Stotfold – A Family Adventure

Back in 1600 AD near the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Gerard and Alice a young couple in England married at the bride’s parish church in Edworth then made their home in nearby Stotfold, the groom’s hometown, a small village in Bedfordshire. Every time Gerard and Alice were blessed with a newborn child, they took the infant to St Mary the Virgin Church in the center of Stotfold to be christened. One of the younger sons, Karen’s direct ancestor, was christened in 1614 and is of particular importance to us. Eleven years later Gerard passed away and was buried in the churchyard. Alice survived him by four years. Shortly thereafter around the the year 1630, six of their children made the decision to leave England for religious reasons and to voyage to New England where they could worship as they saw fit. They were among the Puritans under the leadership of John Winthrop that established themselves in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Four of those children have been well known to genealogists as The Four Spencer Brothers who thrived in the colonies and whose descendents in the United States are countless. Today, on a Sunday morning, with Karen’s sister Lou and her daughter and family we visited the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin hoping to find a headstone for Gerard, Karen’s Ninth Great Grandfather. As Sunday services ended one parishioner greeted Steve in the churchyard and learned of our mission. Soon we were in conversation with the Rector, Rev. Bill Britt and his wife, Theresa. Rev. Bill immediately knew the Stotfold history of the Spencers and that they emigrated in or around 1630. We got to see the baptismal font where the Spencer children were christened and where later today as he performs a christening he will, as he routinely does, reference the Spencer family story of emigration when he talks about an infant’s christening as a begining to a life story with an as yet unknown ending. It was an incredible experience for us to walk where ancestors walked, to stand in a church with a history of at least nine hundred years knowing they were part of it’s history, and to touch the baptismal font that was already at least two centuries old when Gerard and Alice’s children were christened and is still in use to this very day. Little did Gerard and Alice know that they would long be remembered and that four hundred years later descendants would pilgrimage to Stotfold to walk in their footsteps.

After we’d taken leave of Rev. Bill & Theresa and spend a little more time in the churchyard, we took ourselves to The Chequers in the center of town for a Sunday Roast out on the patio. The history of this pub dates back to 1645, a few years after our ancestors left. From there we made our way to Stotfold Mill, the reason we chose a Sunday to visit Stotfold. It’s a lovingly restored water mill that is open to the public on only a few select dates each year. It’s got a fascinating history that dates back to before 1086 when four water mills were recorded in the Domesday Book. In fact Stotfold history goes back much further with evidence of human habitation nearly five thousand years ago in the Stone Age. The mill itself continued in operation until a devastating fire in 1992. In the years that followed the Stotfold Mill Preservation Trust organized to rebuild and restore the mill and preserve it as well as to establish the Stotfold Nature Reserve, We spent a most pleasant couple of hours there immersing ourselves in the history and operation of the mill, enjoying watching the swans swim by on the River Ivel and pausing for refreshment in Randalls Tea Room before we exchanged goodbye hugs to family members as they dropped us off at the Letchworth Garden Station for our train ride back to Hampstead after an absolutely incredible adventure together.