Benjamin Church
Protagonist of a decision-forcing case
You, Benjamin Church, were born to Richard Church and Elizabeth Church (née Warren). in the Town of Plymouth, in the colony of New Plymouth, in the Year of Grace 1639.
Your father, who had been trained as a carpenter, enjoyed sufficient prosperity in England afford his own passage to America. Thus, in 1630, shortly after the founding of the colony at Massachusetts Bay, he appears in the records of that colony as a ‘freeman’. Soon thereafter, he moved to Plymouth, where he became what, in later years, might be called a ‘real estate developer’. That is, he bought land, built houses, and sold the improved lots to people who preferred turn-key solutions to ‘do it yourself’ homesteading.
In 1636, Richard Church volunteered for the fifty-man force formed by New Plymouth for service in the war against the Pequot people of the Connecticut Valley. There he served alongside Constant Southworth, the stepson of William Bradford, the ‘once and future’ governor of the colony.
The war ended before this little company completed its pre-deployment training program. Nonetheless, the friendship between Southworth and your father continued. Indeed, this brief experience of military life may have provided the latter with his entrée into the outer circle of the inner ring of Plymouth society, the most obvious evidence of which was his marriage to your mother, the daughter of one of the original settlers of the colony.
You followed in his father’s footsteps. However, whenever you could spare time from the family business, you hunted, fished, and explored. Indeed, you often managed to combine quests for promising properties with the pursuit of deer, ducks, turkeys, and wolves.
In 1667, you married Alice, the daughter of Constant Southworth. (At that time, you father’s old friend was serving as both the treasurer of New Plymouth and one of the five members of the governor’s council.)
In 1673, you joined a partnership formed to develop land purchased from the Sakonnet people, who lived on the eastern shore of Narraganset Bay (and thus the westernmost portion of New Plymouth.) In that same year, Alice presented you with a son, whom you named Thomas.
For Further Reading
This is starting well. I wonder if Benjamin will be able to hand King Philip a surprise or two in this series?
I like this approach to bios - it helps to set up the early childhood and later social networks influences, and lets players being to think about what his psychological make up and thinking patterns might have been.