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- chief founder (along with Simon Bradstreet) of Cambridge, Massachusetts (called Newtowne) and built the town’s first home<\/li>\n
- four times governor\u00a0and deputy-governor many times<\/li>\n
- instrumental in the formation of\u00a0Harvard College and as\u00a0governor signed its charter in 1650<\/li>\n
- a devout and inflexible Puritan who was a “thrifty man who was somewhat prone to usury”.\u00a0 He “often won approval but never affection”.<\/li>\n
- had 8 children, including Anne (Dudley) Bradstreet – North America’s first published poet, Joseph Dudley – Royal Governor of Massachusetts (born when the old man was 70 years old) and Reverend Samuel Dudley from whom I am descended<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The first winter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was horrific and 200 of the Puritans\u00a0died from disease and starvation.\u00a0\u00a0In March of the following spring (1631)\u00a0Thomas Dudley wrote a\u00a0letter to his friend Lady Bridget, Countess of Lincoln back in England in which he detailed the\u00a0trials and tribulations\u00a0of the colony up to that point.<\/p>\n
That letter <\/a>is a long one and I had read many parts\u00a0of it\u00a0previously but recently I perused it once again and something jumped out at me – the letter included a paragraph near the end that described an experience of the colonists with a great flock of Passenger Pigeons!\u00a0 This must be among the first written accounts of European settlers\u00a0about this now extinct bird.\u00a0 I include that paragraph below (redacted by the Winthrop Society for explanation, in parentheses, and to make it easier to read).<\/p>\n
“Upon the 8th of March, from after it was fair day light until about 8 of the clock in the forenoon, there flew over all the towns in our plantations so many flocks of doves (passenger pigeons, a species\u00a0now extinct), each flock containing many thousands, and some so\u00a0many that they obscured the light, that passeth credit, if but the truth should be written. And the thing was the more strange, because I scarce remember to have seen ten doves since I came into this country. They were all turtle doves, as appeared by diverse of them we killed flying,\u00a0 somewhat bigger than those of Europe, and they flew from the north east to the south west; but what it portends I know not.”<\/em><\/p>\n
I was thrilled to stumble upon this 382 year old connection between my ancestor and the\u00a0Passenger Pigeon!<\/p>\n
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![\"Live](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Live-Passenger-Pigeon-in-1896-kept-by-C.O.-Whitman.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0Live Passenger Pigeon in 1896 kept by C.O. Whitman<\/strong> (image in the public domain)<\/p>\n
For those who may be unfamiliar with the tragic history of the Passenger Pigeon, here’s a few “gee whiz” facts and figures\u00a0about the species:<\/p>\n
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- at one time it may have been the most numerous bird species on the planet with estimates of numbers as high as 5 billion individuals<\/li>\n
- the historic population of this species is roughly equivalent to the total number of birds (of all species)\u00a0that overwinter every year in the U.S.<\/li>\n
- in 1866 one southern Ontario flock was described as being 300 miles long, 1 mile wide and took 14 hours to pass<\/li>\n
- communal nesting areas (known as “cities) were huge – one in central Wisconsin in 1871 covered 850 square miles and included an estimated 136 million nesting birds<\/li>\n
- early colonists believed large flocks of pigeons brought ill fortune – perhaps an explanation for the last line in Dudley’s account of the bird<\/li>\n
- commercial hunting took a huge toll on the Passenger Pigeon with a variety of methods used.\u00a0 One type of net could capture up to 3500 birds at a time<\/li>\n
- at a Petoskey, Michigan nesting site in 1878, 50,000 birds were killed every day for 5 months<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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The two primary causes of the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon were commercial hunting and habitat loss.\u00a0 The species\u00a0absolutely required huge numbers to breed communally and when those numbers were sufficiently reduced they simply stopped breeding.<\/p>\n
The last reliable record of a wild bird was in Pike County, Ohio in March of 1900\u00a0when the bird was killed by a boy with a BB gun, though there were undocumented reports of a few more birds for several years after that.\u00a0 Attempts were made to breed some of the remaining birds in captivity but they failed, largely because of the lack of a communal breeding opportunity<\/p>\n
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![\"Martha_last_passenger_pigeon_1914\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Martha_last_passenger_pigeon_1914.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0“Martha” – the last Passenger Pigeon<\/strong><\/em> (image in the public domain)<\/p>\n
Martha, the last known Passenger Pigeon, died on September 1, 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo.\u00a0 She was\u00a0sent to the Smithsonian Institution after her body was frozen into a block of ice where she\u00a0was “skinned, dissected, photographed and mounted”.\u00a0 Today she sits in the museum’s archived collection and is not on display.\u00a0 There’s a memorial statue of her on the grounds of the Cincinnati Zoo.<\/p>\n
You’d think we’d have learned some lessons from this tragic example\u00a0but at the rate of extinction today\u00a0I fear we haven’t learned\u00a0nearly enough of them.\u00a0 If\u00a0a species as numerous\u00a0as the\u00a0Passenger Pigeon can\u00a0be wiped out so easily in such a short period of time it surely doesn’t bode well for thousands of others already\u00a0on the brink.<\/p>\n
Grieve, for them and for us.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
Note:\u00a0 I’ve taken much of the information presented here about the Passenger Pigeon from Wikipedia<\/a>.\u00a0 If you have the interest (and the stomach for it) I suggest you at least read the “hunting” portion of the article.\u00a0 Man can be truly ingenious in dreaming up ways to kill.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
I apologize for including so much of my family history here.\u00a0 That\u00a0portion of this post\u00a0is likely to be of interest to only a select few but to them (us) it’s important.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
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As most everyone knows, the Passenger Pigeon is extinct. So is my great (x 8) grandfather Governor Thomas Dudley of Massachusetts but I recently found a link between those two old birds and as an aficionado of both family history and birds I couldn’t be happier about it.<\/p>\n