His altar?" Apparently for these people, it is sufficient to quote some passage from their Bible, or Koran. Jim Jones, David Koresh, and many other Christian religious leaders became very wealthy because "God wanted" their followers money. Many Islamic religious leaders are even more wealthy, using similar arguments.

Once Rome had converted to Christianity, the power of Rome could be used to spread God’s Spell, the Gospel. Just as the followers of Islam would do later, Christians with political and economic power used their power to help those who converted and hinder, or even prosecute, those who did not. Government contracts went to favored bidders. Leaders of other religions, weakened by lost civic membership, might choose to convert, or find themselves burnt at the stake as an example to other non-converts.

This combination of politics and religion was very powerful stuff. Soon families were sending sons and daughters to become priests, monks, nuns, etc. to ensure they stayed politically connected not only with royalty, but with the Church. Many a Bishop and Cardinal came from highly placed families.

However, because each culture new to Christianity brought with it, local customs, ideas and philosophies, the Church quickly figured out how to adapt local celebrations to Christianity. For example, All Saints Day was intended to replace the Wica celebration which we now call Halloween (Holy Evening). In the Wica religion, the spirits of the departed went to Heaven on that one night each year.

The problem with tying to local religious beliefs was that local citizens and religious leaders, having been raised in certain beliefs, might also interpret the Bible base on those life experiences and knowledge. However, the consolidation of wealth and power for both royalty and Christianity required a certain amount of conservative thinking. Pope Innocent III began the first crusades, not against Islam (which didn’t yet exist) but against local Christian leaders whose biblical interpretations were not those of orthodox Rome. In time, this intolerance to religious teachings would expand to intolerance towards any subject, even those having nothing to do with religion.

Perhaps the most famous of these, but clearly not the only example, was the discussion in which religious leaders taught that the Sun, and indeed the Universe, revolved around the Earth. As most readers know by now, this is not only incorrect, but has nothing to do with the matter of morals, or Christ’s teachings. Nevertheless, as you long ago learned in High School history, the Church tended use its political power to kill people who disagreed. Other "important" debates that took lives were disagreements over how many angels could stand on the head of a pin.

About 610 AD, a 40 year old man named Muhammad began to claim to be a new prophet of God, and for many years his was a small religious sect with mostly friends and family as followers. The town he lived in, Mecca, was famous for being polytheistic, that is, tolerant of many religious beliefs. Politically well connected, coming from a wealthy family, he suffered no religious prosecution because of Mecca’s reputation. After 10 years of preaching, he had developed a small following, when the city of Medina invited him to rule there, in the name of his new religion. Medina, being an important town, on a main caravan route, offered considerable power, and opportunity to grow the new religion. Although it had its ups and downs, the new religion took root throughout the middle-east, in some cases by argument, and in other cases by sword, just as the Christian Church had previously done.

By 632 Muhammed was the leader of all of Arabia, when he died. His successor, Abu Bekr, began the task of conquering the Middle East in the name of Islam. His armies gave cities 3 choices: pay tribute, join Islam, or die. Christian Arabs and local Jews were among the converted. (Outline of History – H.G. Wells). Over the next 125 years war, armies conquering nations, would be the same tool for the spread of Islam as it was for Christianity. Since Muhammed had preached that all men were equal, Islam had many converts where Christian policies involved the extremely poor working for the extremely rich.

This growth created additional religious problems for the orthodox Christian Church. Muhammad’s unorthodox teachings were, in the process of gathering political and economic power, removing it from Rome’s grasp. Since Europeans were already used to crusades from Innocent III’s times, it was fairly easy to convince them to go fight this new threat to Christian political and economic power, and religious beliefs.

The concept of public debate, and public choice, simply wasn’t an option considered by Christian religious or political leaders of the day. Since the two reinforced each other’s power, choice was not an option. In time the Christian Church would send children (The Children’s Crusades) by the tens of thousands to fight in the religious wars. Those who didn’t die of starvation were enslaved, often by local Christians before they reached any battlefields.

By the 660’s Islam had split into at least 2 main sects. The Shiites believed a man named Ali, nephew and adopted son of Muhammed had hereditary claims to lead Islam. The Sunnites supported a man named Othman, who had succeeded Bekr. As would later happen to the Christian Church, sects would eventually appear, based on local beliefs, local tribal affiliations, and so forth. When not fighting Christians, they often fought, and killed, each other.

Nevertheless where the cities had a history of trade, and therefore tolerance for other races and religions, Islamic government hired its employees based on their skills and knowledge. Many Christians, Jews, and Pagans provided citizens with services paid for by Islamic leadership. As wealth pored into the new Islamic Empire a large, wealthy ruling class poured money into the arts, architecture, charities, exploration, history literature, mathematics, music, medicine, poetry, philosophy, and sciences. As a result, the Arab world developed great Universities, whose teachings also influenced European Universities.

Ibn Rusd of Cordoba had by 1198 had developed an extension of Aristotlean philosophy that carefully distinguished between religious faith and scientific truths. The Physician Ibnsina, prior to his death in 1037 developed medical techniques, medicines, and complex surgical techniques far in advance of Christian physicians (who were bleed-ing their patients). Arab doctors studied hygiene, physiology, and anesthetics, at a time when the Christian Church used faith healing. (If you died, you must not have had sufficient faith).

By the twelfth century Muhammad Ibn Musa introduced the previously unknown concept of zero to mathematics. He also introduced decimals, defining their positional values. Arabs also developed spherical trigonometry, inventing the sine, tangent, and cotangent. In Chemistry, they discovered a long list of previously unknown substances, and figured out uses for them. Their study of physics produced the pendulum, and a knowledge of optics.

Somewhere along the line, they imported the manufacture of paper from the Chinese, and eventually passed its knowledge to Europe. They needed paper for all the scientific treatises they were writing , not only in the fields already mentioned, but in farming, horticulture, manufacturing techniques, and metal-smithing. For a period of time before conservative religious leaders began, like the Christian conservative leaders, limiting their thinking, followers of Islam contributed a great deal to the cumulative knowledge in their known world. Because of their control over parts of Spain, some of this knowledge found its way into the Christian business world, unless Christian religious leaders strictly forbade it.

As Christian religious teachings became locked in detailed dogma (how many angels can stand on a pin?) a new tool was developed circa 1200 AD to control religious thought. Designed to prevent heresy, defined as anything where you disagree with Church teachings on any subject at all, the Inquisition was designed to terrorize those who might disagree. The tools were fire, including burning at the stake in front of the rest of a town’s inhabitants, and instruments of torture. Those who did not recant their personal religious interpretations in favor of the "official" religious line usually died horribly painful deaths.

Although the torture and murder of those who disagreed with any particular religious teaching of the Church clearly break at least one commandment, and obviously go against Christ’s teaching of love, it would continue for the next couple of hundred years. Apparently the use of force was OK if reasoned arguments did not prevail, as long as it was officially sanctioned by some church leader in the name of God.

Heretics, pagans (non-believers), Jews, Arabs, little pockets of unconverted people still following their ancient tribal religions, now became the target of the Inquisition leaders. Although some learned people, by virtue of family connections and therefore political clout avoided prosecution and death, poor people did not. Access to Inquisition leadership could mean opportunities to prosecute one’s political or economic competitors. Later it would mean accusing those you didn’t like, on any pretext. Inquisition prisoners had little or no rights. They could not face their accusers, nor hear or see the evidence against them. The poor could not afford a lawyer. Even the wealthy could find themselves trapped, if they made enemies. "How many angels do you think fit on the head of a pin? Ten? Wrong, you heretic! You are condemned to death!". "You say the world is round, sailor? The Bible proves it is flat, you heretic! You are condemned by your own words!"

There are enough opposing quotations between the Old Testament and the New Testament that many tens of thousands of people died because they didn’t know which answer a particular Inquisitor wanted. Compare "An eye for an eye" versus "Thou shalt not kill", and many other examples, with which anyone who reads the Bible is familiar. The religious leaders of the day forgot the meaning of the word "faith". This deadly abuse of religious power, as well as those later in the new colonies, would be on the minds of America’s Founding Fathers when they wrote the Declaration of Independence.

In 1348 the plague, traveling via merchant ship from one port to another reached England. It was called the Black Death, and wiped out somewhere between ¼ and ½ of the English population. The nursery rhyme "Ring around the Rosey" is a rhyme about the plague. Infected people would get red circular sores ("Ring around the rosey..."). These sores would smell very bad, so common folks would hide flowers in their clothing, so that they would cover the smell of the sores ("...a pocket full of posies". People who died from the plague would be burned so as to reduce the possible spread of the disease ("...ashes, ashes, we all fall down!")

May in northern Europe was when the ground thawed. You could plow to prepare for planting your crops, and you could bury those who had died during the winter, when the ground was frozen too hard to dig a grave. It was thought disrespectful to celebrate marriage in the same month your family was burying its dead, so most people got married in June. Because they took their yearly bath in May, by June they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then, all the other sons and men, then, the women and, finally, the children -- last of all the babies. So if you had a large family, the water could be so dirty you could actually hide an infant in it -- hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."

People took a bath only once a year because the medical profession believed that dirt kept your skin safe from germs. They didn’t have the concept of germs exactly, but knew that disease (literally dis-ease) could be spread through the air. However at the end of a couple of weeks without a bath people smelled pretty bad, and looked pretty dirty. So Europeans invented makeup to cover the dirt, perfume to hide the stink, and wigs to cover incredibly greasy hair.

People in the country were more likely to swim in the local streams, creeks, and ponds, but they were "only farmers" and were not expected to dress like city folk, or like people of the Royal Court. The Royal Physician was usually an upper class person who didn’t have the training the country doctors had. Nevertheless his ideas about medicine were considered law.

Houses had thatched roofs--thick straw, piled high, with wood beams, underneath. Often these houses had a loft. It was the only place for animals to get warm yet be out of the way, so, the dogs, cats lived in the loft. When it rained heavily, the thatch might let enough water in to wet the loft. The animals trying to find a dry spot could slip and fall off the loft-- hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs." There was no ceiling and therefore nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom, where bugs from the thatch and animal droppings from the loft could really mess up your nice clean bed.

A bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top, afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence. I have photos of the several hundred year old stone homes in Nottingham England, typical of the homes during the period when James and William Browne came to America. They still have thatched roofs. The people who did the roofing were called thatchers.

The floor was often dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, hence the saying "dirt poor." The poor had plenty of dirt, but not much money. The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter, when wet, so, they spread thresh on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they kept adding more thresh until when you opened the door it was stacked so high that it would start sliding outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entryway to hold it in --hence, a "thresh hold", which is the piece of wood you sometimes still see on the floor, under the door. It also serves to keep rain and snow out of the house.

In America the European settlers of the 1600’s built wood houses or log houses many of which also had dirt floors. Glass was very expensive to have shipped from Europe, so many settlers used oil cloth in place of windows. Cloth was oiled, then secured to the window frame. The oil kept rain out, while the thin white translucent cloth let some daylight in. The poor would tamp the dirt floors, then use a stick to draw designs in the dirt floor wherever people were least likely to walk. It was an inexpensive way to decorate.

However a wood house with a dirt floor and glassless windows (closed via shutters or oilcloth) had could be dangerous. There are cases of people being killed inside their house of lightening strikes. The lightening would enter an open door or unsealed window, and the dirt floor would act as a "ground".

Most of the doctors in early England supported capital punishment. English law forbade the dissection of human cadavers, with the exception of those executed for murder. This exception existed because early English executions were often quite brutal. Drawing and quartering, for example, were legal butchery. Physicians often got their education in pathology either by claiming those bodies, or by hiring grave robbers (which was, by the way, a criminal offense).

Europeans cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day, they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and, then, start over the next day. Sometimes, the stew had food in it, that had been there for quite a while--hence the rhyme, "peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old." Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man "could bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat."

In Europe peasants were not allowed to hunt in the game preserves of the wealthy and the royal. In America European settlers found plentiful game if you were willing to hunt and fish. So many farmers used hunting and fishing to add meat to their family’s diet. Bear, deer, squirrel, rabbit, wild turkey, quail, pigeons, and in the northeast, timber buffalo were available. Also fish, clams (including fresh water clams taken in such quantities that they can no longer easily be found), oysters, crawfish (even in the north) were readily available.

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with a high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning and death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so, for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous. Since tomato plants are members of the poisonous nightshade family, it was thought that was the cause of the problem.

Most people did not have pewter plates, but had trenchers, a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Sometimes, trenchers were made from stale hard bread, so old and hard that it could be used for quite some time. Trenchers were not washed, and, a lot of times, worms and mold got into the wood and old bread. After eating off wormy moldy trenchers, one would get "trench mouth." People who ate off trenchers were called "trenchermen" which meant someone who could eat heartily even if the trencher was getting a bit disgusting.

Bread was divided, according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle. Guests got the top, or, "upper crust.", which was often softened with butter.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination of alcohol (acidic) and lead (poisonous) would sometimes knock users out for a couple of days. Family would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up, creating the custom of holding a "wake."

England is old, and compared to America, small, so when the English started out running out of places to bury people, they would dig up coffins and removed the bones to a "bone-house" or ossuary, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, one out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks inside the lid. (See lead cups, above.) Europeans realized they had been burying people alive in spite of the wakes. So, they tried tying a string on the wrist of the body being buried, leading it through the coffin and up through the ground to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell. Hopefully, someone could be "saved by the bell", but, if not, was considered a "dead ringer."

Prior to the introduction the printing press, books were difficult to acquire. Only the very wealthy and the church could afford to pay for the laborious hand copying of books. In the case of the Church, Monks in Monasteries were often utilized for this task. Therefore, the poor and the middle class people depended on those people to share what was in the books, including the Bible, since only those associated with either the church or with royalty could read, write, and do math. Many a European royal hired someone to read to them, and write for them. Emperors, kings, and other royals were usually wealthy enough to afford this. Churchmen needed those skills to study the bible for the purposes of teaching believers (Christians) and converting "heathens" (anyone not already of the Christian faith).

We tend to forget that prior to the Holy Roman Empire invading their lands, most European tribes had other religious beliefs (which the Christian church considered to be "pagan"). In England for example most native peoples followed a form of religion where even the trees had spirits. This is quite similar to the belief held by the natives in America, several hundred years later, when America was rediscovered by Europeans.

As part of the conversion process, the Christian church usually would adopt the local people’s favorite religious days. For example Hollowed Evening (Holy Evening) was overlaid with All Souls Day. The Christian day of praying for all souls to go to heaven overlaying the day, in the Celtic Wiccan belief, when all souls were released from Earth to go to their gods. This became Hollow E’en, we now celebrate as Halloween.

Once the local political leaders were converted, the church would have sufficient power to prosecute or otherwise make life miserable for those who did not convert. Druid church leaders, known as "wicas", who tried to retain their religious beliefs were branded as "witches" and persecuted. Modern man realizes these were the same sort of religious leaders as Egyptian priests in that they knew some math, engineering, and astronomy (Pyramids versus Stonehenge). They also knew some basic observable scientific cause and effect. They had calendars, and knew some alchemy by which they could induce chemical reactions, but could not explain them ("magic"). Like most native priests and doctors, they often knew the curative effects of local plants.

While they could not explain, as modern man can, how alchemy and magic worked, they knew that it worked. Along with a little sleight of hand, alchemy and magic were powerful tools in the hands of many pre-Christian religious leaders. People feared that which they did not understand, and often considered things they did not understand to fall under one of 2 categories: magic or miracles.

Unfortunately, early Christian leaders believed that any magic not of their own doing was the "devil’s work", and any magic of Christian origin was a "miracle". So those who’s religious activities did not comply with Christian definitions (as interpreted from "the source of all knowledge", the bible) often found themselves jailed or worse. Even Christians who pursued engineering and scientific knowledge not specified in the bible were threatened. Most famous of these were Copernicus and Galileo.

Oddly enough there are still some Christian sects that hate science and logic, even today. In any case, at that time, the bible was considered by some religious leaders to be the only source of any information, including science. Even the poorest, least literate people, the serfs, were expected to attend church services where God’s Spell, the Gospel could be read to them. As in Galileo’s case, observing facts and thinking logically could result in severe punishment by religious leaders. The Dark Ages were a direct result of this conservative mentality.

The Age of Printing might be a fitting name for this century. Books had been expensive, and laboriously hand written prior to the invention of the printing press. So only the Church, and the wealthy owned them. To this day, there are monasteries with collections of hand-written books that haven’t been opened and read in the hundreds of years since copied, or translated by the Monks who wrote them.

Mechanical printing allowed the quick reproduction of information dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of times. Initially this meant everyone could have their own inexpensive copy of the Bible.

But there were other kinds of information that could also be shared, that did not come from the Bible. Farmers needed to share consistent agricultural and husbandry items. Businessmen could publish prices. Explorers could write of their adventures, as would Marco Polo.

Furthermore during the Islamic Age of Enlightenment, when conservatism did not hold sway over people’s lives, Islamic books had made their way to Europe through the Mediterranean trade routes. The non-religious books on farming, trade skills, medicine, and commerce had valuable information. Algebra, and spherical geometry, for example, were important to businessmen, engineers, ship builders, and so on.

The ready availability of information shared through (relatively inexpensive) books, created a demand for more information. While this demand was slowly building, eventually it would bring reading and writing to at least the middle class and the wealthy of Europe. Initially a religious tool, over time it would become a tool anyone could use to their benefit.

In Haarlem, Holland a man named Coster was printing from movable type before 1446. Gutenburg was printing at Mainz at that time. There were printers in Italy by 1465, and Caxton was printing in Westminster England by 1477. Initially books were still hard to come by. Moreover, good paper was difficult to get in Europe until near the end of the 15^th century. It took nearly another century for good quality paper to be mass-produced cheaply enough for the economical printing of books to take place. However, by the 1600’s professionally printed books had become common, and most people were learning to read so that they could read their copy of the Bible. (Guttenburng’s bible was printed only in Latin, by the way)

Most European nations were coming out of the Dark Ages to some degree or another, and with the various European Wars, the need to colonize the newly discovered Americas to take advantage of the untapped wealth, required a new kind of commerce. Various European Kings were claiming lands, and sending people to tap that wealth, for the resulting commerce could be taxed in the King’s name. This required bookkeeping.

And that required business people very different than the old time town artisans and traders, i.e., it required educated people. The intellectual demands became more vigorous, and both the Bible, and books on all kinds of other subjects, became available. As a result, during this same time, dialects were becoming replaced with a standard of language in many European countries: Italy, Spain, France, Germany and England all developed literary languages which became far more exact and vigorous than the local dialects. While some dialects, slang, and regional accents remained, the idea of "high" English for literary, legal, and political purposes came into being. High German, for example, is literary and scientific German. Local dialects still existed, as they do today. (Even in America, we have a Bostonian accent versus a Georgian accent, or a Texan accent but you will notice that most national TV news commentators have a "mid-western" accent, because that is considered to represent "high" english.)

With the consolidation of language, came a consolidation of kingdoms into increasingly larger political and economic regions. Various European kings and princes sought political advantage against the Emperor of Europe, as well as against other kings and princes, the Roman Pope became a part of the politics, having been the source of Emperors from the beginnings of the Holy Roman Empire. European citizenry with access to the Bible and to other books began to think for themselves and to seek truth, both political and religious.

This time became known as the Reformation Period. Protestantism meant the protest against the politics of the time including Papal politics. The bulk of the new Bible students could find passages in the Bible to "prove" whatever ideas their own logic and conscience might wish in support of their new views and interpretations on politics, religion, and life. It should be noted that within the Christian Church a similar reformation was taking place, where a conspicuous and popular awakening of thought, inquiry, and discussion also began to occur.

The conservative religious leaders of the historical Christian church had been involved in murder in God’s name. The European Inquisition had legalized the "trial" and murder of anyone who disagreed with the local Cardinal, Bishop, or Priest’s interpretation of the Bible. In some cases the trial consisted entirely of the arrest and torture of suspected individuals until they either confessed or died. The logic was that if they died without confessing, or while professing their faith in Jesus, they were probably innocent. The fact that they had been horribly murdered was OK, because it was in the name of religion.

There were many examples known to the founders of this country. In 1474 in Basel Switzerland, a "black rooster" supposedly laid an egg. The religious leaders tried the "rooster", found it guilty, and burned it at the stake. The evidence was that it was black, and had been found sitting on the egg. Black cats, and evidently black roosters, were thought to be signs of the devil.

Galileo Galilei (1564 to 1642) proved Copernicus’ analysis of the movement of the Moon around the Earth, and the Earth around the Sun was correct. The conservative Church leaders decided that the Bible said otherwise, and tried Galilei, threatening him with death if he did not recant his views. He was forced to kneel in front of a court of Cardinals and state he was wrong. He lived his last 17 years under house arrest, with a death sentence if he ever again stated his scientific views on the subject.

Moreover, the European Inquisition had accomplished little other than slowing down the development of science (particularly medical science), and the killing of hundreds of thousands of European citizens for usually bizarre reasons. In one town in Germany for example, a woman was killed after being accused of witchery. Soon anyone with a grudge was using the local government and church to kill any woman they disliked, or wanted to get even with. In that town, all the women were eventually killed as witches, only stopping when the Mayor’s own wife was accused and he brought the murders to a halt.

However, for students of history, there are many more similar stories of the abuse of conservative religious leaders of the time. Throughout Europe families, villages, and small towns were wiped out "in the name of God". The poor and uneducated were the most easily victimized, but as the story of Galileo shows, no-one was entirely safe from the various Inquisitions. Abuse of power was rampant.

In 1492, Cristobal Columbo, an Italian ship captain, convinced the King and Queen of Spain that he could find a faster route to the Spice Trades. Spice trade with the lands west of Africa, and with Asian countries was creating enormous wealth. The Spanish royals had spent most of their wealth trying to regain control of all of Spain from the Islamic Arabs. Acquiring a fast route to the Spice Islands potentially meant acquiring great wealth.

The Spanish called him Christopher Columbus. He didn’t find spices, or India, but he did find enough gold, and more than enough islanders to enslave, to indicate potential wealth. Spain would send more explorers. As word spread of a route west to lands of great wealth in timber, slaves, and potentially gold, other European nations would send their own explorers.

It could be called the Age of Exploration, or the Age of Separation of Church and State, or the End of the Holy Roman Empire. It was all of that and more. Further explorations would prove the world was indeed round. The question would arise, that if the Church leaders were wrong about that, what else were they wrong about?

And so also it became the end of the Inquisition. Independent Kings didn’t need it to squash political players. Without royal support, Christian church leaders would be hard pressed to legally murder those who disagreed with their biblical interpretations.

Kings, and other religious dissidents, could now publish their own views about what the Bible meant. And they did.

This century saw the end of the Holy Roman Empire, and the beginnings of the separation of governments from the Christian Church of the time. Because that church had claimed that kings received their power directly from God, via Christian Church leaders who were the Word of God on earth; those kings who disagreed with Rome were founding their own religions.

The Holy Roman Empire was on its way out, as various European Kings attempted to buy their election to the position with "vast amounts of bribery". (The Outline of History, H.G. Wells). Knights in shining armor were on their way out; armor could be pierced by musket balls. Arrow and sword stopping armor didn’t help a knight to close for combat with a musketeer 25 yards away. The days of European bows and arrows was coming to a close.

In 1517 a German monk/priest named Martin Luther had denounced the "worldly splendor" of the Roman Papacy, as well as the selling of indulgences as a Christian Church fundraiser. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, a Hapsburg (German) had to choose between Rome and Luther. However a significant number of powerful German Princes sided with Luther. As Kings and Princes chose sides, war broke out, primarily in Italy and France.

After 10 years of war, Europe was left impoverished by its costs. By then German Protestant Princes had broken away from the Roman religious leadership. Although Rome denounced them, the fracturing of the Christian Church into various sects, with various belief systems, had begun. Wars were breaking out based not only on political alliances, not only on alliances against non-Christians, but also based on which Christian sect controlled a particular political area.

The English King, Henry VIII, had come into office in 1509 at the age of 18. He began his career by writing a book condemning heresy, for which the Pope awarded him his title. But by 1530, he wanted to divorce his first wife to marry Anne Boleyn, something the Pope would not allow. So he joined the Protestant movement, and protested the anti-divorce ruling by founding the Church of England. This allowed him to oppose Charles V in support of the French King Francis I. He also appropriated the vast wealth of the churches in England.

Suddenly many European Kings were declaring their Divine Right to Rule through local Bishops or Cardinals who in many cases held their offices due to political, that is wealthy family, ties anyway. In many countries, refusing to change allegiance was tantamount to treason, therefore punishable by (at the worst) death. These Kings were declaring for religious freedom for their States, but not necessarily for the citizens therein. But the question was being asked, if for Kings, why not for citizens? That the Kings were taking Church wealth for their own had the added bonus, for the royals, of weakening the Church’s influence and power.

Meanwhile wars were being fought for or against various claims to the office of Emperor. War on the sea had consisted of armed merchant ships of various sizes attacking each other. Henry VIII commissioned the construction of the first modern warship since Roman galley times. The battleship Mary Rose was designed stem to stern as a true warship. Thus began the rise of modern navies, and the race to build bigger, stronger warships.

In the 1500’s a Bohemian named Count Schlick was minting silver coins which he called Joachimstalers, the name of the valley (Joachimstal) where the ore was mined. Over time people shortened the word to "taler", which the Danes and Swedes called "daler", and the Dutch called "daalder". When the English took over New Amsterdam and renamed it New York, and New Sweden became Wilmington, the Dutch and Swedish settlers who stayed in those settlements continued to use the silver coin. Since silver and gold coins were the money of the day, the English settlers, who understood that silver and gold coins held more value than paper money, also used the "dollars".

This might be called the Age of Religious Revolt, Political Revolt, or American Colonization, for it was all of those things. Perhaps it could be called the Age of Exploration, because in addition to exploring "the New World", people were exploring information, facts, ideas, and the process of thinking for themselves.

If Kings were encouraging questioning the Church’s rulings, the Church was encouraging questioning the rulings of Kings and Queens who were doing so. Businessmen and farmers alike were beginning to realize that both their political and their religious leaders could be wrong about very important matters. Matters that affected peoples’ lives.

Reactions against religious excesses were involved in triggering the Reformation. People who lost friends and family during such abuses of conservative religious thinking were apt to welcome reform that led away from murderous religious fanatics. Some of the religious rulings that were taken quite seriously, would be considered silly by today’s standards of education, but at the time people were prosecuted, jailed, and even executed because of extreme conservative thinking.

For example, the eating fork was introduced into England in the early 1600’s. Because it was 3 tined, religious leaders thought it an invention of the devil, and said so in the pulpit. For several decades the English continued to eat with a knife, rather than a fork, until someone invented a 4 tined fork which didn’t look so much like the devil’s pitchfork. Farmer’s pitchforks carried 4 or more tines, and were not denounced.

In 1603 James, King of Scotland, also became King of England taking the name James I. The English parliament had, by virtue of the Magna Carta (King John 1199-1216), two assemblies: elected shire representatives called the House of Commons, and one of episcopal and patrician members called the House of Lords. The Magna Carta created fundamental rights for citizens, making England a legal state rather than a regal state. The power of the King of England was restricted with regards to controlling the lives and property of his citizens, save with the consent of that citizen’s equals.

In 1640 Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh Ireland, used biblical genealogy to "establish the date God created the Earth", and by extension the Universe. He counted the ages of Adam and his descendants, as translated into English from the Latin translation, which came from the Greek translation of the original Aramaic text. (The Jews of Christ’s time didn’t speak Hebrew, they spoke Aramaic).

However he failed to take into account the changes common to every language throughout its history, when he announced that the Earth was created on October 23, 4004 BC. Between the changes in the meanings of words within a single language, and efforts to translate those kinds of potential errors across at least four languages, the best Historical Language experts of today are still discovering corrections.

For example, archaeologists only recently discovered that camel caravans were passed through tunnels in the walls of Jerusalem known as an "Eye of the Needle" because they were so narrow. It allowed one camel at a time to be searched for contraband, weapons, and for tax purposes. Thus what was thought by Christians to be an interesting parable, turned out to have specific meaning the listeners of Christ’s time.

Since science was limited to alchemy (chemistry) and often considered to be "magic" unless practiced by religious leaders, the Archbishop’s opinion would stand for several hundred years. This would create a religious debate between those who believe the Bible must be taken literally on all subjects, and those who believe it has meaning only in the context of moral guidance.

Because the first Bible (the Old Testament) in its original language was written at a time when most people were uneducated, and knowledge of science didn’t exist, i.e. some 3,500 years ago, this writer takes the latter view. It is appropriate to note that the Old Testament came from the Jews, and that Jesus was a Jew.

Regarding taking individual passages of the bible (much less the Koran) literally, one passage states that the Earth is the center of the Universe, a common belief thousands of years ago. When Copernicius, and Galileo showed evidence that it was not, conservative Church leaders prosecuted them for blasphemy. We all know how that turned out. Church leaders should lead moral discussions, and stay out of science and politics. All too often they do not, with disastrous results.

James son, Charles I during his reign triggered a civil war in 1640. His Parliament fought back when he attempted a series of political moves that included trying to arrest 5 members of Parliament who opposed him. In August 1642 Charles I set up his standard at Nottingham, England. He was unable win the battle for London, to arrest the Parliament; but neither could they take the king’s forces. Oliver Cromwell would change that.

A Parliamentary commander, Oliver Cromwell seems to have been an excellent military organizer, and he quickly rose to General. He soon captured Charles I, who chose to insist that his rule was more important than his citizens’ rights. Charles was tried as a tyrant, traitor, and murderer, and in January of 1649 he was beheaded. England was without a king, and the kings of other countries were openly hostile to English envoys. Cromwell became the new leader of England, suppressing both Irish and Scottish uprisings. The Dutch took the opportunity to go after English shipping trade, so Cromwell went after the pirate fleets from Algiers, Tuscany and Malta and in the process established England as a sea power to be feared.

The English, like all the European nations that had any sea power at the time, wanted to take advantage of the vast resources in America. In the early 1600’s they had founded Jamestown Virginia, as part of their claim to land between the French in the north and the Spanish in the south. While the Dutch and Swedes had settlements in Manhattan New York and Wilmington Delaware respectively, the English were confident that new Navy they were building would take care of that problem.

By 1621, the English settlement at Plymouth Rock (officially called Northern Virginia) in New England was doing very well under the tutelage of the Wampanoag Natives in the area. The English settlers had learned from them how to farm the local crops, find the local fruits, and hunt the local game. Only about half the immigrants had survived the first winter, largely due to some illness after they arrived. (As an interesting exercise in real history, ask yourself who taught Squanto, the Wampanoag, the English he used to talk with and help the Plymouth settlers. He already spoke it when they met him. There are several books on the subject of Squanto. He had, in fact, lived in Europe for many years before meeting the settlers at Plymouth).

The Jamestown settlement was faring even worse. However, that spring the Natives began teaching the northern settlers how to survive off the land. Remember that in England, many farmers farmed for royal landowners, and hunting was not permitted on royal lands. Furthermore the crops the settlers were used to, were not the crops the Wampanoags were raising. Were it not for Squanto’s people, the Plymouth settlement would have died.

At the end of 1621, after a successful spring and summer, during which the Natives had shared their food, and their hunting and farming skills with the new settlers, the colonists decided to give thanks to their hosts by returning the favor. At this first thanksgiving, the Plymouth settlers shared with their hosts, wild turkey, venison, clams, lobster, and other meats. From their gardens came maize, beans, onions, carrots, pumpkins, squash, and other American vegetables. For desert there were grapes, plums, currants, acorn, chestnuts, walnuts, and other native fruits and nuts.

(By the way, this is a good time to point out that the English were late-comers to America. The Spanish had settlements in Florida, California, Central and South America in the early 1500s. The French were settling Canada, and the Dutch and Swedes were settling along the East Coast well before the English attempted their first settlements.)

However there would be no national Thanksgiving holiday until President George Washington proclaimed, with congressional resolution, a National Holiday in 1789.

It is important to note that William Penn’s father was an Admiral in the English Navy, and was instrumental in accomplishing this process. Admiral William Penn was by age 29 a very rich vice-admiral of the navy. When Oliver Cromwell died in 1658, Admiral Penn declared for Charles II. As a commissioner of the navy, in addition to shares of the distribution of war spoils, he received 500 Pounds a year salary. As Admiral of Ireland he received an additional 400 Pounds a year. He had in part earned all this by convincing the Navy to also declare for Charles II.

Naval officers who successfully waged war in the name of their king, could earn significant wealth. During the times discussed here, naval officers who successfully captured either warships or cargo ships earned a part of the value of the ship and its contents. A captured warship could be repaired, renamed, and re-used by the navy. Cargo ships likewise, with the additional benefit that the cargo could be used by the English crew if food or drink, saving the king the cost of supplies, and goods could be sold at high profit. The only cost was the repairs on one’s own ship due to battle, and the cost of loss of life during the battle. In Admiral Horatio Nelson’s letter to the Lord Earl Spencer regarding a battle where he captured 3 ships for the British Admiralty in September 1798, he estimated the total value 60,000 Pounds. Of this the breakdown he worked out as follows:

Navy Rank	Estimated Value in Pounds
Commander-in-chief	3,750
Junior Admirals	625
Captains	1,000
Lieutenants	75
Warrant Officers	50
Petty Officers	11
Seamen and Marines	2.5

(Life before the Mast, Carroll & Graf, edited by Jon E. Lewis)

From this it can be seen that a successful naval officer could earn quite a lot of wealth if he survived the carnage. Make no mistake, in naval battles during the sailing vessel heyday casualties were high. William Dawson of the HMS St. Fiorenzo in 1808 described a battle with the French ship La Piedmontais which carried 366 sailors and 200 Lascars (working the sails). In the action the French suffered 48 killed, and 112 wounded. In one battle 28% of the French were casualties. Later in the same letter, Dawson lists his own ship’s casualties over a 3 day battle: 13 killed, 25 wounded.

For this reason the King made it legal for the Admiralty to "press" men into the Navy. If you lived along the coastline, or on a river, you might find yourself kidnapped by Marines, and placed aboard ship to learn to sail and fight for the Admiralty. If your hands had the stain of the tar caulking used on shipping vessels, you were a "Jack Tar", meaning you were already skilled as a sailor, and all the more desirable to his majesty’s Navy. One of the complaints of colonists during the Revolutionary War was being pressed into his majesty’s wars. Even after Americans won their independence, British ships that captured American ships up to and during the War of 1812 continued to press Americans onto British Warships. This was one of several problems that brought about the War of 1812.

In 1660 Charles II, son of Charles I was brought back to England and crowned. In 1667 the Dutch sailed up the Thames River and punished England by burning the English fleet in the Medway. In 1685 Charles II was succeeded by his brother James II, whose politics initiated a second Parliamentary revolt. Parliament replaced him with William Prince of Orange and his wife Mary. (The Outline of History, H.G. Wells).

William Penn, the son of Admiral Penn, was well educated and by age 15 entered into the University of Oxford. He studied Greek and Latin writers, and was fluent in French, German, Dutch and Italian. He would later learn 2 or 3 Native American dialects as well. He certainly knew John Wilmot, Christopher Wren, and John Locke. He studied on the continent as well. He spent some time with his father aboard the Admiral’s ship (Royal Charles) at age 20. He had also spent time in jail for his religious beliefs, for he had opposed the state sponsored religion (which tended to change according to which King and/or Queen was running the country) and refused to renounce his Quaker faith. (Pennsylvania, Province and State, 1609-1700, Bolles)

The American Plantations were the lands claimed along the Atlantic coast by England and extended to the west as far as the English could imagine. Settlements were established by several other countries also, for example the Dutch in New York, and along the Zuydt (South) River, the Swedes along the South River (the Delaware), the Spanish in Florida, and the French in Canada. English regions were settled in "Patents" and "Proprieties" granted by the King to individuals, generally in return for various favors to the Crown, and slowly developed the defined, and often disputed, boundaries of the Colonies. Many people were sent to the American Plantations simply to get them out of England for various reasons, among them to escape political, or religious, persecution. Many incentives were provided to induce others, usually people with skills, to emmigrate from the Old World to the new, to firmly establish the claims to the lands.

New Englanders claimed all the Atlantic Coast from New England to Virginia as part of New England. When researching family history, ships records may record landings at "New England" towns that later became part of other colonies. Remember that not all the colonies were established at the same time. Also, as wars were won, the English secured land originally claimed by other European kings.

As a result of the persecution of Quakers in England, William Penn developed a plan to found a colony in America. His first effort was in what is now New Jersey. King James I had granted the land between the Atlantic and the Delaware River to Lord Berkeley, and Sir George Carteret. However Berkeley later decided to sell his share of the venture for 1000 Pounds to John Fenwicke in trust for Edward Byllinge, both Quakers. Byllinge soon sold his interest in New Jersey to William Penn and 2 other men. Penn quickly had members of the Religious Society of Friends settling in West New Jersey, at Burlington and other locations. It was during this time (1677) that our James Browne arrived and helped found and lay out the town of Burlington, originally called Bridlington. Penn’s success in this effort led him to desire to found a colony in which he would be the sole proprietor.

By 1681 King James’ treasury was empty from the various internal and external wars. He owed Admiral William Penn sixteen thousand Pounds, and a peerage. The Admiral had commanded the English fleet in the battle against the Dutch. His victory had allowed England to claim the Dutch colonies in the Americas, including New Amsterdam, which was renamed New York.

The king offered instead a charter for a colony on English soil in America. The charter was documented and signed on March 4^th, 1681. Penn had drawn up the charter so as to avoid the problems that had occurred with the New England Charters. Within 4 weeks of the king signing the charters, Penn’s cousin Colonel William Markham was sent to take possession of the land. By the autumn of 1681 Penn had sent three shiploads of colonists he had recruited to the new land. The vessels John and Sarah reached the Delaware River first. However, the Bristol Factor was driven by storms to the West Indian Islands and did not arrive until the following spring. The ships arrived at Upland, which was later named Chester PA. Penn had purchased from the Duke of York land that is now the State of Delaware, but was then known as the Lower Counties (New Castle, Kent, and Sussex).

The colonists began planning and building a "great town". And William Penn began negotiating through his representatives in the colony with the natives of the area for land and for trade. He also completed and published his framework for his government by 1682. His constitution focused on elected representatives of the people, and on religious freedom.

Meanwhile at Bristol England a company was organized with the name of the Free Traders’ Society of Pennsylvania, with a lawyer Nicholas Moore as chairman.

All of these experiences, as well as time spent in prison for his religious beliefs, were in the mix when Penn accepted the land grant which Charles II called Pennsylvania, after William’s father Admiral Penn and the huge tract of woods being given (Sylvania), for his Great Experiment. (Pennsylvania, State and Province 1609 - 1790, Bolles)

All men were to have religious freedom, as long as it did not interfere with anyone else’s. It is important to understand this history so we can understand why James and William Browne made their choices. Their decisions were based on it.

It is necessary to understand that English Quakers had been visiting the colonies well before Penn established his colony. Most often these Quakers were preachers intent on proselytizing in the existing colonies. Various colonies had been founded as bases for specific religions, for example the Puritans in New England, and the Catholics in Maryland.

These colonies had laws that restricted religious freedom to the faith in that particular colony. In 1656 for example 2 Quaker woman preachers were arrested and shipped to Barbados, and their pamphlets burned by the hangman in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In Maryland law decreed arresting and whipping Quakers. In Boston Quakers had their ears cut off, and four (Mary Dyer, William Robinson, Marmaduke Stephenson and William Leddra) were hanged because they continued to preach there after being banished and returning. Religious freedom did not exist in most colonies.

Rhode Island and East Jersey permitted freedom of religion. Eventually Maryland ceased enforcing its anti-Quaker laws due to the significant population of Quakers settling along the shores of the Chesapeake. (Philadelphia Quakers, 1681-1981, Schiffer Publications Inc.)

Having given you some idea of the religious, political, and economic background of England coming into the 1600’s, you can begin to get an idea of what daily life was like for our ancestors. They faced many problems. Who was king today? What religion was he publicly backing? What religion did he privately back? How much taxes would he take? To what use would he put them, war, or his own coffers? With the Reformation in full tilt, what preachers made the most sense? What would happen to his followers? Could there be freedom of thought, political or religious? Or might you end up in jail?

John Browne, of Bedfordshire and Northampton England was a Justice of the Peace of the County of Northampton. He had 3 sons, William, who died about 1664; Richard about 1622; and Thomas about 1663. (History of Luton and its Hamlets, Wm. Austin). Because of this entry, there seems to be some confusion as to whether this ancestor’s name was Richard or William. According to his descendant, the noted writer Henry Armitt Brown, Richard was the father of William and James Brown (who both emmigrated from England in the late 1600’s). Based on H.A. Brown’s own research., and the burial records, it is likely that the writer William Austin mixed up the death dates of William and Richard.

In 1786, an entry in the Nottingham Meeting record for births and burials added to this confusion by mentioning "the father of William Brown senior, in England; whose name is believed to have also been William and whose sons William and James came over in early times". This record was certified by George Churchman. Being nearly 100 years after James and William came over, time likely clouded the accuracy of the account, which must have been given by a grandchild of William, who certainly wouldn’t have met the great grandfather Richard.. H.A. Brown’s research seems a more accurate resource.

Richard Browne of Poddington, Bedfordshire, England became a member of the Religious Society of Friends, after meeting William Dewesbury who was a well known Quaker minister of the times. He had, during the religious and political upheavals of the times, been a Baptist, and later a Puritan, before becoming a Quaker. Richard Browne had 2 sons and 6 daughters. Both sons, James and William, emmigrated from England to America. Richard died 28^th of 9^th month 1662, and was interred in Friends burying ground at Wellingboro, County Northampton. His entry is the first record of births or deaths for Bedford and Northampton Counties, England for the Quaker records. He is stated as having been of Puddington, near Williamsborough, Nottinghamshire, England according to an account read into the church records at East Nottingham Brick Meetinghouse on the 28^th of the Fourth month of 1776. (The Browns of Nottingham and Related Families, Mary Williams Smith 1969). I’ve also seen Puddington spelled as Poddington. Remember, people of the time were not well educated, dictionaries did not yet exist, and folks spelled words how they thought they sounded. And how they sounded could be a matter of what local accent, the speaker had.

It seems appropriate here to take a moment to mention again the religious, political, and economic upheaval in England during the 1600’s. In the 1500’s political leaders sought to separate themselves from the political power of the Christian church. Away from Rome, it had been common for sons and daughters to be told by their parents that they must become priests or nuns. This was often for the same family purposes as sons and daughters being told whom they would marry. Such assignments had to do with securing family wealth and power. Furthermore kings sought the approval of local bishops, much less of the Pope in their quest to acquire the land and power from other kings. This frequently involved pre-arranged marriages, or political bribery of one sort or another. The history of the consolidation of France, Spain, Italy, and England from numerous kingships into countries ruled by one king, and of those kingdoms paying homage to one Emperor demonstrate the politics quite well. Even in WWI the protagonists, the King of England and the Emperor of Germany were cousins by blood, sharing the same Grandmother.

By the 1500’s some individual kings or emperors had amassed enough power that they could take stands against papal rulings that did not favor them. Various kings who wanted to be designated Emperor of a particular country within Europe, but were not so designated, simply created their own alliances or went to war. Since kings claimed a throne through Divine Right, i.e., power given by God, and the Pope claimed to be God’s voice on earth, there was bound to be a conflict of politics and religion. For the average citizen in each country, the question became "Who is right? The king or the pope?" The king might create an alliance with a local Bishop, and found his own religion.

Some local religious leaders, in trying to make sense of these conflicting claims, founded new religions that were neither Rome based, nor King based. The period from the early 1500’s through to the American colonies establishing freedom of religion is a period people seeking a religious path which made moral sense to them. During this time the term "seekers" often referred to the idea of people seeking "religious truth".

One of the ideas that set the early Quakers aside from the other Christian sects being founded during this period of religious upheaval, was the idea of democracy in religion. They quickly decided that they did not want a minister or priest telling them what the Bible meant. They knew how easily that turned into politics and war. The history of England during the same time is one of Kings and Queens lasting only a few years before being overthrown, and often… beheaded by the new political leaders. James I, Charles, James II, William and Mary, the list is long, of short lived "royals". Protestant or Catholic; whoever was in charge, persecuted those that were not in political and religious favor.

Quakers allowed anyone at Sunday Meeting, young or old, male or female, who felt they had a message to share, to do so. There would be typically 15 minutes of silence at the beginning of the meeting, to pray to God for his guidance. After that, people could share what they felt in their hearts and souls about God’s Truth. How did Jesus’ message of love actually translate into treating one’s fellow men and women in a Christian way? In bringing up questions of that sort, Quakers were still Seekers of Truth. All shared their search for an answer that would earn the Meeting’s approval.

Quakers quickly realized that women must be treated as men’s equals, both legally and intellectually. Children were not to be held as property, nor women. In this regard, it was quite common for Quaker women to "preach" in the sense of proselytizing converts among both other Christian sects, and in Indian villages. The Puritans feared this freedom so much that they passed laws in Puritan colonies to imprison Quaker preachers, burn their books, cut off their ears and run a hot poker through their tongues. In fact the first American Quaker martyrs were people hung by Puritans for preaching Quaker beliefs in New England. The Quakers are still around, but the Puritans are not. Interestingly, the Quakers who moved westward past the Mississippi River do now use ministers.

This concept of universal freedom was unique thinking at the time and scared many colonial politicians. In 1770, nine of the thirteen colonies had state supported churches, i.e., had one specific legally recognized religion. Only Pennsylvania (including the Lower 3 Counties now called Delaware), New Jersey, and Rhode Island did not have a state church. In the other nine, if you didn’t belong to the state church, you weren’t free to hold a political office. Also Quakers understood that things in life change, so in both their Meetings, and the three colonies where they held the majority, rules were expected to be flexible, and to change as they became outmoded. This was very scary stuff for the other colonies to cope with. Quakers were vilified and persecuted in the other colonies.

One must also be aware that William Penn, as proprietor of Pennsylvania, ensured that his colony had laws providing for freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. He actively sought people from many countries, and with many religious backgrounds to settle Pennsylvania. He called it his "Grand Experiment" to prove that all men could be brothers, regardless of their religious differences, under the law. Initially, few other colonies offered freedom of religion. Understanding this political and religious climate will help us to understand Richard Browne’s decisions and his sons’.

It can easily be seen that Quaker ideas of religious and political freedom heavily influenced the ideals for the type of government we have today. These ideals of freedom are certainly one of the main reasons so many of our ancestors immigrated to this country

Richard Browne’s wife was Mary. His death entry states: Richard Browne of Boarsworth died ye 28 day of ye 9^th mo. 1662 and was buried at Wellingsborough, County of Northampton. In the same book are listed: Daniel Browne, County of Bedford ye son of Richard and Mary d. Puddington 9 mo 11, 1719. Joseph Browne son of Richard and Mary d. at Puddington 3 mo 9, 1731. (Friends Records in England, according to the writer Henry Armitt Brown of Philadelphia). See the Family Tree for the rest of their children.

When Richard’s grandson, William Browne, visited England in 1752 with his brother-in-law John Churchman as Quaker ministers, William found descendants of Richard Browne living in Luton, Bedfordshire, England. (The Browns of Nottingham and Related Families, Mary Williams Smith 1969).

A story, repeated by William Browne to his own children about Richard Browne, concerns an incident after Richard chose to become a Quaker. Richard paid his landlord rent to a steward every 6 months. He trusted both the steward and the landlord and never asked for a receipt. The landlord, angry that Richard had refused on a particular year to raise and feed some hunting hounds for him, came and demanded a rent already paid. When Richard could not produce a receipt to prove it paid, the man asked him to swear an oath that it had been paid, knowing that Quakers did not believe in swearing oaths. Richard paid the rent a second time, but the landlord turned him off the farm anyway.

Quakers were viewed as being "different" than Baptists and Puritans; so it took some time for Richard to find another farm to settle on. During the 1600s, people who did not belong to the State sponsored faith were often given a bad time by those in power. William Penn obtained the grant from King Charles II for the province of Pennsylvania. He quickly proposed that Friends leave England and settle in America. Penn intended that in his colony, all would be free to practice the religion of their choice, as long as it did not impinge on anyone else’s faith. Many Quakers were concerned that it would seem as though they were fleeing religious persecution in England, which would imply that their faith in their religious choice was not strong.

William Dewsbury traveled around to various Quaker Meetings in England, including the one in Northamptonshire where the Browne family resided. Dewsbury argued that "The Lord is about to plant the wilderness of America with a choice vine of noble seed which shall grow and flourish… Under his blessing arising into a state of prosperity". Many members of the Religious Society of Friends believed this prophesied the spreading of Truth in America, and agreed to immigrate to the new colony. (The Browns of Nottingham, East Nottingham Monthly Meeting records, 1786)

Depending on the time of year, which affected the weather ships were likely to encounter, there were two primary routes to take to get to the Americas. There was the Northern Route and the Southern Route. Both could be highly dangerous if sailed too early or too late in the season. On the other hand, your ship might also lose the wind, that is to say the wind would fail. In such cases the ship would be subject to the ocean currents. A good captain and his navigator had to know the currents.

The northern route sailed west towards Iceland and Greenland, then along the Canadian coast and south towards the Hudson Bay, Delaware Bay, etc. The southern route started going to the western cape of England towards the Irish Channel, then south to the Canary Islands, and west to the islands of the Caribbean, then north along the eastern coast of North America.

In either case bad weather was to be feared. North Atlantic winter storms would send ships fleeing back to the nearest land for shelter, or risk sinking. Hurricanes coming out of the Gulf of Mexico sank not only Spanish bullion ships, but many English vessels which now line the coast from Georgia to Maine. Passengers depended on highly skilled ships’ captains and crews for their safe arrival to the colonies.

Beyond the weather, there were other issues. A 350 ton brig might carry 250 to 300 passengers as well as the ship’s crew. A voyage could take 2 to 3 months, depending on whether bad weather sent the ship hurrying to nearest land for shelter, or otherwise off course. The ship had to carry enough water, and food that wouldn’t spoil. If the passengers were lucky the ship might have a doctor on board. On a small ship, any contagious illness would quickly spread.

There were no cabins, nor privacy on ship. There was no outhouse. If a passenger needed to attend to a "nature call" there was a place at the front (or head) of the ship. This was called "going to the head".

Prior to the invention of iron stoves, passengers ate dried (jerked) meat and dried vegetables and fruits, nuts, and dried biscuits. If any of those foods became wormy, the choice was to starve, or to consider the worms as protein. If the ship was large enough to afford to carry firewood for cooking, that could be done using a large pan filled with sand. A small fire was lit well away from the edge of the pan, and buckets of water nearby to squelch any embers that might pop onto the deck.

On at least one of William Penn’s trips across, the passengers came ill with smallpox. Penn is said to have personally ministered to the health of his fellow Quaker passengers. Nevertheless it was said that the ship lost almost a passenger a day before arriving at their destination. That could amount to 60 to 90 passengers in a 2 to 3 month trip carrying 300 passengers.

In order to know how fast the ship was sailing, the captain would have the crew tie a long piece of thick twine to a board. The crew would throw the board off the stern of the ship. When the board, called a "log", hit the water, the twine was paid out, while the captain operated an hourglass that was designed to run out of sand in 28 seconds.

When the time was up, the crew would pull the twine and log back to the ship, counting the number of knots in the twine as they retrieved it. As the ship sailed through the water, the board had rotated, causing the twine to knot up. The faster the ship sailed, the more knots there were. The ship was said to be sailing that many "knots" per hour. The ship’s speed, as measured by the twine and log, was recorded several times per day in the ship’s "log book". This soon came to be known as the ship’s log. And after a while, anything the ship’s captain thought important was "logged in"

For new crewmembers of sailing vessels, there was anywhere from 1 to 4 or more masts plus the ship’s prow, from which sails could be unfurled. Furled or unfurled the sails were controlled and operated via ropes. A new sailor had to "learn the ropes".

As sailors began extending their sailing range from a few days, or weeks port to port, they discovered that sailing for months at a time over great oceans, the men began to get sick with rickets and scurvy. Both were caused by vitamin deficiencies, but doctors didn’t know about vitamins yet. It was discovered that men who ate citrus fruits quickly recovered, so the British navy began carrying limes on their ship, to prevent these illness-es. Their sailors became known as "Limey’s".

The Kent carried colonists to West New Jersey with Gregory Marlow as master, and loaded in London for New Jersey from 19 March to 31 March 1677. There followed loadings for other ports, but the ship sailed before May. The Kent sailed first to New York, arriving sometime between the 4th and the 16th of August.

After a short stay there, the Kent sailed across the bay to Perth Amboy, then headed south to the Delaware, landing first at the mouth of Raccoon Creek to disembark 230 passengers of the total of 270. She then moved on to Chygoes Island, now Burlington. Some histories describe a landing at Raccoon Creek after an early June stop at New Castle, arriving at Burlington on 23 June. However, the arrival time in New York is known from the minutes of the New York government, with which the Commissioners (aboard the Kent) met during their stay there.

It should be noted that many passengers said to have been aboard were from Yorkshire, Northamptonshire, and other northern counties. They probably loaded at some northern port, perhaps Hull or Liverpool, before the Kent arrived at London, which is why they are not listed in the London loading documents. (The Kent, by Donna Speer Ristenbatt)

Richard Browne’s son James was among the first Quakers to come to America, on the ship "Kent", where he helped lay out the town of now known as Burlington NJ in the latter part of 8^th mo. 1677. Many of these settlers were from Bridlington in Yorkshire England, and that name was originally used, but in a short time Burlington became common usage. (Philadelphia Quakers, 1681-1981, Schiffer Publications Inc.)

Sailing up the South River, as the English called the Delaware River in those early days, must have been an astonishing experience. We know from various historical records that the water was so clear that you could see to the bottom of the river and the schools of fish so thick that when you passed over one, you could not see the bottom.

There are also accounts of ducks and geese swimming in flocks so thick that when your boat moved through such flocks, you could not see the river water. And when you disturbed such flocks so that they flew away, it was like a great cloud had suddenly blocked the sun. The noise of their wings flapping, and of their duck calls and goose calls were so loud that people had to cover their ears as though from thunder.

In the woods overhanging the riverbanks would have been flocks of birds also as thick as clouds. Flocks of Passenger pigeons and Carolina parakeets thrived throughout the eastern colonies until the early 1900’s. The Carolina parakeet had green wings, and red and yellow heads. However such great flocks of pigeons and parakeets could cover an orchard or a field of grain, and farmers considered them to be pests. By the early 1900’s both species had been wiped out by hunters, and are now extinct. (A Gap in Nature: Discovering the World’s Extinct Animals; Flannery and Schouten; 2001)

At night any settlers near waterways (and most were) would have heard the sound of frogs calling in great numbers. Children would have contributed to their parents’ larder by catching frogs for a meal of frog legs. And, of course, there was fishing, fresh water clams, fresh water crayfish, oysters, as well as crabbing along the large rivers and their tributaries. Ponds and lakes could also be fished.

In the woods and fields young men learned to hunt rabbit, dear, bear, elk, and in the early days of the eastern colonies there were woods buffalo, an eastern bison. Duck and geese could be caught one of two methods: drifting a small boat through a flock and reaching out from under a tarp to wring the neck of unsuspecting birds; or by drifting a boat through a flock and firing a shotgun into the flock. The latter method was often used by professional hunters who intended to take large quantities of birds for salting and for shipping elsewhere. For this purpose a special kind of shotgun called a blunderbuss was designed. It was of higher caliber, so as to kill the most number of birds in one shooting, before the birds all flew away.

Hunters looking to put meat on their own table would also have water dogs or retrievers that could swim out to a dead duck or goose and bring it back to the hunter without ruining the meat. In the fields, colonists could hunt quail, pheasant, wild turkey, geese, and other birds. Retrievers were useful here as well. Many a family kept pointers or setters as hunting dogs.

In this regard, it should be noted that dogs and cats were not kept as pets as we now think of pets. A family had dogs for specific functions. Farmers with flocks of sheep, goats, or chickens kept guard dogs to protect their flocks from raccoon, fox, shoat, bear and other meat eaters. Farmers who also hunted kept dogs appropriate to the kind of hunting they did. Men who lived close to waterways kept water dogs. Men who lived farther from rivers and streams kept dogs that helped them hunt such as hounds, or dogs that could find downed birds such as retrievers. Farmers kept cats in the barns to keep mice and rats out of the granaries, and away from the horse feed or cattle feed. We think today of cattle to refer to cows, but a couple of hundred years ago the word referred to any herd of animals including goats and sheep. The first settlers didn’t raise cows, but like their English brethren, raised "mutton".

At Bridlington (Burlington) New Jersey, James Browne and other young men in the party assisted a surveyor named Richard Noble, who had arrived 2 years before. In 1679 it was there that James married Honour Clayton in "the primitive meeting house made of a sail taken from the Kent, it being the first marriage recorded in the state of NJ". In other words they were married in a tent; incidentally it was the first marriage recorded at Burlington. In 1678 her sister Prudence Clayton married Henry Reynolds, who later helped found Rising Sun (now in MD).

"The town thus laid out was divided into twenty properties – ten in the eastern part for the Yorkshire men, and ten in the western for the London proprietors. All hands went at once to work to prepare for the winter. Marshall, a carpenter, directed the building, and the forests began to resound with the blows of his axe. A clearing was made on the south side of the main street, near Broad, and a tent pitched there as a temporary meeting-house." While building the town, the settlers lived "in caves dug in the banks and faced with boards, or shanties of the most primitive description. They were not built of logs, as is commonly believed. It is to the Swede that we owe the "block-house" … and the "log-cabin". Two years later, 2 Dutch travelers noted the Burlington houses as "made of nothing but clap-boards", plastered with clay between the boards to stop the wind and rain.

The town was named after a village in old Yorkshire, England. The ship Kent is said to have landed at Raccoon Creek, on August 16, and they laid out the town on Chygoe’s Island in 1677. In letters written back to England, one settler wrote "I have seen orchards laden with fruit to admiration. Their very limbs torn to pieces with the weight, and most delicious to the taste and lovely to behold." And another "I have know this summer forty bushels of bold wheat from one bushel sown. We have from the time called May til Michalemas great store of very good wild fruits – strawberries, cranberries, and whortleberries, very wholesome". (The Settlement of Burlington, Henry Armitt Brown, 1878).

The first meetinghouse was an hexagonal structure built in 1682. An addition was built on in 1696. It is interesting to note that a local sachem or chief, Ockanickon, who died in 1677 is among those buried in the cemetery at the Meeting. It says something about the relationship of Quakers to the natives, that he is interred there.

Honour and Prudence Clayton’s father was William Clayton who became a Justice at Upland PA (now part of Chester, PA) in 1681, and a member of William Penn’s Council, therefore not without influence with Penn. (Upland had originally been a Swedish settlement). James Browne settled initially in the Marcus Hook PA area (Delaware County) until he bought land in the Chichester area, where he would help found the Chichester Meeting. In addition to being a Quaker minister, he was by trade a weaver but like most people of the time also farmed to a large extent. Weavers often grew the flax they needed for weaving textiles on their farms.

It may be appropriate to take a moment to straighten out a common misconception about Quaker clothing. Today it is generally believed that Quakers dressed as the Pennsylvania Dutch still do in Lancaster County PA, i.e., in black or gray clothing. In the late 1600’s this was not at all true. Although it was undecorated but neat, Quakers wore the bright colored clothing of the day: green, blue, and red. Their scarlet colored cloak was known as the "cardinal", and was quite common among Quakers. Their men wore the wide-brimmed hat called the Cavalier, and the women’s Quaker bonnet was from Paris, and considered most fashionable. Generally clothing colors were somewhat muted and the design basic, that is, little or no jewelry, ornaments or badges. However Quakers used the finest silk, the best quality broadcloth, and other expensive cloths for their clothing. It should also be noted that the clothing of various European countries was quite distinctive, and the clothing of the Europeans settling in America during this early time allowed all viewers to immediately deduce the wearers’ mother country by the wearer’s style of dress. (Five Centuries of American Costume, R. Turner Wilcox, 1963)

Another misunderstanding comes from the use by Quakers of the words "thee" and "thou". Over the years, people have come to associate these words with "ancient" translations of the Bible. However prior to the 1600’s, both thee and thou were used when speaking to one person. The word "you" was used when speaking to two or more people. Using the word "you" to speak to one person was a form of flattery, as if to say "thou are as important as several other persons combined". Since Quakers held that all persons were equal in God’s eyes, they felt that such flattery was the same as lying. So they continued to use the singular pronouns when speaking to individuals. Movies about Quakers don’t particularly make this clear. (Contributions of the Quakers, Elizabeth Janet Gray – 1947)

As mentioned before, log cabins were a Swedish construction. The English initially built the same framed, clapboard houses as existed in England. However, the great forests of England had been decimated for ship building when its government had set about building a Royal Navy capable of competing with the French, Dutch, Portuguese, and Dutch on the high seas. So the English had learned to construct houses using minimal wood resources.

In America the British settlers discovered millions of acres of old forest. While the woods close to waterways could be harvested and shipped back to Europe for great profits, the costs of hauling wood tens of miles overland made for lessening profits. The Scandinavian log cabin offered an excellent solution to the problem of clearing land for farming. Log cabins solved several problems, actually.

Using an axe and a saw, a couple of men could quickly cut down and notch the ends of trees of a given diameter. With an axe or adz, they would square the log into four sides, and start the first layer of the four walls of a cabin. A couple of logs and some rope provided a lever for lifting the heavy logs into place as the walls became higher.

Chimneys could be built of logs, covered with mud, or of stone if it was easily available. Roofs could be of slate, or wood shingles (hemlock, pine, and cedar were common) depending on which resource was at hand. Sometimes clapboard roofs were used. Generally the floors consisted of the dirt where the building was being put up, but some builders took the time to split trees and lay them round side down in the dirt. Structures went up faster if this step was skipped. Dirt floors had the advantage of not catching fire from sparking fireplace e