Talk:Elizabeth Poole

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I could not find much information about Elizabeth Poole. I edited article based on the references available. In particular, there was one statement I left out: "Also, she was the first-ever business woman in the Americas." If someone can find a reference to this, they're welcome to put it back into the article.Glendoremus 06:55, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Some proposed changes

The information about Elizabeth Pole is wrong. I am writing from the Old Colony History Museum in Taunton, MA which is where Elizabeth Pole lived when she came to the New World. There is a lot of misinformation about her. I would suggest using the following information:

Elizabeth Pole or Poole (25 August 1588 – 21 May 1654) was an English settler in Plymouth Colony who was among the founders of the town of Taunton, Massachusetts. Historically, the name has been spelled many different ways. Today, it is generally spelled “P-O-L-E” and pronounced “Pool.”

Pole was a well-born woman from Shute in East Devon, near Axminster. She was the daughter of Sir William Pole, who was knighted by James I in 1601, and Mary Peryam, the daughter of Sir William Peryam, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer. Until 2009, her family's descendants, the Pole-Carews, lived in the Devonshire house she was born in, Shute Barton a National Trust property which is open to the public on four weekends during the year. (The property is now refurbished and let by the Trust as holiday accommodation).

Elizabeth sailed from Plymouth, England in 1633 on the Speedwell with two friends, fourteen servants, goods, and twenty tons of salt for fishing provision. We know she was in the New World by 1635 as she and her brother William Pole were listed as being residents of New England at the time of their father’s death in 1635. Records also indicate she may have gone back to England around that time and returned in 1637, as the ship Speedwell’s manifests includes her name in 1637. It is likely that the 14 other people she traveled with included indentured servants who would have worked on the newly-established farm, which Elizabeth named “Littleworth.”

She intended to form a settlement and for the conversion of the Native Americans to Christianity.] Although the Taunton town seal depicts Pole purchasing land from the local Wampanoag Indians, she was not actually involved in the original transaction. However, together with her brother William, she acquired a large section of this land in 1637. This led to the development of the Taunton settlement in 1638. The next year, on 3 March 1639, the settlement was officially incorporated. A 1639 deed exists that was signed by forty-six proprietors who bought the land they called Cohannet adjacent to Teticut for $1,450. Elizabeth Pole is not one of those proprietors, but her brother William is. By 1640, both Cohannet and Tetiquet joined and land was re-named Taunton after the shire town in Somerset, England where most of the settlers had originated.

There are no surviving documents about her actions in the land transactions that led to the formation of the Taunton. However, there are reliable written accounts left which mention Elizabeth Pole. For example, there is John Winthrop’s diary, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony, in which he wrote in November of 1637: “This year a plantation was begun at Teticutt, by a gentlewoman, an ancient maid, one Mrs. [Mistress] Poole.

Legend has surrounded Elizabeth Pole for some time, and she is often referred to as the first women to found a town in America. This allegorical story is even emblazoned on Taunton’s City Seal., and the city’s Latin motto, “Dux Femina Facti” is a line from the ancient Roman epic poem the Aeneid, which means “This was the deed of a woman.”

Local artist Ralph Davol sculpted Taunton’s most well-known women on a plaque that graces the front entrance of the Pilgrim Congregational Church on Broadway. Here she is shown with an actual quote from the only writing that survives by her, which is in her last will and testament: “Unto the Church of God in Taunton, I give one cow.” The plaque was later brought to life in a parade float from the 1964 Centennial Anniversary of Taunton becoming a city.

Ralph Davol also captured what he imagined were Elizabeth Pole’s brave, noble, and pious qualities in his drawing, “Faith in the Forest” which was used as a basis for a mural in the Elizabeth Pole Elementary School.

Elizabeth Pole rests in Taunton’s Plain Cemetery, where she was interred after her original burial spot on her home lot was disturbed when a new cellar was dug. She had moved to the center of town toward the end of her life and lived near the church she had helped to found on today’s Main Street. Taunton’s famous 18th-century resident and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Robert Treat Paine, wrote the epitaph for the marble monument: Here rest the remains OF MISS ELIZABETH POOL A native of Old England Of good family, Friends, and Prospects, All of which she left, in the Prime of her Life, To enjoy the religion of her conscience In this distant wilderness A great proprietor in the township Of Taunton; A chief promoter of its settlement, And its incorporation 1639-40, About which time she settled near this spot, And having employed the opportunity of her Virgin state In piety, liberality, and sancitity of manners, Died may 21, A.D. 1654, aged LXV (65) To whose memory, This monument is gratefully erected By her next of kin, John Borland, Esq. A.D. 1771

Her gravesite was re-dedicated and the marble stone protected with a clear cover in 1960 when a descendant, Sir John Carew Pole, visited.

An interior door from Shute House that was donated to Taunton’s First Parish Church still stands in the entry vestibule to First Parish Church and is a tangible piece of Elizabeth Pole’s past. The reason it is called “First Parish” is that it was the first congregation founded in what is now Bristol County, and we know that Elizabeth Pole was a founder of that church because she reportedly signed its covenant. Though the document itself is no longer in existence, that event is commemorated at the church in stained glass along with other important moments in Taunton’s history.

Elizabeth Pole’s name appears on other documents; for example, she was an investor in the early ironworks. After Saugus, Taunton had the second successful iron foundry in America due to the natural bog iron in the ground. We know from Mistress Pole’s will that she had regained some of the wealth she had given up in England and was able to leave her nephew, John, her share of the ironworks. To her niece, Mary, she left most of her clothing and household utensils, and a cow. To the Congregational church, she left another cow, and one to Margery Paull, a widow and her “kind and old friend.” The bulk of her estate—her land, most of her livestock, and two houses—were left to her brother William.

From the inventory taken following her death at the age of 66, we know that her household effects were indeed impressive when compared to others of the day. For example, she owned a great deal of linen and wool—which were the most expensive things a person could own in the days when it was all made by hand from flax and the coats of sheep. She even owned luxury items such as lace, needlework cushions, blue and white earthenware, pewter and silver tablewares, and even some “pictures and tracings.”

In Taunton today there is a small plaque showing where her home lot was on Main Street (now on the front of the St. Pierre’s Shoe store). A street in the north part of Taunton near Lake Sabbatia is named after her. An elementary school (that has the mural “Faith in the Forest”) still bears her name. A turn of the 19th-century fire pumping wagon in the collection of Old Colony History Museum used her name. The site of Littleworth Farm and so-called “Stall Hill” where Elizabeth was said to have protected her cattle was flooded by the creation of cranberry bogs around 1905, and then even more so by the creation of Lake Rico in the 1970s. Part of East Taunton is still called “Pole Plain” because of its association with Elizabeth and William Pole.

Mount Pleasant Cemetery’s plot number one was dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth Pole in 1836 and her marble monument reads: The Females of Taunton have erected this monument in honour of ELISABETH POOL. Foundress of the town of Taunton in 1637. Born before the settlement of America in England, 1589, died at Taunton May 21, 1654

Sources include the exhibits here at the OCHM (http://www.oldcolonyhistorymuseum.org/) Chapter 1 of this book: https://www.amazon.com/History-Taunton-Massachusetts-Second/dp/0979886724

OldColonyHistoryMuseum (talk) 19:18, 16 February 2017 (UTC)