Thomas Weston

17th century English Puritans escaped religious persecution by moving to Leiden in The Low Countries (The Netherlands). After years of attempting to make enough money to sustain their community, and failing, they next sought a new life far from Europe, in the New World.

Thomas Weston, a somewhat successful English merchant, arranged for the vessel the English Leiden Puritans would sail aboard together to America, the Mayflower.

This is well known about Weston. Yet, “Thomas Weston, early seventeenth century London merchant, was by the end of 1623 among the first to ship fish into the Virginia colony.” an insignificant sounding event, until it is understood that English colonists, in James Cittie, Jamestown Colony, then starved. Arlene’s findings about Weston largely came from “three colonial Virginia court hearings: the first Virginia records we have involving either Weston or his ship, Sparrow.”

Though a ne’er-do-well rogue, as colonists were starving, Thomas Weston may have alone saved Jamestown.

Arlene completed this research and published her findings in her article for Global Maritime History (February 2019), New Evidence: Was Thomas Weston, Seventeenth Century London Merchant, among the First to Sail Fish to Virginia’s Starving Colonists?