For many years when I worked in the bookstore one of the books I sold every Thanksgiving was Sarah Morton's Day, a picture book about a young girl living at Plimoth Plantation. So it came as a pleasant surprise when I found out Sarah Morton was my ancestress.
Her father was my 9x great grandfather George Morton. He was a merchant who arrived in Plymouth from Leiden, Holland in 1623 on the ship Anne, but because he died only a year later he didn't have much of a chance to leave his mark. With him came his wife Julianna Carpenter (whom he had married in Leiden on 22July 1612) and their five children.
Julianna (Carpenter)Morton was related to many of the most prominent Pilgrims, one of whom was Governor William Bradford. He took in young Nathaniel Morton as secretary to himself and the colonial government and Nathaniel eventually wrote a history of early Plymouth. In it, he wrote this about his father George Morton:
The latter of the two forenamed, namely, Mr. George Morton, was a pious, gracious servant of God, and very faithful in whatsoever public employment he was betrusted withal, and an unfeigned well willer, and, according to his sphere and condition, a suitable promoter of the common good and growth of the plantation of New Plimouth ; laboring to still the discontents that sometimes would arise amongst some spirits, by occasion of the difficulties of these new beginnings ; but it pleased God to put a period to his days soon after his arrival in New England, not surviving a full year after his coming ashore. With much comfort and peace he fell asleep in the Lord, in the month of June, anno 1624. -p.65
New-England's Memorial Congregational Board of Publication, Boston, Ma., 1855
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