Interesting that he was a sailor : there was a very extensive (though not
much studied, yet) coastal trade and contact in the mid 17th century
between the Eastern Shore and New York and Boston. Eastern Shore Virginia
merchant-planters are much in evidence for example in the Aspinwall
Notarial Records.

Jon Kukla

>> As it happens, there was at least one free black in early Boston
>> (1640s-50s) who decided, for reasons we'll never know (unless more
>> records turn up), to move down to the Eastern Shore of Virginia. He
>> lived there for the rest of his life (he died in 1670). In Boston,
>> he'd
>> been a sailor, and we do have one record of a voyage he made to
>> Virginia
>> years before he moved. His name in Boston was Bastian Ken (with many
>> variations). His life there is described in the old Robert Twombly and
>> Robert Moore piece on the Black Puritan." On the Shore, he was
>> known as
>> Sebastian Kane. I have written a few pages about him in my /Race and
>> Class in Colonial Virginia. /
>>
>> Doug Deal

Dr. Jon Kukla, Executive Vice-President
Red Hill - The Patrick Henry National Memorial
1250 Red Hill Road
Brookneal, Virginia 24528
www.redhill.org

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