Transatlantic connections

The tomb of Adam Winthrop, Groton church, Suffolk, UK (above). Below the house the Winthrops built in the 16th century in Barn Street, Lavenham.

Groton in Suffolk is the beginning of the Winthrop trail, which I followed across the Atlantic to Boston. The Winthrop family were fullers. In the production of Lavenham blue cloth, the fullers took the woven cloth and washed and pounded it to compact the weave. The Winthrops of Lavenham lived in Barn Street. They belonged to the Fuller's Guild in the City of London and were able to afford to educated their sons. Adam Winthrop became a successful lawyer and bought the manor of Groton. He married the heiress to the manor of Edwardstone. Adam's son, John, was married four times. Three times in England and the fourth after he took his family and many other families from Boxford and Groton across the Atlantic to the New World. John Winthrop and his fellow puritans emigrated in the Arbella in 1630. They founded a new colony on the east coast of the New World. I found the tomb of John Winthrop in Boston, Massachusetts.