Who was Patience Brewster?

                   

Little is known about Patience Brewster (1600-1634).  Her parents were William and Mary Brewster.   She was born in Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, England during a time of religious unrest.  (England broke away from the Roman Catholic Church and created a new church called the Church of England. Everyone in England had to belong to the church.)

 

Around 1610, William Brewster and his family escaped England to live in Leiden, Holland.  William Brewster was able to make a living teaching English in Leiden and then went into hiding before departing to the New World.  William and Ann Brewster first arrived in Plymouth Colony with their sons, Love and Wrestling on the Mayflower in 1620.   Patience and her sister, Fear arrived later in 1623 aboard the ship, Anne.   William Brewster was a well-respected religious leader of the Plymouth Colony.  He became a landowner, and many places in Massachusetts are named after him, including:  Great Brewster Island, Little Brewster Island, Middle Brewster Island, Outer Brewster Island, and Brewster, Massachusetts.

 

Patience Brewster and Thomas Prence were one of the first marriages in the Plymouth Colony which pleased their fellow pilgrims.  It was a fortuitous match in 1624; a well-respected young man who became the 4th Governor of the colony with the daughter of the Plymouth Colony religious leader.  Much has been written about Thomas Prence.  Patience and Thomas had four children: Rebecca, Mercey, Hannah and Thomas.  Their future life together was shortened in 1634 by smallpox and influenza which ravaged the English and Indians.   Both Patience and her sister, Fear died from the outbreak.  

 

Thomas Prence (1600-1673) arrived in Plymouth Colony on the ship, Fortune in 1621.  He succeeded Governor Winslow in 1634 as Governor for twenty years, and held other offices including member of the council of war, treasurer of the colony, 12 years as commissioner of the United Colonies, and appointed president of the Commissions of the Board of Commissioners in 1672.  He was married four times, and had children by each of his first two wives, and probably by his third wife.  Thomas had amassed a large amount of land in Plymouth and lived in what is now Duxbury and was one of the first settlers of Eastham, Massachusetts ca 1644. Both Patience and Thomas Prence are buried in Burial Hill, a historic cemetery in Plymouth, Massachusetts where many Pilgrims are buried.