By Faith Alone One Family's Epic Journey Through American Protestantism

Part One Europe Beginning at the Beginning I sat in the passenger lounge at Newark Liberty International Airport one Friday evening, sipping a beer and scribbling notes to myself as I waited to board a flight to London. I jotted down the surnames of my English ancestors, boldly retracing the letters over and over again. Towne . . . Woolsey . . . Jenney . . . In the days before the Norman Conquest in 1066, the people who lived in the land we know today as England came by their names pretty casually. Each person would, of course, be given a first name at birth, but last names evolved over time based on various criteria: a person's particular skill or trade (Miller or Cooper, for example), where they hailed from (my mother's maiden name, Norris, was a very common English name meaning "northerner"), or some physical characteristic (my maternal grandmother was a Benne, which The Oxford Dictionary of English Surnames says was a nickname meaning "the plump, lumpish one"). The name Towne (and all of its many variations, including Town and Townes) was derived from the Old English word tun, which meant "homestead" or "village." A twelfth-century Englishman named William who lived in the village might have been referred to as William de tun. By the thirteenth century, surnames not only became more common, but also hereditary, with names passed on from one generation to the next. By that time, William de tun would have become William Town, or, in my family's case, Towne. Woolsey was originally spelled variously as Wulcy or Wulsi. It was derived from the nickname "wolf's eye," which was common in Suffolk. It is not exactly clear where Jenney came from. It was either from an old Cornish name, Genn, from which names like Jennifer, Gene, and Jean are also derived, or it may have been from an old French name, Jene, which the Normans brought with them. When my flight was called, I finished my beer and headed for the boarding gate. As I was taking my seat on the jet a flight attendant greeted me, took my drink order, and handed me a dinner menu and a small gift bag. After I stowed my luggage and got myself situated, I opened the bag. Inside I found a pair of black socks, a sleeping mask, lip balm, toothpaste, a toothbrush, and some breath mints, everything to make a transatlantic flight more comfortable. It was all very nice and luxurious, but it made me feel self-conscious, because all I could think about were the hardships my seventeenth-century ancestors endured when they made their own journeys across the Atlantic. Conditions on the merchant ships they sailed on were difficult, the food was horrible, and there was the very real possibility that during the two months they were at sea, one could fall ill and maybe even die. Here I was, with black booties and breath mints on board a luxury jet that would take only seven hours to get to England. I tucked the bag in the seat pocket in front of me, unopened. These ancestors of mine were members of history's holiest generation, the Puritans. They were among the tens of thousands of English men and women born between 1590 and 1610 who passionately took a stand for their faith, sought to transform England into a community of godly people, and when that failed they made the decision to start from scratch and form their own holy community on the American continent. What would my ancestors think of their holy community today? One that explicitly separated church from state, that banned prayer in the classroom and displays of the Ten Commandments outside courthouses, and debated dropping "under God" from its national pledge and currency. The Puritans, who punished members of their own community for missing a single worship service, would no doubt be dismayed to know that by the early twenty-first century, church attendance in America had eroded to roughlyGriffeth, Bill is the author of 'By Faith Alone One Family's Epic Journey Through American Protestantism', published 2007 under ISBN 9780307337283 and ISBN 0307337286.