On a chilly day in November a nineteen-year-old Nicholas Butterworth of Yorkshire embarked from Liverpool on the Elizabeth & Judeth for Virginia.1 The ship would have sailed south toward Madiera Island and the Canaries, about the latitude of the Caribbean, before bearing west, across the Atlantic, in order to take advantage of prevailing winds and currents. Leaving England on the 19th of November, they were assured of missing the hurricane season which then, like today, meant that the wise traveler avoided the tropic latitudes between June and November.

Life aboard ship was no picnic for the ship's officers and even the wealthy passengers that could afford private cabins and personal stores. For the common sailor, it was a hard life exposed to wind and weather, and crowded conditions belowdeck. For poorer folks – those that were to have their passage paid for by pre-arranged indenture or those gathered by speculators and were to be sold into indentured service upon arrival – life in the hold was pure misery. One German immigrant described:

"…during the voyage there is on board these ships terrible misery, stench, fumes, horror, vomiting, many kinds of seasickness, fever, dysentery, headache, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth rot, and the like, all of which come from old and sharply-salted food and meat, also from very bad and foul water, so that many die miserably.

Add to this want of provisions, hunger, thirst, frost, heat, dampness, anxiety, want, afflictions and lamentations, together with other trouble, as e.g., the lice abound so frightfully, especially on sick people, that they can be scraped off the body. The misery reaches a climax when a gale rages for two or three nights and days, so that every one believes that the ship will go to the bottom with all human beings on board. In such a visitation the people cry and pray most piteously."2

Many passengers, particularly pregnant women and children, found their release sewn into a bag with weights or cannon shot at their feet, handed over the side and into the deep.

Nicholas Butterworth arrived, apparently healthy, "bound to Mr William Part" for seven years' indenture — a common period of service in payment for passage. This raises interesting questions about the circumstances of young Nick's leaving England: We understand that the Butterworth family was one of some substance; they were fairly well-to-do. Why would Nicholas be compelled to trade his service for his passage if his emigration was approved of by his parents and extended family? Perhaps Mr Part represented not only his passage, but also an opportunity to learn certain skills through his indenture? An opportunity to be introduced to specialized agricultural methods unique to making a go of it in Virginia? Learn the ins and outs of commerce? We don't know, at this point in our researches.

However, Nicholas proved to be an industrious young man, and by 1725, he owned 150 acres of his own "on Gravelly Run," a well known stream in Dinwiddie County (then Prince George), Virginia. On December 6, 1727, Nicholas added 100 acres in Bristol Parish to his holdings.3

Nicholas established the Butterworths among the up-and-coming families of the Colony.

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NOTES:

1. French, Elizabeth, List of Emigrants to America From Liverpool, 1697-1707, Genealogy Publishing Co., Inc., Baltimore, 1962. p. 31.

2.  Mittelberger, Gottleb, Passage To America, 1750, a diary excerpted on EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com, 2000.

3. Butterworth, Ivan, The Butterworths of Dinwiddie County, Virginia, 1961.