♂Love Brewster

Love Brewster (about 1612 – 1650) was a colonist of Plymouth Colony who crossed on the Mayflower in 1620 as a boy, a son of Elder William Brewster, and later a farmer of Duxbury. His will was witnessed by Captain Myles Standish, who swore to it before the colony’s court, and in it he claimed land due to him by right of his “first coming into the land … in the yeare 1620”. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Wrestling Brewster (1644–1696).

Early life and the crossing

Love was born about 1612 at Leiden in Holland, where his parents, William Brewster (1566–1644) and his wife Mary (1568–1627), had settled with the English separatist congregation that later sailed as the Pilgrims. His given name, like those of his sisters Patience and Fear and his younger brother Wrestling, follows the Puritan fashion for names drawn from virtues and the life of the soul. In 1620, aged about eight, he sailed on the Mayflower with his parents and his brother Wrestling; the older children followed on later ships. In the division of the colony’s cattle on 1 June 1627 (New Style), he and Wrestling were listed in their father’s lot.

Duxbury

On 15 May 1634 he married Sarah Collier (1616–1691) at Plymouth, a daughter of William Collier, one of the London merchant adventurers who had backed the colony and who had come over in 1633. He was admitted a freeman of Plymouth Colony on 2 March 1635/36. He soon moved to Duxbury, where his father had land, and according to a Brewster family genealogy published in 1908 he farmed the family acres there and lived in the Elder’s own house, part of which came to him and his children.

In 1637 his name appears among the Plymouth men who volunteered for the Pequot War; the war was over before Plymouth’s company set out. In the military enrollment of 1643 he was listed in Captain Myles Standish’s Duxbury company, and the same year he served on the grand jury from Duxbury. When his father died at Plymouth in April 1644 without a will, the colony court on 5 June 1644 granted administration of the estate to “his onely two sonnes surviveing”, Jonathan and Love, who swore to the inventory together. In 1645 Love was one of the proprietors of the extension of Duxbury that later became the town of Bridgewater.

Will and death

Love Brewster made his will at Duxbury on 6 October 1650, “being in pfect memory”. He left each of his four children, Nathaniel, William, Wrestling and Sarah, a kettle, and each of his three sons a gun. His wife Sarah received the rest of the estate, including the land at Duxbury, “for her bringing up of her and my Children”, with the land to pass after her death to the eldest son, Nathaniel, and failing him to William and then Wrestling. His books he left to his wife to share out among herself and the children “at her discresion”. To the three sons equally he gave all the land due to him “by Purchase and first coming into the land Which was in the yeare 1620”, the rights the colony allowed those who had come on the first ships. Myles Standish witnessed the will, and on 4 March 1650/51 he swore to it before the General Court at Plymouth.

He died at Duxbury between the making of the will and 31 January 1650/51, when the inventory of his estate was taken; Governor William Bradford, listing the Mayflower passengers, wrote that “his son Love lived till this year. 1650. and dyed”. The 1908 Brewster genealogy adds that his widow Sarah married Richard Parke of Cambridge after September 1656, and that she died at Plymouth in 1691, recorded by the church there as “mris Sarah Parke, widow”.

Notes

The family record gives his death as 1 October 1650, five days before the date of his own will; the will and the inventory place his death between 6 October 1650 and 31 January 1650/51. Some compiled sources give 1651, which is the same winter written in the modern calendar, since the legal year then began on 25 March. A compiled genealogy of the Mayflower families places his birth about 1611, probably in Holland, and some compilations date the marriage 25 May 1634; the published marriage indexes give 15 May.