Peter Colman Dr. "Father of the Man"

Thomas Colman was a strong, simple man, a husbandman, a caretaker of cattle and sheep. He had sold his modest holdings in his native Marlborough, Wiltshire, England, garnered whatever meager resources he possessed: tools, clothing, a few books – including a recent English translation of the 1611 Bible, published at the bequest of King James - a few simple cooking utensils, one favorite clay pipe, a flint-lock musket with a small supply of shot and powder, assorted bottles of lineament, cough and kidney cures, a few hundred feet of good rope, a keg of nails, leather harnesses, a small box containing scissors, knives, quills, two crude circular ‘black-glass’ ink wells, and one stoneware master ink. All kegs and containers were sealed with cork and beeswax to prevent seepage and mold; other items were confined to sealed wooden cases.

Thomas was a practical, soft-spoken man, but beneath the seemingly innocuous outcropping of a calm demeanor lay an indomitable Scottish core of rock-hard resilience and a fierce, unyielding temperament. As he stood upon the weathered deck of the “James,” one of two three-hundred-ton Dutch mercantile vessels which had left the shores of Southampton, England, nearly two months earlier, on April 15, 1635, he thought deeply and reverently about the lonely but exhilarating up-rooting he had endured. Any misgivings were carried away by the sweet sea breeze caressing his tired brow. The winds had been favorable during the treacherous crossing, the seas uncharacteristically docile as the small, fragile vessel had sought, like so many others of that generation, to traverse the dark, sinister wilderness of the North Atlantic.

***
As the sheep and horses tossed restlessly in the ship’s fragile hold, Thomas surveyed the rugged, emerald coastline. His compatriots and companions were now beginning to congregate upon the deck, adorned in crude woolen breeches, cotton shirts and swaths of sun-drenched calico to protect their fragile, weakened frames from the relentless blasts of the Arctic Sea, and the penetrating volleys of icy salt-sea sprays. The next morning, just before dawn, the “James,” with its tired, grateful cargo, tasted the warm, confluent currents of the Parker River. Here on these virgin shores, with this fledgling settlement of tailors, tanners, mercers, weavers, coopers and carpenters – laborers and husbandmen – the corner stones and massive oak beams would be planted – and the community of Newbury (Boston) erected.








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