Thomas Prence - in New England

In New England

Thomas Prence came to Plymouth Colony on the ship Fortune in November 1621 as a single man. In the 1623 division of land, Thomas Prence is named as "holder of one akre of land".

The Plymouth Colony had been founded as a joint venture between Separatists religious separatists and a group of "Merchant Adventurers", who underwrote much of the cost of the colony's establishment in exchange for a share of its profit-making activities. By 1626, however, it was clear that the colony was unlikely to yield significant profits, and the Merchant Adventurers sought to divest themselves of their obligations. Prence was one of eight leaders of the colony (known collectively as the "Undertakers") who agreed to assume all of the colony's debts to the merchants, in exchange for which the other colonists granted them a monopoly on the local fur trade. In a 1633 tax assessment Prence's wealth was such that he was one of a few men required to pay more than £1.

The Undertakers established a number of trading posts around New England, where they traded with the natives for furs, which were shipped to England to pay off their debts. The business was risky for a variety of reasons: there was competition from Dutch and French traders (the latter seizing the Plymouth post at Pentagoet, present-day Castine, Maine), and their first shipment to England was taken by French privateers. The group's agent, Isaac Allerton, also casually mixed personal business with the group's, apparently to his own advantage. As a result, debts to English merchants continued to mount until the late 1630s, when Allerton deserted them and the Undertakers sought to dissolve their agreement with the London merchants. An agreement was reached in 1641 to pay the London merchants £1,200 over a several-year period, but one of the merchants refused the deal and insisted on being paid an additional £400. In order to rid themselves of the problem, the Undertakers in 1645 pledged some of their landholdings as security. A few years later they were forced to sell of some land to make satisfy the pledge; Prence sold his house to make his share.

The economy of the colony changed after major migration to the new Massachusetts Bay Colony began in 1630. The Puritans arriving at Boston and other new communities to the north created demand for Plymouth's agricultural output, which had until then been primarily used for local consumption. Because the land at Plymouth was not particularly good, its colonists began to disperse to other places where land was better. Prence was part of this migration, joining his father-in-law William Brewster in moving to nearby Duxbury in 1632.

In 1644 the Prence family was one of seven to found a new settlement at Eastham on Cape Cod. The area of the Outer Cape (roughly from Brewster to Provincetown) had been reserved to the Undertakers, and Prence became one of the largest landowners in the area. His holdings included land in what is now Brewster, Harwich, Wellfleet, and all of Truro. The land there was fertile, and the town prospered under his guidance. Prence lived there until 1663, when he moved back to Plymouth.