In the ship's list of passengers in the
"Paule", Leonard Betts, master, sailing from London, England, July 1635, bound
for his majesty's colony of Virginia, bearing the certificate of the minister of
Gravesend, "of their conformitie to the Church of England," there appears the
name of Anthony Day, who is described as being then twenty-two years old.
(I) This appears to be the first mention of the name of
Anthony Day in American colonial history, but while there is no tradition in the Day
family in New England - descendants of Anthony - that their ancestor ever set foot on the
soil of the English plantation in Virginia, there is every reason to believe that he
arrived in this country several years previous to 1640 and that he was related to
immigrants of the same surname who are mentioned by several writers as having come to
America between the years 1630 and 1636 and settled in Salem and Ipswich and other of the
plantations in the vicinity of Boston. In his "History of Gloucester" Mr.
Babson says that Anthony Day was born in 1616; the ship's list previously referred
to says that the Anthony Day therein mentioned was twenty-two years old in July, 1635, a
difference to immaterial in fact that Anthony Day who came over in the "Paule"
might easily be taken for him of the same name who first appears in New England history at
the time of his visit to Cape Ann in 1645.