Jonathan Brewster

Biography

Jonathan Brewster's life ranged from textile work in Leiden, in the Netherlands, to trade and public office in New England. Born on August 12, 1593, he was the eldest son of William and Mary Brewster. In Leiden he worked as a ribbon maker and merchant. He crossed the Atlantic aboard the Fortune in 1621, a year after his parents' Mayflower voyage, and married Lucretia Oldham at Plymouth, on the coast of present-day Massachusetts, on April 10, 1624.

As Plymouth's agent at the Connecticut River settlement that became Windsor in Connecticut, Jonathan reported competing English claims to William Bradford in 1635 and tensions with the Pequots to John Winthrop Jr. in 1636.

Jonathan served Duxbury as a deputy to Plymouth's General Court, beginning in 1639 and again in the early 1640s. In 1649 he moved to the New London area on the southeastern Connecticut coast, where he later represented the settlement in Connecticut's General Court. A grant from the Mohegan sachem Uncas supplied land for his trading establishment. The recorded agreement required Jonathan and his heirs to maintain a house for trading with Indigenous people. Connecticut's court objected that he had established the post without its authorization, but allowed him to continue for the time being.

At Brewster's Neck, on the Thames River in what is now Preston, Connecticut, Jonathan also experimented in alchemy, seeking a universal medicine. In 1656 he told Winthrop that he feared dying before completing the work and proposed leaving sealed instructions for him.

The same year, Jonathan wrote to his sister-in-law Sarah that he and his family intended to return to England. The plan did not become a permanent departure for Jonathan. He remained in Connecticut, where he died on August 7, 1659, shortly before his sixty-sixth birthday. He was buried at Brewster's Neck.

Jonathan and Lucretia’s eight children were William, Mary, Jonathan, Ruth, Benjamin, Elizabeth, Grace and Hannah.