Into the sunset to a new life in a new land...

John GATCHELL, wife "Wibera" (true spelling unknown), and brother Samuel sailed from Weymouth on the Hopewell in May 1635 for Massachusetts Bay, where John and Wibera settled on Marblehead Neck near present-day Salem. They "lived in that part of Salem which was incorporated as Marblehead in 1648" (History of Salem, MA: Vol. I (1626-1637), Heresy, p. 444).

John was born about 1609 in Somersetshire, England, and christened at St. Augustine's, the parish church in West Monkton. His younger brother Samuel was also christened there. Wibera's birthplace is unknown. [There's also evidence a third brother, Richard, also briefly joined John and Samuel in Salem, then returned to Somersetshire, where he died around 1669.]

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Inside St. Augustine's...

Charles Edward "C.E." Banks implies in his Topographical Dictionary of 2885 English Emigrants to New England, 1620-1650 that John and Samuel were born in the West Monkton area of Somerset, where there was a significant Gatchell family presence at the correct time. A fire in the West Monkton parsonage destroyed the parish's records, therefore no definitive birth records exist proving the birth locality or parentage of John or Samuel. Consequently, their presumed births in the West Monkton area is based largely on circumstantial evidence.

High on a wall inside St. Augustine's (left) in West Monkton is a Gatchell family monument. Its location denotes they were prominent members of the community, although not titled.

In fact, the monument is so high on the wall that on my visit there in 2003, I couldn't make out what it said, even by (shhh...don't tell anyone) standing on the back of a pew.

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The Scene Shifts to Philadelphia...

In 1682, Barnabas WILCOX, a Quaker from a family of shipbuilders and outfitters in Bristol, England, came to Philadelphia with 13-year-old son Joseph, arriving shortly before William Penn.

Barnabas soon established the city's first rope walk to produce the heavy ropes every ship required.

If you've ever made a "rope" of yarn, the process is a miniature of the making of nautical rope. The halfway point of long strands of hemp was secured at one end of an open shed, then the ends stretched tightly and rotated while being "walked" to the other end, resulting in a rope several inches thick.

According to early maps of Philadelphia, the rope walk was two city blocks long - "at the north side of the town, running westward from Front to Third, north of Vine Street".

In 1684, Joseph and Barnabas returned to England to fetch wife Sarah and the rest of their children. They possibly made the voyage in the originally-French ship Hope, which had been scheduled to be scrapped but the Philadelphia Council sold "by inch of candle" [meaning 'at the last minute'?] to Barnabas for £59 s10 d6.

While they were away, the premium lots assigned to Barnabas as one of Penn's First Purchasers, on which he intended to build a home, was given to someone else. After his return, he was eventually given land in a less desirable location. As recently as 20 years ago, the resulting lawsuit was still used as a model case in real estate law at one U.S. law school.

In 1706, Barnabas and Sarah's daughter Rachel, b. in Philadelphia in 1685, married Elisha GATCHELL, Sr., son of Jeremiah and Elizabeth (Boude) Gatchell.

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