• Everyone should write down a family history of what they know
• What a historical boon it would have been if Jeremiah Henley had written down what he knew
• The Henleys came here in what was termed “The Great Puritan Migration”

PICAYUNE, Miss. — I have from an early age been extremely interested in history, actually majored in it in college just because I liked it, and enjoyed reading it, but my eyes were opened much more by studying my own history, my family history, because my family, especially on my mother’s side, is so tied up in the whole panorama of American history as it progressed through colonial times, on through the early stages of the Republic and through the devastating Civil War.

I have often thought about if, what I consider my most important forbear, Jeremiah Henley, had sat down and wrote down all he had known (he was born during the American Revolution and lived into the 1850s or 1860s) on paper what a marvelous history that would have been. He might have done that but it did not survive. That’s why if you do write something, you had better make sure you place it in an archieve that will preserve it.

I propose to write down here all I know about my family, on my mother’s side first, the Henleys, and on my father’s side next, the Farrells, or as I later learned, the Sparkmans, too. More on that name change later.  My father’s people were Irish. My mother’s side were pure-blood English from Dorcetshire England. I will present an  overall summary from memory first and then backtrack and begin to go over it in more researched detail on the second take.

It was 1630 in England. King James I had died in 1625 and his son King Charles I, a Catholic, had assumed the throne. What were called the Puritans had consumed Parliament and there was a titanic religious and political struggle going on between the throne and parliament.

The king claimed he was ruling through a God-given divine right and maintained his word was supreme. The Parliament, inhabited by independent businessnessmen, the bourgoise, most holdiing a religious persuasion that came to be know as Puritanism, and its adherents, Puritans.

The Puritans wanted to “cleanse” the English church, the Anglican Church, established by King Henry VIII when he broke with the Roman Catholic Church over a dispute over his marriage vows. The Puritans dispised the Catholics, which still held much influence in England, and wanted to further cleanse the Anglican church of poppish ritual and ceremony. The Puritans, Bible readers and believers, also challenged the doctrine of the divine right of kings and maintained political power represented in the Parliament was derived justly from the people, and Parliament, therefore, was supreme and held the last word.

The situation was pregnant with potential violence, and many saw a inevitable civil war between Catholics, Cavaliers, and Puritans, Roundheads, a description applied to Puritan soldiers because of the way they cut their hair. Many began to flee England, deathly afraid of the gathering violence. Puritans left in the hundreds of thousands, and it became known as the Great Puritain Migration. And they all headed for America.

The first English settlement had been established at Jamestown in 1607, at Plymouth in 1620 and shortly thereafter the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established, which became the headquarters for Puritanism in America. My earliest known forbears, Charles and Henry Henley, brothers, were among these Puritans that left England. And it is no wonder that they were extremely religious, Protestants (that is not adherents to Catholicism) and were involved in the Puritain movement. The Henleys have always been partial to and prone to strong religious expression and many have been lay preachers.

I have heard two stories on how they got to Virginia, just north of Jamestown in 1630, only 23 years after the first permanent English settlement was founded in America. One story is that they both became indentured servants, and for fare to America, signed an agreement to work for a man or family for seven years to pay back their ship fare. The other story is that they knew a ship captain and merchant named Perry, who gave them the money to cross the Atlantic to Virginia.

The Henleys were always close to the Perrys, intermarrying with them and naming their children after them. Jeremiah married a Perry at first, and my great-grandfather Byrl Perry Henley was named after one of Jeremiah’s Perry friends. The Perrys are still prevalent in the Henleyfield Community that Jeremiah founded.

Anyway, they made it to what would later become America, the home of the brave and land of the free. Of course, they were still English subjects then and had no idea they were helping blaze a new trail for a new nation.

They were just seeking freedom to practice their religious beliefs without interference from ruling despots.

Millions have come to these shores for that same religious purpose.

(More to come)