Careswell - history of Winslow House, Marshfield, Mass

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2001 by John B. Hermanson

The Historic Winslow House in Marshfield, Massachusetts

The Pilgrims came to America just to keep their religion pure but also to win fame and fortune. In 1620 Edward Winslow (1595-1655) arrived in America on board the Mayflower with his wife and servants. [1] Today, Careswell, the family's estate in Marshfield, Massachusetts, stands as a memorial to the secular status the Winslows attained over the next two hundred years.

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In the seventeenth century property ownership was the hallmark of the English aristocracy and the aspiration of the middling classes. The quest for property could be played out in New England by a "division" of land outside the town boundaries. The granting of small tracts eased the pressure of a growing population and the granting of large tracts rewarded gentlemen already prominent in the colony. After describing how Duxbury broke away from the town of Plymouth after one such division, William Bradford (1560-1657), governor and chronicler of Plymouth Colony, described how Edward Winslow obtained his land:

To prevent any farther scatering from this place, and weakning of the same, was thought best to give out some good farms to spetiall persons, that would promise to live at Plimoth, and likely to be helpfull to the church or comonewelth, and so tye the lands to Plimoth as farmes for the same.... And so some spetiall lands were granted...at Green's Harbor [today Marshfield] [2] ....

Thus, in 1632, Edward Winslow was granted a large tract, between 850 and 1,000 acres, in "a plase very weell medowed, and fit to keep and rear catle, good store," wrote Bradford. "But, alass!," he continued, this remedy proved worse than the disease; for within a few years those that had thus gott footing rente themselves away, partly by force, and partly by wearing the rest with importunitie and pleas of necessitie, so as they must either suffer them to goe, or live in continuall opposition and contention. [3]

Winslow named his estate "Careswell," after Kerswell, the ancestral Winslow estate in Worestershire, England. In the years immediately following 1632 Winslow did return in the winters to the town of Plymouth as agreed, but by 1636 he had built the first of the Winslow houses at Careswell and had moved his family there permanently. By 1640 Winslow and the other property owners in Green's Harbor wheedled, cajoled, and bullied the Massachusetts General Court (legislature) to be allowed to create a new township within the colony separate from the town of Plymouth. It was just what Bradford had feared. [4]

The separation from the town of Plymouth was doubtlessly facilitated by the fact that Edward Winslow had become governor of Plymouth Plantation, eventually serving three terms (1633, 1636, and 1644). When not governor, he was almost continually a member of the General Court and deputy governor. Winslow also represented both Plymouth Plantation and the neighboring Massachusetts Bay Colony in England. In 1646, during the English Revolution, he went back to serve the cause of Oliver Cromwell (Lord Protector; 1653-1658), and died in 1655 in the English campaign to capture the Spanish West Indies.

He was buried at sea off Hispaniola.

Josiah Winslow (1628-1680), Edward Winslow's only surviving son, [5] inherited Careswell. Josiah rose to become almost as distinguished as his father--and much wealthier. Like his father, Josiah became governor of Plymouth Colony (1673-1680). He served as commander-in-chief of the New England troops in King Philip's War (1675-1676)--a war he was accused of precipitating by poisoning King Philip's brother, Alexander, at Careswell.

Careswell grew. Edward Winslow had added parcels of land to the original grant, and in 1662 the estate was further enlarged. A second seventeenth-century Foundation has been found next to that of Edward Winslow's original house. It may be from a house built by Josiah Winslow for his family while his mother, Susanna White Winslow (d. 1680), continued to occupy the first house until her death.

Both Susanna Winslow and her son Josiah died in 1680, and Careswell passed to Josiah's only surviving son, Isaac (1671-1738). Known as "Honorable Isaac" for his public service as judge of the probate court and chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas at Plymouth, he was also president of the council for the Massachusetts Bay Colony and a colonel in the militia.

Honorable Isaac Winslow had, perhaps, a less distinguished career than his father and grandfather, but he left a more lasting monument to the Winslow family. It was he, who at the age of nine had inherited Careswell with its two houses, and later built the third house--the "Historic Winslow House" that stands today a quarter-mile north of those earlier sites. The weight and continuity of Winslow family tradition and the conflation of house and estate going back to 1632 can be seen in the fact that Isaac's new house, built after Governor Edward Winslow and Governor Josiah Winslow were long dead, was still referred to as "the governor's house" two generations later. [6]

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Careswell - history of Winslow House, Marshfield, Mass

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2001 by John B. Hermanson

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