Not many local historical chronicles even mention Mattapoisett sea captain Oliver Allen, one of the Nantucket Allen clan who had settled in that part of what was then Old Rochester with his wife, Jeanne, by 1760. His brother, Thomas Allen, another master mariner, was also living in the busy port town with his family at the time.

            The sons of Nathaniel Allen of Nantucket were a branch of the Allen family that had moved off the islands and settled in Newport, Rhode Island, just before the American Revolution (1775-1783) began. The men were sailors, coopers, carpenters, businessmen, and craftsmen associated with the maritime trades; Newport was the commercial hub of the South Coast in colonial times, so a number of Allens naturally washed up there.

            Captain Oliver Allen would have his brief spotlight in Revolutionary War history last just 12 months – between October 1776 and the fall of 1777 – becoming perhaps the most successful privateer commander who sailed our near-coastal waters during that critical time in the war.

            Before the war, both Captain Allen and his brother were involved in the coastal trade, shipping merchandise and freight of all kinds up and down the Northeast coastline. The small, fast sloops and schooners that the traders helmed were the freightliners of the day, and their masters and crews of these commercial vessels came to know these waters like the backs of their hands.

            Both captains were successful skippers, and both owned substantial property in Mattapoisett for a time. When the War for Independence started, much of that everyday commerce was stifled by the Royal Navy’s tight blockade of the American coastline, putting many sailors and captains out of work.

            Many of those mariners found work on state-licensed privateer ships (former merchant vessels) equipped with cannons, swivel guns, and usually an extra-large crew of heavily-armed men whose job was to intercept the growing flow of military supplies, victuals, and reinforcements that the British were sending to the colonies to support their armies trying to subdue the rebels.

            The privateers greatly aided a tiny Continental Navy and a handful of state navy ships, capturing or sinking hundreds of British merchantmen, supply ships, and military transports during the war. Much of the weaponry, gunpowder, and other military supplies needed by the Continental Army and Continental Navy in the early days were taken from captured British convoy vessels and warships.

            Many successful privateer owners, captains, and crew members became wealthy men from their shares of the sales of captured ships and cargo during the war years – including Captain Allen and his brothers.

            The less successful privateers faced death or mutilation in combat, capture and slow starvation in a British prison, or forced impressment into the Royal Navy. The owners of the American ships lost their investments when their vessels were captured, burned, or sunk, but there is no record of that happening to True Blue.

            For a brief time, Oliver Allen was the best of privateer commanders. In late October of 1776, state officials authorized his commission as captain of the True Blue, a 55-ton, armed sloop fitted out with six cannons, eight swivel guns, and a hefty crew of 40 men … mostly, Old Rochester and Wareham sailors and officers.

            The surety bond listed Captain Allen, Edward Hammond, Israel Fearing, Joshua Briggs, and Wareham’s David Nye as owners of the sloop; Allen, Ebenezer White of Rochester, and Middleborough merchant Abiel Pierce put up the $5,000 bond. The agreement was one-third of all profits went to the shipowners, one-third to captain and crew, and one-third to the state treasury.

            Captain Allen had local militia veterans John Wallis (first lieutenant) of Rochester and Barnebas Bates of Wareham (second lieutenant) as his officers; John Carver was the sailing master.

            An experienced leader, Allen was a captain of the fourth company of the Second Regiment of the Plymouth County militia when not at sea; Wallis was a militia veteran, too, along with Bates, who had marched off with Captain Israel Fearing and other local Minutemen to surround a Loyalist stronghold in Marshfield on April 19, 1775, the day the war started.

            Besides the cost of the True Blue, its armaments, and the bond deposit, the owners also invested in 35 barrels of beef and pork and 3,000 pounds of bread to feed the crew for an extended period at sea, starting October 28, 1776.

            The first few short cruises of the True Blue were fruitless. But on December 15, Captain Allen and True Blue were sailing near the Nantucket Shoals with the Rhode Island privateer schooner Eagle when a large ship was spotted, pursued, and captured after a short fight. The 500-ton chartered transport Addellgunte Loewise and its cargo became shared prizes to be sold at auction in February.

            On another cruise in March of 1777, True Blue’s crew captured Felicity, a 120-ton British brigantine. The ship and unspecified cargo were to be sold by the Mass. Maritime Court in April, according to a report in The Boston Gazette & Country Journal on April 7, 1777.

            A few months later, in August, an American brig carrying dried fish was recaptured from the British prize crew, adding to the ship’s profits. Two other British merchantmen were added to the prize tally that month; their names and cargoes remain obscured by history.

            There are no further records for True Blue after that fall. Perhaps it was captured, sold, or renamed, perhaps signed over to one of the partners when the prize money had to be divided up. As a shipowner and commander, Captain Allen would have gotten a double share of the tens of thousands of dollars in prize money that his five captures had earned – half of the third shared by the captain and officers and 20 percent of the third that the five partners would divide.

            Maybe Captain Allen had seen enough fighting and enough of the sea after that intense year of pursuing and capturing British ships. For whatever reason, sometime in 1777, he sold all his Mattapoisett property and relocated his family more than halfway across Massachusetts to Hardwick.

            He bought a farm and managed its production; during the rest of the war, he served on the town’s Committee of Correspondence and likely signed up with the local militia unit. In 1784, Allen sold his Hardwick holdings and bought a farm in Shutesbury, another small western Massachusetts town even farther away from the sea. Within two years, he was respected enough to be elected a selectman in that town.

            Oliver Allen’s nephew Robert Allen also settled there and raised a big family. Eventually, Oliver’s brother, cooper Joseph Allen of Newport, Rhode Island, moved there to stay with his son in his final years. The wartime adventures of his brothers, Thomas Allen and Benjamin Allen, another mariner, are stories for another day.

            These days, Captain Oliver Allen’s wartime legacy is probably known only by students of naval warfare in the American Revolution. But Mattapoisett can be proud knowing that one of its short-term residents helped our nation win its freedom almost 250 years ago.

            Robert Barboza is author of the 2014 history book, “Patriots of Old Dartmouth: Local Heroes of the American Revolution,” published by Vineyard Sound Books.

By Robert Barboza

            If you do an internet search for the first English child born of Mayflower Pilgrims, Peregrine White’s name will pop-up. He was the baby boy born to a couple that took a leap of faith in the 1600s, boarded a ship in Amsterdam, and sailed toward an unknowable land and an equally unknowable future.

            So, how does one research the lives of early colonists when there are scant documents and few if any written accounts of a person’s daily life? Ask Stephen C. O’Neill, author of the monograph “The Life of Peregrine White – The First Englishman Born in New England.” On March 21, the Mattapoisett Public Library, in partnership with the Mattapoisett Museum and sponsored by the library trustees as part of their Purrington Lecture Series, gave O’Neill the virtual floor to tell his story of seeking Peregrine White.

            A graduate of Boston College and Boston University, O’Neill is certainly well established to ferret out details of this long-ago colonist. He is currently the Hanover Historical Society’s executive director and has also been the associate director and curator of collections at Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth.

            O’Neill began by saying that, although White never became a great leader, never distinguishing himself during his lifetime in ways other male family members would do, White had the distinction of being the “first” infant born to Pilgrims while harboring off Provincetown on the Mayflower. Slight clarification: There had been another infant, but that child did not live, leaving White with the title of “first” Englishman born in New England.

            O’Neill said that the pandemic hindered a great deal of the research he normally would have undertaken combing dusty old archives in libraries that have been entrusted with early colonial ephemera. Yet what little he did find is intriguing while at the same time “begging more questions than answers,” he said. So, what is there to read and absorb of New England’s own first child? To answer that question, O’Neill found evidence of his birth, maps of his farm and homestead in Marshfield, several legal and court documents, and a notice of his death.

            To weave the story of the man, however, one has to be a storyteller.

            O’Neill said that White had been born to his mother, Susanna, and father, William, sometime in late November 1620. Amazingly, a wicker cradle attributed to the family has survived through the centuries and today is on display at Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth. O’Neill said that shining a light on White’s life means “filling in the gaps from cradle to grave.… His life had to be complicated.”

            White would become a captain of the local militia at the age of 16 and in 1648 would marry Sarah Bassett, whose own family is well documented as several members held positions of power and authority. Bassett was also related to the Winslows, another family of influence and governance in the colony. Yet White never seemed to be ambitious, O’Neill has concluded.

            The Whites would know a bit of documented drama, however, and it’s interesting to peek back in time and find this juicy little gem. O’Neill said that in 1648, Sarah, not yet married to White, was very much with child. The couple was fined for the crime of “fornication before marriage.” They paid the fine, and thus, “the matter was cleared,” court documents revealed. The following year, White would be found guilty of fighting with a neighbor and, upon admitting his guilt, “He was admonished to take heed – the matter was cleared,” another court document ascribed. Presumably, Mr. and Mrs. White would live happily ever after with their seven children and 29 grandchildren between the years of 1648 and 1704.

            A good storyteller always draws the audience into the tale, and O’Neill was able to do that, especially when he asked everyone to imagine the “travails of Susanna White in the third trimester of her pregnancy – cold, suffering uncomfortable conditions aboard the Mayflower and with child.” Yet they made it. The Whites arrived in the New World not only awaiting the birth of their second child but also with a five-year-old son named Resolved. Within the first year in the colony, Susanna would give birth and become a widow. Two servants who also traveled on the Mayflower with their employers, the Whites, would also be claimed by death. She was totally alone, at least for a little while.

            Another first for the White family would come when the widow Susanna would marry the widower Edward Winslow. Theirs was the first marriage in the Plymouth colony. White’s stepfather would one day become the mayor of the colony.

            O’Neill said that step-dad Winslow was a literate man, educated, and most assuredly would have educated his children. Given Winslow’s literacy and upward mobility, “Peregrine must have felt pressure to take on duties.” But what those might have been are unknown. In a follow-up, O’Neill said that, although correspondence to or from White was lacking, records of his life do exist and, given his long lifetime basically in one location in Marshfield, parts of White’s history are accessible.

            What is documented is that White was given land by his stepfather Winslow along the South River in Marshfield and most likely was a lifelong farmer. A glorious map of his deeded lands rests in archives. And although he seems to have settled into farming and being a family man, he did become a “freeman” at the age of 31, gaining the right to vote. It’s easy to surmise that having the distinction of being a freeman was important to White, especially considering there were only 11 other freemen in Marshfield at the time. The term “freeman” simply meant a man was a full citizen of the colony with the right to vote or hold office as outlined in the first Massachusetts charter.

            Going back to the beforementioned wicker cradle that was in use through the mid-1800s, its existence after so many centuries is amazing unto itself. O’Neill illustrated its historical provenance by showing a painting from a Dutch master from the era in which a wicker cradle is pictured; it is a nearly identical model to the one now on display at Pilgrim Hall formally belonging to the White family. O’Neill said that it was easy to carry aboard the ship, given its lightweight construction compared to solid wood construction.

            And speaking of wood, the Marshfield Historical Society has an engraving done by Marcia Thomas in 1854, depicting an apple tree planted by their famous native son, Peregrine White. A piece of the actual tree is now in the collection of the Hanover Historical Society.

            While much remains unanswered of New England’s first Englishman’s life, more pieces may be found when studying other more prominent family members such as White’s older brother, Resolved. Records indicate that the older brother would travel to Barbados to handle business affairs for his sister-in-law. Younger brother White, our Peregrine, “may only have gone as far as Middleboro in his entire life,” O’Neill guesses. But, pray tell I, he now travels in our thoughts.

            To learn more, contact O’Neill at the Hanover Historical Society at 781-826-9575.

By Marilou Newell