Hi,
Thank you very much for your input on this.
Of course you are absolutely right - the reference I have doesn't necessarily imply that William Drysdale himself was going to travel to Virginia.
That was really the main reason why I was trying to locate the original text in the Sainsburys extract - to see if it gave any further information on the circumstances of William Drysdale and the men he was transporting.
Although I couldn't find any Drysdales in Virginia in the 1630s and 1640s, I did find a number of 'James Drysdale' references for Charles city in the period 1658 - 1665 and also a 'Thomas Drysdale' in Boston in 1660. These could possibly be William's sons.
Since yesterday's post I've managed to unearth some further info on William Drysdale himself in London:
In the early 1600s William's family was the only Drysdale family in London, and, together with his wife Mary Miller (or Muller) they had at least 3 daughters (one died) and at least two sons (one died).
He was a craftsman, a 'saddletree maker' (the wooden framework of a horse's saddle) and his business must have been good because he moved up from Wapping in the East end of London (in 1610) to Westminster, next to the Houses of Parliament in the 1630s.
His father & his wife died in 1635, (both are buried in St Margarets Church, Westminster).
So in 1636, in those circumstances, noting that he was a craftsman rather than a trader, it is not unreasonable to postulate that he was perhaps travelling to Virginia with 6 men to start a new saddlemaking business there.
Regarding the possibility of additional editions of Sainburys abstracts having different page numbers, this may well be the case - I don't know.
The only possible anomaly I can see from the original reference is that it mentions the word 'Docquet' within the footnote?
Thanks again & best regards
