PRELIMINARY NOTICE.
In preparing the following brief sketch of the principal incidents in the life of the author of "The History of the Christian Indians," the Publishing Committee have consulted the original authorities cited by the American biographical writers, and such other sources of information as were known to them, for the purpose of insuring greater accuracy; but the account is almost wholly confined to the period of his residence in New England, and is necessarily given in the most concise manner. They trust, that more ample justice will yet be done to his memory by the biographer and the historian.
Daniel Gookin was born in England, about A. D. 1612. As he is termed "a Kentish soldier" by one of his contemporaries, who was himself from the County of Kent,[1] it has been inferred, with good reason, that Gookin was a native of that county. In what year he emigrated to America, does not clearly appear; but he is supposed to have first settled in the southern colony of Virginia, from whence he removed to New England. Cotton Mather, in his memoir of Thompson, a non-conformist divine of Virginia, has the following quaint allusion to our author:
Shone round him, and his heavenly glory were.
Gookins was one of these. By Thompson's pains,
Christ and New England a dear Gookins gains."
A gentleman of the same name, "Master Daniel Gookin," (as he is styled,) accompanied by "fifty men of his own, and thirty passengers, well provided, arrived out of Ireland," in Virginia, Nov. 22d, 1621. He was one of twenty-six persons, to whom patents of lands were granted in that year, and who are said to " have undertaken to transport great multitudes of people and cattle to Virginia."[2] Having fulfilled his contract with the Virginia Company, by bringing them cattle and other supplies from Ireland, he settled in the colony at a place called Newport's News.[3] This gentleman is stated by several writers to have been the father of General Gookin ; but the only circumstances authorizing even a conjecture to that effect, are the identity of name, and the fact that both lived in Virginia. A circumstance of an opposite character has been already alluded to, which seems to imply that Gookin had acquired his knowledge of arms in Kent ; but, had he gone to Virginia with his father in 1621, when only about nine years of age, and re-
