By Hope We Came

André Forand was eleven years old when he ran the dock road to meet his father's ship coming in from the war with Spain, watched every sailor walk down the gangway, and found that his father was not among them. Twelve years later he crossed the Atlantic himself with the Carignan-Salières regiment, marched south into the Mohawk valley in Tracy's 1666 campaign, and stayed in New France when the regi...

Robert Chapman crossed the Atlantic on a twenty-five ton Norwegian bark too small for the open sea and landed on a wilderness shore where he helped build the fort at the mouth of the Connecticut River. Through the winter of 1636 the Pequot besieged that fort, and Robert stood sentinel through six months of hunger, raids, and a marsh ambush that killed four of the twelve men sent out with him. Year...