Fresh Start

My Pease "Fresh Start"

What does the phrase "Fresh Start" mean to me, relative to my family history?

I think the phrase "fresh start" could be applied to every ancestor and family member I have.

• Those who crossed oceans
• Those who migrated from one region to another
• Career changers
• Births, marriages, deaths, and so on 

Fresh start is relevant to every person at some point in their life, sometimes over and over. 

Today, I'm going to apply "fresh start" to my PEASE family line. That's a major surname for me - My mom was a Pease. 

When I think "fresh start" relative to the Peases, I think of all the times they started over. They have traditionally been the entrepreneurial branch of the family, somehow able to both forge ahead with something new, and also to remain rooted in family values and traditions.

• Cousins striking out on their own business ventures.
• Family members who very successfully re-tooled their work skills when faced with potential end-of-career events.
• Career women who made their own way, in an era when they might be expected to take the more traditional role.

Our auntie Byrde Pease MARSDEN sure had to think on her feet. At the young age of fourteen, she started her professional career with a bookkeeping job t help her family make ends meet when her father was ill yet again. Later on, she married a doctor, who decided he had to leave this world. Byrde dealt with adversity as it arose, and she supported herself and her widowed mother. She lived a long time and continued to support herself to the end. 

Her father, John B. Pease was never in the best of health, and his own story has a lot of "fresh start" moments, even though he only lived to reach the age of 46. Hew as a veterinarian, county deputy, and he also sold farm implements and insurance. 

Other Pease fresh starts:

• A mariner who became a farmer 
• A farmer who became a mariner
• Migration from Massachusetts to New York
• Migration from New York to Wisconsin

And, to start our Pease story, a migration from England to Massachusetts, by John Pease of Great Baddow. John and his brother stepped off the Frances in 1634 in Salem, and before long, John fresh-started again, at Martha's Vineyard.