In 1622, Sir Roger Gregory and Lady Margaret Thornton were blessed by the birth of their firstborn son John Gregory.  As John grew older his desire to step out on his own and make a life for himself in America was a constant pull, as evidenced by his numerous preserved journal entries.[1]  In these entries, John writes about his desire to sail the ocean in search of land and opportunity for himself.  John worked tirelessly to achieve the rank of Captain over the ensuing years and sometime between 1648 and 1650 left Stockwith, Nottinghamshire, England, and set sail for America.[2]

The first record of him having arrived in America comes in the form of a recorded paid levy in Lancaster County, Virginia in 1653 to a Mr. Toby Smith.[3]  In that same year, Captain John Gregory married Elizabeth Bishop and shortly thereafter bought 600 acres of land in Rappahannock County, Virginia.  Captain John Gregory was blessed to have come from some money that would allow him to set up roots in Rappahannock County, but he knew that for him to make a life for himself and his new bride that he would have to provide for them.[4]

Sometime in late 1653, Captain John Gregory turned to his church looking for work, and they offered him the opportunity to become the church vestryman.  He spent the rest of his adult life levying taxes on the community designed to support the church.  These funds were used to pay the minister’s salary, upkeep the church’s property, and care for the poor within the local community.  John and Elizabeth had four children: Richard, John, Elizabeth, and Mary.  At the time of his death in 1676, his preserved will, filed in the Rappahannock County Court, bequeathed nearly 2000 acres of land to his four children and late wife; seemingly a validation of a life well lived, and a dream accomplished with respect to young John’s desires to step out on his own and make a life for himself in America.[5]

Captain John Gregory left his home sometime around 1650.  Blessed with nothing but some modest family wealth and a ship, he set sail into the unknown facing not only the volatile waters of the Atlantic Ocean, but also his own uncertainties about what lied ahead should he successfully make it to the shores of America.  With Captain John’s first steps onto the shores of Virginia, my family’s story began here in America.  My family would continue to move West over the ensuing decades, leaving their imprints from the Virginia shores to the streets of East Los Angeles in the early part of the 20^th Century.  My family were some of the first settlers here in America; a designation that would not have been possible without an audacious young Captain daring to dream big about a life outside of Stockwith, Nottinghamshire, England.

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[1] Victor P. Meador and Bernal M. Meador. Our Meador Families in Colonial America: …. V. P. Meador, 1983. As cited on John Gregory, 1623 – 1676.

[2] As cited on John Gregory, 1623 – 1676.

[3] Beverly Fleet. Virginia Colonial Abstracts. 34 Volumes. Salt Lake City, Utah: Digitized by FamilySearch International, 2011. Vol. 22, p. 45.

[4] Fleet, p. 46.

[5] Nell Marion Nugent, Abstracted and Indexed by. Cavaliers and Pioneers: Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and Grants, 1623-1800. In Five Volumes. Richmond, VA.: Press of the Dietz Printing Co., 1935. p. 9-10.

In thinking about the ways in which Christianity influenced the early American Republic, one of the more underrepresented lines of historical inquiry on this topic lies in the way in which Christianity was believed to be a cultural bridge between the Indigenous people of the area and those who travelled far distances to settle on its shores. This cultural bridge had more implications than just merely the conversion of Indigenous peoples to Christianity in the name of their own salvation, but also had implications for the cultivation of partnerships across dissimilar communities in the name of building a shared future in the New World more broadly.

Several primary sources accounts from the period give credence to this idea. In 1671, John Elliot published an 80-page pamphlet entitled Indian Dialogues, for Their Instruction in That Great Service of Christ, in Calling Home Their Countrymen to the Knowledge of God, and of Themselves, and of Jesus Christ. In it, John Elliot calls upon his own experiences in evangelizing to the Indigenous population(s) of the early American Republic and creates a written manual through which Indigenous converts to Christianity can go about the business of bringing the Christian faith back to their families and communities.¹ His work reads as a conversation between three Indigenous men seeking to find not only answers to essential questions around salvation through Jesus Christ, but also the ways in which salvation through Christ can help cultivate shared values between their communities and those of European settlers seeking a shared future with them.

Abraham Pierson’s 1659 work Some Helps for the Indians: Showing Them How to Improve their Natural Reason, to Know the True God and the True Christian Religion is similar to the work of John Elliot on this topic. Pierson too offers an 80-page pamphlet designed to tackle the idea of Christianity being used as a cultural bridge to create lasting partnerships between Indigenous and settler in the New World. Unlike Elliot however, Pierson’s target audience in his work are the settlers themselves. Written in largely a Q & A format, Pierson’s work attempts to answer critical questions about salvation through Jesus Christ in a way that would be more easily consumed by the Indigenous people Euro-American settlers would encounter. Moreover, his pamphlet also includes a full Algonquin translation within it. Pierson’s work makes a couple of important points simultaneously with respect to this topic. The first is that there was an acknowledgement by the early Euro-American settler community that the desired path forward with respect to nation building in a land with deep roots in the Indigenous community was to bring them along settler communities as partners. The second is that being able to communicate with Indigenous peoples in their own languages was critical to the sustainable success of these attempts at bridging cultural divides using Christianity.²

Using Christianity as tool to bridge cultural divides in the early American Republic was not without its share of risks, however. Some 150 years after the publishing of the before mentioned pamphlets, John Halkett would write a retrospective piece entitled Historical Notes Respecting the Indians of North America: with Remarks on the Attempts made to Convert and Civilize Them (1825). In it, Halkett catalogues the varying degree of success to which theses attempts to use Christianity as a cultural bridge were employed. His conclusions were that these attempts, on the whole, had mixed results. While Euro-American settlers were successful at establishing a New World in the early American Republic centered on Christian values, its ability to bridge vast cultural differences was less effective.³ While some settler communities were able to find willing partners in the Indigenous people that lived there, many Indigenous communities maintained an aura of ambivalence to it (if not outright hostility).

While Christianity’s influence in the early American Republic served as a critical piece of cultivating American identity during the period, its ability to reach the Indigenous peoples in a way that would cultivate lasting partnerships was limited. For all the shared values that may have been able to be cultivated between the two groups using Christianity during the period, cultural and languages barriers between the two seemed to wide a gulf to be bridged in this particular time and place. This was not for lack of trying. While, as a matter of the historical record, we see many breakdowns (some violent) in the cultural encounters between Indigenous and settler across American history, at least in the early American Republic, there was a hope, belief, and a desire to create partnerships with the Indigenous people that lived there in the name of a shared future built on shared values through salvation in Jesus Christ.

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¹ John Elliot, Ts. Indian Dialogues, for Their Instruction in That Great Service of Christ, in Calling Home Their Countrymen to the Knowledge of God, and of Themselves, and of Jesus Christ. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1671.

² Abraham Pierson. Some helps for the Indians : shewing them how to improve their natural reason, to know the true God and the true Christian religion … : undertaken at the motion and published by the order of the commissioners of the United Colonies. London: Printed by M. Simmons, 1659.

³ John Halkett. Historical notes respecting the Indians of North America : with remarks on the attempts made to convert and civilize them … London: Printed for A. Constable and co., Edinburgh [etc.], 1825.