<< Thanks, Bev. I have worked a long time tracking my Kennedys, > McClennys, Garners, Sparks, Carrs, Johnsons, Pelhams, Grants, > Doziers, Warrens, Rushings, Lipscombs and others. Drew a name > out of a little box on my desk and it was Kirby this time so here I am > trying to figure out if they got here before or after the Mayflower. > Sometimes I think all my early ancestors were in the Lost Colony. >> Merchants and Revolutions (Brenner) pg. 151 "Since New England never did develop the kind of staple commodity that supported the southern and West Indian colonies, its commercial po- tential during the 1630s was never very large even for those men who had access to its trade. Furs were its only really important export and, for a while at least, a London-based subpartnership led by the new governor's son John Winthrop, Jr., the London lawyer Emanuel Downing, and the City merchant FRANCIS KIRBY carried out a series of fur-trading expedi- tions under the auspices of the company of undertakers. By and large, however, London merchants were excluded from the fur trade, which soon fell almost entirely into the hands of politically well-placed merchants residing in the colony, just as it had in Virginia. Like most of the traders with Virginia and the West Indies, these men had only rarely begun their careers as overseas merchants. Almost always originating outside the City, they often entered the fur business on the basis of capital acquired through the sale of property in England and especially by virtue of their close connections with the new colonial government. 123 123 Ibid, pp. 30-32"