Planting Towns
After 1625 the story stops circling the Atlantic and starts putting down roots — wooden towns on Massachusetts mudflats, stone chimneys above the St. Lawrence ice, meetinghouses where freemen argued and rivers where beaver pelts bought muskets. Two branches of one tree planted in the same generation, unaware of the Iowa wedding waiting at the far end.
In 1626, while failed Gloucester fishermen retreated to Naumkeag and renamed it Salem without the king's permission, registers on both shores kept recording names. On 1 January, John Douglas Alcock was born at Markfield to and Anne Hooker. Deacon John Upham married Elizabeth Webb at Bicton on 1 November. Robert Smith was born at Boston, Lincolnshire; Solomon Johnson married Eleanor Crofts in London. In France: Françoise Morin at Gahard, Anne Cloutier at Mortagne on 19 June, Pierre Tremblay at Randonnai, Pierre Saint-Denis and Vivienne Brunel at Dieppe and Rouen, Etienne Dumay Sr. at Dieppe, Sébastienne Veillon near La Rochelle, Marguerite Couillard at Québec on 6 August to Guillaume Couillard and Guillemette Hébert. Champlain granted more land along the Saint-Charles River and opened the farm country at Château-Richer across from Île d'Orléans. The Iroquois destroyed the Mohicans and turned north toward the river.
1627 brought death and structure in equal measure. — fifty-two years old, Québec's first farmer — fell on January ice; widow Marie Rollet kept the farm with son-in-law Guillaume Couillard, who inherited half the estate and received another hundred acres on the Saint-Charles, driving the colony's first plow the next spring. Cardinal Richelieu dissolved old trading monopolies and chartered the Company of One Hundred Associates — four thousand settlers promised in fifteen years, Catholics only, Huguenots pushed toward English and Dutch colonies. The seigneurial system arrived: river-front lots in three-by-nine-mile manors, feudal obligations dressed as settlement policy. Robert Giffard sailed home to Perche to recruit. Jean Guay was born at Berneuil. Richard Sawtelle married Elizabeth Pople; Ralph Farnham Sr. married Alice Harris at Southampton. England and France were at war; La Rochelle's Huguenots starved through a fifteen-month siege.
The Kirke brothers made 1628–1629 brutal for New France. English ships intercepted Giffard's fleet from Dieppe; Robert and Marie Renouard turned back. Cap Tourmente's farm was burned, livestock slaughtered, men killed. Champlain bluffed through a July demand for surrender, but by August 1629 Québec had one tub of roots for sixty-seven starving souls. On 9 August he yielded to David, Thomas, and Louis Kirke. Abraham Martin, Marguerite Langlois, and most settlers sailed for England; Marie Hébert Rollet refused to leave the ground her husband had broken. Jean Nicolet stayed with the Nipissing, blocking English trade. Nine-year-old Hélène Desportes landed in Dieppe with aunt Marguerite Martin. Jacques Ménard was born at Fontenay. married Catherine Poulet. Euphrosine Madeleine Nicolet was born — Métis daughter of Nicolet and Jeanne Bahmahmaadjimiwin Giisis. In England, John Endecott signed the New England Company grant; the London Plantation patented Salem; William Perkins took his B.A. at Christ's College.
March 1629: Charles I dismissed Parliament for eleven years. The Massachusetts Bay Company charter arrived in August — and crucially failed to require meetings in England. Cambridge investors voted to move the whole company to America. In October they elected John Winthrop governor while he was still in Lincolnshire. The Petition of Right, passed 7 June 1628, would later bind the restored Stuart throne. When Québec fell, the French colony was forgotten in the crossfire of European religion — a pattern that would repeat every time Paris and London quarreled.