Coming Over: Migration and Communication Between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century

I enjoyed this book. It was very well written and packed with facts.

This is by far the best thing I’ve read on the Great Migration of the 1630’s to 1640, as well as for the rest of the 17th century. I thought I had mined all the best sources concerning this pivotal time in American (and English) history. There was so much information in the book (much of it new to me), I have re-read it already, and will keep it at arm’s reach when I’m working on my own history-related projects. If you’ve tranced your ancestry to even one family that lived in New England in the 1600’s, this book will answer so many questions about the motivations for emigration (and not just the usual re-having of stuff you read in the more common references), details of the actual process of obtaining permission to emigrate, finding a way to pay for it, obtaining transportation, and what their lives were like from the point they left their homes in Old England. It has helped me unravel some genealogical information, not just because the author has included information about scores of actual emigrants, but because it has enlightened me as to what was and wasn’t possible when making a new life in the new world. We make a lot of assumptions about the first Europeans in the Americas, and this book will help anyone work through questions and clear up the misconceptions about those that settled in New England. I highly recommend the book for scholars as well as history and genealogy buffs.

Beware: my book was missing 33 pages!

In researching my family genealogy, I learned that my earliest ancestor come to this country from England in 1639 as part of the "Great Migration". I wondered what would motivate a man who was a well established yeoman farmer to give up everything and take the risk to move his family to the wilderness of New England. This book shows why thousands of people made this journey, what the voyage over was like, and how they established themselves in a new society. What surprised me was how much communication there was with family and friends who remained in England. Anyone interested in the early colonial history of New England should read this book.

This is a very good book. Excellent!