By the time that immigration set in from England to the Colonies, the family names had become hereditary. The descendants of the workers in the fields and about the barns had assumed the name derived from their ancestral calling, and carried it with them to the western world. The name, and such money as they had, by the industries of a few generations, collected by hard labor, was, with a good reputation and sound health (it is hoped) all which they carried with them. Evidently the Grangers had no family pride, grand traditions, or blue blood to import into the land of their adoption. They came here without prestige to make their way without favor or aid. All those of the name among the earlier settlers of whom we have trace, occupied themselves at first with the distinctly family business of farming, or their names appear first in the rural districts where all were tillers of the soil. Niccolas Graunger, aged 15, came in the ship George in 1618, and appears in the muster of the inhabitants of the eastern shore of Virginia as late as 1623. From him, I suspect, sprang the large family named Granger, now scattered over Virginia and Maryland. Robert Granger, aged 21, went from London to the Barbadoes in 1634; Bryan Granger appeared in the newly-settled town of Salem in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, in 1637, and then forever disappears from view. Thomas Granger, after passing a satisfactory examination before the ministers at Greenwich, England, "as to the state of his religion, " sailed in the ship David for Virginia, in 1635. It was customary in those days, to the end that only such "as feared God" might settle in the newly-formed colonies, to have each emigrant examined by a minister in England touching his religious condition, and thus prevent, if possible, the importation of all such as might be of moral damage to the community in which they were thereafter to live.

John Granger and Grace, his wife, appear to have been at Scituate in the colony of Plymouth, as early as 1640. They had three children, born in the old country, John, Thomas, and Elizabeth. John, Sr., died at Scituate in 1640. John, Jr., whom it appears by his mother's will (1648) was not then of age, died at Marshfield, October 4, 1655, and was buried in the adjoining town of Scituate. Thomas, the other son, became the servant of Love Brewster of Plymouth, and was hung for a (then) capital offense(*) on September 8, 1642. He was then "a youth under twenty," probably about 17. What became of Elizabeth, does not appear, but evidently the family became extinct in 1655, on the male side at least. Grace, the widow, died in 1648, and her will, dated November 24, 1648, is one of the earliest probated in the Plymouth Colony.(+)

The crime of Thomas Granger excited greatly the good people of the parent colony. They were shaken from attic to cellar. The culprit was examined not only by the civil, but by the ecclesiastical authorities. Ministers as well as judges reviewed his case, and the former, who, through their own kind in the land across the sea, were the guardians and sentries who watched that the Devil crept not into New England, were aghast. They were in quaking despair, that one so ungodly should have gotten in among the saints of the colony, and at a gathering of the parsons of Plymouth, discussed the momentous question how such a thing was possible, since "Seeing it was religious men ye begane ye worke (planting the colony) and they came for religion's sake." The conference concluded it was because
"1st. When ye Lord begins to sow good seed, ther ye envious man will endeavor to sow tares.
(*) N. E. Gen. & His. Register, Vol. 3, Part 4, p. 397 et seq
(+) N. E. Gen. & His. Reg., Vol. 4, 253

"2ed. Because ther being much labour & service about building & planting in the wilderness, when men could not get such help as they would, were glad to take such help as they could, and so many untoward servants were brought over.

"3ed. And the maine reason, because men finding so many godly disposed persons willing to come to these parts, began to make a trade of transporting passengers and goodes, and hired ships to that ende, and then for profits sake cared not who they carried, so that they had money to pay them.

"4th. As a mixed multitude came into ye wilderness with ye people of God out of Eagipte of old, so also there were sent by their friends, some under ye hope they would do better; others that they might be eased of such burdens, and thus, in 20 years time, it is a question whether ye greater part be not growne ye worser."

The execution of Thomas Granger was conducted in a strictly scriptural manner and according to the Levitican law (Leviticus xx, 15) and Thomas was the last part of the sacrifice.

Lists of some of the emigrants from England were preserved, and Hotton, in his valuable work, gives the names of hundreds of people who sailed from the old country to America and the West Indies. But diligent search in every available book fails to show the name of Launcelot Granger, or any Granger other than those given already, among the passengers of any ship. Yet the lists are very incomplete, containing but a fraction of those who did come. Hutchinson and others state that in the first twenty years of the New England colonies (1620-1640) 298 ships had come to the province, bringing 21,200 passengers, besides goods of all kinds, and while some have doubted the accuracy of this, its probability is maintained by those writers best competent to judge. With the year 1640 came a change which opened a way for passengers to come to the Bay Colony from those colonies to the south, which opportunity we know was seized by many. The revolution in England, headed by Cromwell, removed the cause which had induced such large emigration. Without a warning the influx stopped almost entirely, never to be resumed during colonial days. Indeed, the colonists began to talk of returning to the old home and many did go, while Cromwell conceived a plan to remove them all to Ireland. Prices of everything produced by the settlers fell, since more was produced than could be consumed, and new mouths came not to demand the surplus. New milch cows fell in one year from œ30 to œ5; an estate valued at œ1,000 in three months declined to œ200. A financial crash was upon the people, and to various other pursuits than farming they turned their hands. Saw-mills sprang up, fishing was encouraged by the government, and merchants fitted out vessels to carry lumber and provisions to the West Indies and other distant colonies. Thus by these vessels people dissatisfied with the Barbadoes, St. Christopher, and other isles, drifted up to the colonies of New England, whose remarkable progress and thrift had been noised about the world. So our ancestor who appeared in 1648, had many ways and routes by which to reach this land, and there is no way of definitely saying whether he came from the settlements of Sir Fernando Gorges on the Maine coast, from the isles of the southern seas, from cavalier Virginia, or from the British home land. Perhaps in some musty pigeon hole in an English port, the long desired paper inscribed with the name of Launcelot and his fellow passengers exist, but these dusty corners have been well ransacked by Hotten and others, and little hope remains that anything on the point will ever be unearthed.

I will briefly say that in my researches I have discovered a family whose ancestors were expelled from Grand Pr‚s at the same time as the mythical Evangeline. They were French, of course, and went into Canada. Their descendants are scattered through the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, etc., and I find one, a priest of the Roman Catholic church, a resident of the busy city of Chicago. It is, of course, a distinct family from ours.