John Dane

Our ancestor John Dane was born in Hertfordshire, England-- probably in the hamlet of Little Berkhamsted. He and his wife, Frances, were shocked when their older son, also named John Dane, probably about 20 years old and already working as a tailor, was enthusiastic about joining the Puritan Great Migration, to set up a more godly dominion in the newly established Massachusetts Bay Colony. Here is young John's own statement, made years later: "To return to the way and manner of my coming.... My father and mother showed themselves unwilling. I sat close by a table where there lay a Bible. I hastily took up the Bible, and told my father if, where I opened the Bible, there I met with anything either to encourage or discourage, that should settle me. I, opening of it, not knowing more than the child in the womb, the first I cast my eyes on was: 'come out from among them, touch no unclean thing, and I will be your God and you shall be my people.' My father and mother never more opposed me, but furthered me in the thing, and hastened after me as soon as they could." From that time forward, Dane reported, "[I] bent myself to come to New England, thinking that I should be more free here than there from temptations" Parents John and Frances and their other two childern, our ancestor Francis and his sister Elizabeth, followed young John to the New World, probably before 1636 (the year wife Frances died).

John, his wife, Frances, and their children were part of the puritanical, idealistic Righteous Generation. John's second wife, Annis, was part of John's Righteous Generation, but her children from a previous marriage were all part of the Cavalier Generation.

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