Mirabilis Member Years

There shall be initially 410 Mirabilis Members. Mirabilis is latin for miracle. The Mirabilis Members will each be unique in that they will adopt a year in the great American story.

1620

English settlers aboard the Mayflower spotted land, which proved to be Cape Cod, after a harrowing voyage of more than three months on the Atlantic Ocean. They sang the 100th Psalm in thanks to God for enabling them to survive the voyage. They became known as the “Pilgrims” and established the Plymouth Colony on the shore of Massachusetts.

1621

Squanto walks into Pilgrim camp and speaks English, a providential boon to communication with the native tribes and the beginning of what would eventually amount to a bi-lateral treaty of peace and mutual defense with the Wampanoags that will last fifty years.

1622

Chief of the Powhatans, Opechancanough led a general massacre intending to kill all the white settlers in Virginia. A young Christian Indian named Chanco warned Jamestown settlement of the impending attack and the fort stood ready. The small settlements and homes along the James and York Rivers, however, were lulled into complacency by the apparent friendliness of the Indians. More than three hundred fifty men, women and children were slaughtered, including John Rolfe. Had it not been for Chanco, the Virginia colony may have been wiped out entirely.

1623

Plymouth Colony abandoned communal crops and parceled out the land for private use. A bumper harvest resulted with profit all around.

1624

John Smith published A General History of Virginia upon which much of our knowledge of the early settlement of the colony is based.
The King, displeased with the Virginia Company that settled Jamestown, withdrew the charter and made Virginia a Royal Colony. Charles I, James I successor, allows them to continue ruling themselves through their elected General Assembly, but now also with a Royal Governor

1625

The beloved pastor of the Pilgrims, John Robinson, died in Leyden, Holland, from which place they had set out five years earlier. They waited in vain for his coming to America, but he was providentially detained to continue preaching to the congregation that remained. Elder Brewster continued leading the church.

1626

Dutch General Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan from the native Lenapes for sixty guilders and named the colony New Amsterdam under the auspices of the West India Company. Their chief economic pursuit would be the fur trade along the Hudson River to Fort Orange, now Albany.
The Dutch settled in New Jersey

1627

Charles I launched a half-hearted attempt to rescue the Huguenot Protestants at La Rochelle, suggesting to the home-grown Puritans that the new King was not interested in protecting the Reformed Faith in England either.

1628

Dutch Admiral Piet Heyn captured the Spanish treasure fleet outside Havana scoring enough money to finance the West India Company on all sorts of ventures, including renewed investment in New Amsterdam.

1629

Members of the Salem community in Massachusetts organize their own congregation and called a pastor, setting the pattern that would be followed throughout New England as Congregationalism evolves apart from the Anglican establishment.