Thomas Mayhew
Governor Thomas Mayhew, the Elder (April 1, 1593 – March 25, 1682) established the first European settlement on Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket and adjacent islands in 1642.
Through the agency of Matthew Cradock of London, Mayhew had been appointed to manage properties in Medford, Massachusetts, and to engage in trade and shipbuilding.
[citation needed] Mayhew and his fellow settlers found a large and economically stable native population of about 3,000 living in permanent villages, led by four sachems (chiefs).
So successful were these policies that during the bloody battles of King Philip's War, in 1675-1676, the Vineyard's native population never stirred, although they outnumbered the settlers on the island by twenty to one.
The Mayhew family, which from that time forth became an integral part of island history, wanted to share its religion with the natives, but the Wampanoags were not too interested, having their own spiritual faith.
As soon as Mayhew could converse with the natives, he would some days "walk 20 miles through uncut forests to preach the Gospel...in wigwam or open field".
There were more visitors from off island and some stayed, challenging the Mayhew government, while Baptists and Methodists arrived to make converts from the established Congregational Church.
The Governor and his grandson Matthew were made "joint Lords of the Manor of Tisbury", and the inhabitants became manorial tenants subject to the feudal jurisdiction of the Mayhews.
Nine years later the political rule of his family ended when Martha's Vineyard was annexed by Massachusetts after the Glorious Revolution in England, but the manorial land tenure remained.
Although some of the Mayhews clung to the "pleasant fiction" of their manorial rights almost until the American Revolution and received token quit rents as late as 1732, feudalism on Martha's Vineyard died the same slow, lingering but certain death it did elsewhere in the colonies.
The elder Thomas Mayhew, known for his missionary work, was not concerned for Indian souls when he settled on his island; he sought only to improve his social and economic position.
Somewhere, he received a liberal education, apparently from private tutors, and after moving to the Vineyard to begin the white settlement there he became pastor of the small Anglican church as well as acting governor in his father's absence.
He soon discovered that he could not refuse the challenge he found among the three thousand Pokanaukets, a branch of the mainland Narragansetts, who far outnumbered the whites, so an effective settlement required friendly relations with the Indians.
But Thomas the Younger appears to have been motivated largely by spiritual concern, while his father and other members of the family enjoyed the practical results of the Indian mission.
As the elder Mayhew put it, his son had followed this work "when 'twas bare with him for food and rayment, and when indeede there was nothing in sight any waies but Gods promises."
When the venerable Governor Mayhew became ill one Sunday evening in 1682, he calmly informed his friends and relatives that "his Sickness would now be to Death, and he was well contented therewith, being full of Days, and satisfied with Life".
His great-grandson, Experience Mayhew, a son of John, was only eight at the time, but he clearly remembered being led to the bedside to receive from the dying man a blessing "in the Name of the Lord".
