James Chilton was a complex man with a complex story. He had ties to the Separatist group at Sandwich and to non-conformist communities around Canterbury, Kent. In this new book, Sue Allan has brought together the historical bits and pieces and added significant new information from her own research to achieve a better understanding of who James Chilton was and what influenced him and his wife to make that fateful journey to New England.

This compilation presents the first fifty sketches written for the Early New England Families Study Project. The project, under the direction of Alicia Crane Williams, was created to fill the need for accurate and concise published summaries on seventeenth-century New Englanders.