Sea Venture at Sea, 1609

My Uncle Carl completed his research on our family geneaology, and has traced the Proctors from Boone County, Missouri in 1817 (Micajah Gipson Proctor settled near to what is Sapp, Missouri prior to the Missouri Compromise) — to Jamestown in 1610.

Before settling in Missouri, our ancestors were pioneers in Lincoln County Kentucky when it was still Kentucky County and part of Virginia in the 1760′s. And before that – pilgrims in Jamestown, Virginia in 1610. One of my ancestors, George Proctor–the first Proctor of our line born on American soil–was a small landowner in Henrico County who participated in Bacon’s Rebellion, which is regarded as the first colonial uprising.

Our first ancestor, ’John The Immigrant’, departed England in 1609 aboard the Sea Venture, which was a part of The Virginia Company. The Sea Venture was caught in a hurricane, seperated from its flotilla, and wrecked off the coast of Bermuda. John Proctor and 149 of his comrades built two ships (“pinnances”), ‘Patience’ and ‘Deliverance’, from the debris of the wreckage, and completed the journey–fulfilling the mission, and bringing badly needed supplies to Jamestown in May 1610.

This was the year following the hard winter of 1609 that left only 60 of the original 214 settlers from 1607. John Proctor was in the same group with, and contemporaries with tobacco entrepreneur John Rolfe, who married Pocahantas, the favored daughter of the Algonquian chief Powhatan.

Some theorize that Shakespeare set ‘The Tempest’ on Bermuda and intended the characters to reflect early American persons and events.