In carpentry, it means "not level or plumb";
applied to people, it means "not normal"...
"off the wall"...even a little crazy. It only
follows that a daughter, granddaughter
and great-granddaughter of carpenters
would consider ancestors who braved an
ocean to start life anew in a strange land,
or left civilization to tame the wilderness,
to be "a couple of bubbles off".

So you've been warned. This writer carries the
genes of people who thought wayyyy outside
the miter box and embarked on endeavors
more timid souls would reject in favor
of the familiar and conventional.

(Or so every tale about Marblehead
is said to be prefaced...)
Fifteen years after the Mayflower landed and 140 years before the United States was even thought of, my earliest known ancestors, the GATCHELLs,
settled on Marblehead Neck, a spit of land
across from Marblehead proper.

Most history books gloss over (or ignore altogether) the next 50 or 60 years of American history, a time the Gatchells lived among Puritans on Marblehead and in Salem. In 1692 the Salem Witch Trials would touch two generations of this family.

But they knew none of that in 1635 on a glorious May day in Dorset, or what the future had in store for them after they boarded the Hopewell. Nor did they know when they sailed into the sunset to the New World that they'd never see England again. Or never again set foot inside St. Augustine's, the parish church in West Monkton, Somerset. St. Augustine's, of course, was part of the Church of England, so it's no surprise the Gatchells didn't get along with their Puritan neighbors in Massachusetts.

Naturally, the Gatchells were involved in the Salem Witch Trials...twice. First in 1684 when John, Wibera and son Thomas were charged as accessories in the theft of £500 from Capt George Corwin, father of future witch trials judge Jonathan Corwin and grandfather of George, sheriff during the trials.

The second time was when daughter-in-law Elizabeth "Gettchill" (my ancestress and wife of Jeremiah) attested to the good character of Mary Bradbury, accused but thankfully found innocent.

All this notoriety was apparently too much for Jeremiah, who left Elizabeth in Massachusetts and moved to Philadelphia. Their son Elisha followed
his father to Pennsylvania, married a Quakeress, converted to Quakerism, and became rather notorious himself as a respected elected official.

The Puckerbrush Blog Award of Excellence