Born 20 Dec 1581 in Etton, Yorks, ENG; died 8 Nov 1653 in Barnstable, MA.
From Governor Winthrop's Journal under date of 18 September 1634 - "The Griffin and another ship now arriving with about 200 passengers. Mr. Lathrop and Mr. Sims, two godly ministers coming in the same ship." That same year Lothrop went to Scituate, where he formed the first church there, and then in 1639 the church divided and Lothrop went with the group that settled at Barnstable, becoming minister there, too."
Records show that Rev Lathrop sailed with his family on the Griffin in 1634. The ship sailed with about 100 passenger. The only documentation available lists 41 passenger.
The book The Planters of the Commonwealth provides a discussion about the life on board these early ships and about the motivation for leaving England. Following are 2 excerpts from the above book including names of interest from the passenger lists of the Griffin and the Hercules.
(page 19 - quoted)
The second great character in local influence in England was the Reverend John Cotton, then vicar of the magnificent Church of St. Botolph in Boston, Lincolnshire. He was responsible for the early and important group of emigrants from his flock in Boston as well as from many surrounding parishes. For one devoted follower, Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, who set the Massachusetts Colony by the ears, Cotton is chiefly responsible and she came near converting him to her cause. The Reverend John Lothrop, who had been vicar at Edgerton, Kent, and later in London conducting Separatist services surreptitiously, was undoubtedly the inspiration for the emigration of a large contingent from the Weald of Kent who settled in Scituate (MA).
(page 41 - quoted)
It is a puzzle to imagine what things occupied the time of these emigrants for ten weeks on the crowded decks of the small vessels which took them across the three thousand miles that lay between the continents. Even to-day with our many permitted diversions timehangs heavily. Certainly those residents of the rural hamlets left nothing of interest behind them, and so missed nothing in their drab lives when exchanging their pithless parochial existence ashore for the monotonous doldrums of a swaying deck at sea. Ships carrying religious groups, like the Mayftower or the Arbella, indulged in daily services when their spiritual leaders 'exercised' the Godly in prayer and sermon. We can readily believe that Mistress Anne Hutchinson furnished enough excitement aboard the Griffin when she engaged the Reverend John Lothrop and the Reverend Zachariah Symmes in theological bouts, but these were exceptional ships, as the vast majority of emigrants came without ministerial leaders to entertain them. If the voyage were stormy, they were obliged to go below decks and kill time in the darkness. Doubtless they went to bed at sundown, as there was no way to light the decks. They rose at the break of day to begin another round of nothing in particular.
Passengers and Ships
GRIFFIN. This ship arrived at Boston September 18 (1634), with about one hundred passengers and cattle for the plantations.