Annex 29 – Chinese Settlements in New England: Boston & Rhode Island
General comments
• Greenland, the Gulf of St. Laurence, Nova Scotia and the Massachusetts Peninsular are recognisable on the Vinland Map published c.1440 (radio carbon dating 1410- 1443) long before Columbus set sail. Someone had reached and charted these parts before the Europeans.
• Since publication of the hardback version of ‘1421’ in November 2002 we have received hundreds, perhaps thousands of emails about the Boston area. We are indebted to those who have provided this new evidence: their names will be inserted in the acknowledgements section.
• The people who provided the information for the maps left an array of stonework behind – which the first European settlers found when they arrived in the early 17th Century. Much of this stonework may be seen today in the form of towers, carved stones, stone bridges, quays and jetties, roads and harbours and a number of strange tilted stone boulders. They also left plants and animals foreign to North America but found in Asia – the famous Rhode Island Red chickens, rice, hops and tea. So this points to Asian people as the first settlers.
• Gavin’s claim that Chinese of Zheng He’s Fleets had settled in what we now call New York and Boston comes from evidence of the first European explorers. Further down the coast in Florida, Pedro Menendez de Aviles found the wrecks of Chinese junks. The prevailing Atlantic winds and the Gulf Stream would have carried survivng junks to New England. The first European Giovanni de Verrazano found Chinese settled there when he arrived. He also describes Asian people in Narragansett Bay. Leading off that bay is the Taunton River with its carved rock, the Dighton Rock. One of the first Europeans to reach the rock, Bishop Berkley, describes Mongolian people living in the area and the writing as Mongolian (the writing has eroded so badly it cannot be deciphered any longer.)
• The prevailing winds would have carried Junks from New England to Greenland, Iceland, the Azores, Ireland, Shetlands and N. Norway. There is plenty of diverse evidence (Appendices 32,33,34 that this is what happened).
• Evidence of Chinese settlement in New England is found beside the Hudson, Connecticut, Taunton, Charles and Merrimack Rivers. Perhaps they pushed up these rivers to attempt to escape the savage winter weather, which can so quickly and unexpectedly disrupt life.
River Taunton – From Rhode Island to Dighton Rock
• In the 1950’s before the housing developed at Ferry Point, the remains of a number of stone houses were found their axis pointing south. Hops and wild rice grew nearby.
The Dighton Rock
• Bishop Berkley considered the underlying writing Mongolian and that the local people were Mongolian. There are undoubtedly Portuguese crosses over the underlying writing.
• Local Indian folklore (Rev. Danforth) – the rock was placed by people who “came [in] a wooden house (and men of another country in it swimming up the River Asooner who fought the Indians with some mighty success.”
• Rev. Danforth describes a picture on the rock – a ship with broken masts (refer to Chelmsford tilted stones).
• Today some Narragansett women have ‘Chinese’ crowns to their teeth (DNA tests not yet carried out).
• A reader found what seems to be a pendant with hieroglyphics on it whilst digging on the banks of the Taunton River in Fall River, MA – Nicholas Santos
The Mount Hope Bay Rock
• Downstream from the Dighton Rock and upstream from the Newport Round Tower is the Mount Hope Bay Rock, first noted and described by Ezra Stiles in 1780. It was photographed in 1940 – a clear depiction of a high sterned ship without sails, surrounded by characters in an unknown language. (Refer to Dighton Rock and Chelmsford Tilted Stones).
The Newport Round Tower
• Seeing the Newport Round Tower in moonlight leaves the immediate powerful impression that it is a Romanesque tower built by the The Templars.
• After they were ejected by Saladin from the Holy Land, these religious knights saw their duty to crusade overseas. They built Round Towers along pilgrimage routes. I have travelled all four routes to Santiago de Compostella and seen their towers from the Inner Temple in London down to Ponferadda in Galizia.
• However an analysis of the Tower’s mortar carried out by Mr Siemonsen’s (a Copenhagen business man) team carefully conducted using the latest scientific methods shows the date to be sixteenth century – an astonishing result, far too late to have been built by the Templars (who had been disbanded by the fourteenth-century) or by Norsemen.
The Newport Tower as a Lighthouse
• In the summer of 2003 whilst making a TV film about my book, Dr Bob Thomas and friends experimented with simulating a fire in the fireplace on the east wall of the Tower at the first storey. They found the windows are so aligned that the fire would be seen by a ship sailing north into the sound from Rhode Island sound; that the light from the fire would then be blocked out from sight as the ship sailed north. It reappeared just when the ship would need to alter course to starboard to avoid the shoals and anchor in the small bay beneath the tower. So whoever built the tower appears to have designed it to guide ships entering Narragansett Bay from the southwest – which would seem to preclude Norsemen or Templars approaching from the northeast. This of course may be a coincidence – but why build a fireplace on the first floor of a building which had a wooden floor?
The Newport Tower as an Observatory
• For this please refer to the work of Professor Penhallow whose learned articles appear in a number of Neara publications. Professor Penhallow, a Professor of Astronomy, has demonstrated the windows of the tower were very precisely built to enable astronomical observations to be made in three dimensions. Although this seemed to me to be true, I could not see the point. If the Chinese had wanted to calculate longitude, all that was required was an upright pole, which the observer could line up with Polaris at the moment the astronomical event occurred (please refer to Appendix 2 of my book). Professor Penhallow said I was wrong – today indeed all that is needed is a pole but 600 years ago the earth’s axis had shifted due to its ‘bulge’ so that Polaris’ apparent position was not on an extension of the South Pole – North Pole axis. During a six-hour observation time this could have thrown up a six-degree longitude error. However, and here is the dynamite – the windows of the tower and cusps on the ledges of the windows enabled Polaris’ apparent position to be corrected as the earth precessed. Hence precise longitude calculations could be made. So whoever built the tower already had very advanced knowledge for they built in methods of correcting Polaris apparent precision and as far as I know only the Chinese could do so. In my submission if Professor Penhallow is correct, only the Chinese could have been the builders of the windows in the tower.
The Newport Tower on Mercator’s map, 1569
The Rhode Island Tower: Colonial Mill or Viking Lighthouse? By Paul Chapman from Ancient American – Issue # 19 / 20
“…But in researching my book, The Norse Discovery of America, I found that Gerald Mercator’s map of 1569 actually indicated the Newport Tower at Narragansett Bay. Since Mercator published his map some 67 years prior to the colonial settlement, it stands to reason that the tower could not have been of colonial origin….”
• A visitor to Newport Rhode Island saw the tower and also a Chinese carved pillar with writing on it that no one could explain. Does anyone know the significance of this monument. To view it please click here
• A reader reports how a history student acquaintance of his has noted a very large unusual anchor off the coast of Newport RI, whilst diving. He will be sending us photographs shortly – Nicholas Santos
Summary
• Taking all the evidence beside the River Taunton as a whole, it seems to me Chinese and Mongolians had settled there. The mortar dating, I accept is inexplicable.
River Charles and Merrimack
These are about a days sailing north of the Taunton River around Cape Cod with the prevailing wind. Beside both rivers are a series of tilted rocks each propped up by a smaller rock at the bottom. They have to be seen for their extraordinary impact to be felt – at Savoy, Upton, Barre, Royalston, South Peabody, Concord, Chelsmsford, and Acton – around the perimeter of Boston. On some rocks are unexplained carvings, a ship or junk at Chelmsford. It is possible these tilted rocks are the debris of glaciers of long ago but as far as I am aware no such concentration of tilted rocks has been found anywhere else. In posture the rocks closely resemble that of the Cape Verde Islands and of the famous Khaikitiyo shrine of Burma, a pilgrimage place of great importance to Therevada Buddhists. 40 miles west of these tilted rocks, reached via the Connecticut River is the Shutesbury Stone carved with the classic pose of Buddha contemplating aging. A new technique has been evolved using infrared technology to excite crystals in rock. This may enable us to date the carving of the Shutesbury stone. Results will be posted on the website. Near the estuary of the Connecticut River is another carved stone similar to the Dighton Rock, High Tor and Mount Hope stones.
Did the First European Settlers find a Chinese Colony when they arrived in New England in the early seventeenth century?
The first European settlers arrived a century after Verazzano had found Chinese near what is now New York. With the above background here is the gist of a very strange story, which came to our attention in December 2003, which GM investigated in January 2004. The source is a New England gentleman who lives in the house which his family have owned for a very long time. The house is at the centre of perhaps the oldest village in New England located some 20 miles north of Boston. It is therefore possible the family home was built by the first settlers. Here is the story as told to GM in December 2003 and January 2004.
“… About thirty years ago I became very interested in local history. In the centre of our village was a very old Inn, which had been turned into a library. The Library had a collection of letters that passed between the first English people who settled here and their relatives back home. I should say that the first English settlers came well before the Pilgrim Fathers. They were English Gentry who brought an entire village infrastructure with them onto what were Church Grant Lands, this was before the Civil War in England as the articles mentioned the real possibility that the leaving to the New World of some of England’s best blood may have helped to enable that insurrection. The Church Grant Lands were larger than the Princes Grants. This was while England was still part of the Catholic Union. These designations were changed with the many sovereignty changes in England. There were maps that showed the precession of house structures from the 1500,s to the present a fact as well on a family property deed. These people were titled and only dropped their titles when the Cromwellian expellees arrived . Some changed their names and we have still in a private home that has been rebuilt over the centuries an intact secret chapel that were built in this and neighboring communities when the rebels arrived. The less said the better for them only these few surviving relics gave an accurate view of the times & seasons of the real first settlements.
The Pilgrims who came later knew nothing about these communities having been here but they knew of the Pilgrims. The article mentioned ships & landing areas on the north shore. There was some link to England and no doubt precipitated by the events leading to the English Commonwealth.
“They had landed near what is now called New Plymouth and were surprised to find a well built stone harbour with stone quays and a stone tower nearby. A well made road led inland.”
“Some time after they had settled they came across a city of two story houses built of blue stone. This city was well recorded in various books & letters most of which are nearly impossible to find however periodically the region re discovers ancient literary treasures and they reappear. The city was well laid out with stone watercourses and pipes of lead and had running water in spring fed cisterns and a large underground burial complex. There were all types of artefacts including an unusual giant wheeled cart the colonists found housed and used calling it The Juggernaut. Some speculated that it was a deserted Roman colony used for tin mining . The new world settlements had enough problems getting started and so the only interest was recorded by these lettered gentry. It was mined for building stone by the later colonist farmers . The later colonial authorities encouraged its dismantling and the view that the less said the better rather than risk the possible return of whoever had left it. This was surprisingly the attitude of our local honorables even in the 1970,s when discussing the literature that there was knowledge of Chinese colonization and records left in the ruins and that in this new age with high tech weaponry development that we should not encourage or plant ideas in the heads of the Chinese as to a prior claim to the land. They did so and you can see those stones in the foundations of our village houses today.” The locals decided to save some of the stonework for remembrance or luck? Some of the paving stone was visible in the downtown of Watertown, Ma. in back lots as late as the early 20th Century these were described as huge squared paving stones of 5 to 6 ft. There were other outlying structures of stone, a 3 story tower north of Boston along a road and farms and unusual structures. Most people stayed nearby their new communities, most could have cared less to question any prior infrastructure and really couldn’t be blamed coming from a most uncertain and changeable period of English History. When later ships came to Plymouth one traveller questioned the now established colony there where they obtained this stone earthwork Quay so quickly; he recorded receiving replies of a local colonist and from an official queried later that it was Portugese. There is still a lot of this Chinese colony but it is all built over by new structures and incorporated we would need real dating help at hundreds of sites in many communities to identify & date material.
Some local Mass. men identified the remains of old hulks of longstanding in The Mystic Basin. They reported them to the governor as oriental and too big for their age to have been of other known ship types
“They then came across a line of deserted junks moored beside the Charles River. They reassessed their earlier decision believing now that the city had been built by Chinese. Although the city had been dismantled, the official attitude was still to get rid of remaining evidence. These had to be destroyed and the only effective method was by blowing them up. Gunpowder was in short supply and obtaining enough proved difficult – resulting in a number of letters between the settlers and “notables”. Eventually they succeeded. The hull wood should still be there alongside the Charles River and you should be able to find it.” It should be on the north side of the Charles-Mystic River confluence which is where the junks were grounded.
“Whilst the argument continued about the identity of their predecessors – whether Roman or Chinese” they corresponded with their relatives in England. Those remaining in England favoured the Chinese for they said a huge Chinese fleet of red sailed ships had visited England in the 1420’s. They had presented their credentials to the “Dowager Queen” complaining that they had been discourteously received in Spain and Portugal. They were now en route to Muscovy. Before leaving they presented the Dowager Queen with valuable vases, which she had displayed in her Palace outside London!I suspect the English followed their fleet North in order to get the information they had about the stop at a provincial Muscovy port where they were received by local officials before continuing North which puzzled them but they assumed a route to China.Once again I believe aside from protocols of Govt. secrecy that a lot of material was lost in the dynastic and later civil wars in England.
“When the village was being cleaned up for the bicentenary celebrations, it was decided to replace the roof of the library, the former inn. The records I have referred to were on the 2nd floor under the slate roof. They were removed for safekeeping whilst the work was carried out and appear to have been lost. The cleaning people accidentally threw them out over a period of weeks making room for the repairs to the building. I think they were accidentally buried in a land fill as were other old records but have been unable to find out.” This archive consisted of the records, privately printed volumes, gazettes, letters and early photographs and donated material from the libraries of our local honorables of the leading families as they had evolved into the 19th Century. I spent years in this attic reading these collections after school and later before the loss. These were people of extraordinary talent, authors, poets, musicians, and famous clergymen, financial wizards such as Charles Abbott “Father of The Trusts” They played host to a who’s who of early American life. Their later descendants were very conservative and not given to exaggeration. Most of them passed on and the Town modern now. A suggestion; this region is covered with the infrastructure of many prior attempts by other cultures in different time periods. Does it not seem to be the same that little or no mention is made of any of it except a few references of the materials from all over the New world simply being used over in new structures. Apparently people were just too busy like in all successive cultures that had this same experience of prior culture infrastructure in all places and times of the human experience on this earth…”
The Blue Stones taken from the Ancient City
On 4th January GM photographed these – they do indeed line the foundations of the old houses. Some are very large and many very well cut. They do have lead drainage holes – GM has samples of lead and mortar for dating. The position of the lead holes is only explicable by the stones coming originally from another place. The stones have another extraordinary unique characteristic. Along the leading edge, about nine inches apart are grooves incised into the stone. These grooves are about ¾ inch wide and 1 ½ inches long and ½ inch deep. If one imagines a clay mould the shape of the stone, it is as if a man with a small penis had impressed it into the clay every nine inches. There is no evidence that the grooves were for nails as no iron nor traces of iron are present. The only other place GM has seen similar (almost identical) grooves are in stones beside the slipway at Bimini and those removed from Bimini to line the ship channel in Miami. A local (Islington) stonemason is examining the grooves, to date he is baffled.
Update, May 20th 2004: We have recently been informed that a possibility for the cause of the curious grooves found on stones at the Miami Ship canal, Fort Lauderdale and Watertown is that they resulted from the use of a blastless demolition agent. This entails the application of unique Chinese chemicals to fracture rocks – when water is applied, Calcium Alumino Sulfate forms etringnite crystals that swell by about 30 % in volume, with an expansive force approaching 30,000psi – Harry Francis
The ‘Blown Up’ junks beside the Charles River
We are told that when excavating the port area beside the Charles River in Central Boston, tea was found in the sludge – evidence of the Boston Tea Party?! However, we are told the tea was dated long before the Boston Tea Party. We have not seen the test reports and would welcome any information to corroborate or dispute ours. Also in this position the remains of a very old jetty have been discovered, provisionally identified as a Viking one.
Chinese Fleet sail from New England to Europe in 1422
Evidence is contained in Appendices 32,33 and 34. It seems there is little doubt a huge fleet did land in Greenland and Iceland and that some ships reached Ireland and Scotland, others France, Portugal and Spain. There is no evidence they reached England.
The “Dowager Queen”
Strangely, there was a “Dowager Queen” in England in the 1420’s, Joan of Navarre, Henry V’s stepmother. Henry V died on campaign in France in 1422 leaving his young son (born December 1421) and his teenage widow, Katherine of Valois. Katherine, who was entitled to do so, started an affair with her dresser, Owen Tudor (hence the Tudors). She fell out of favour with the court and was temporarily, unlawfully imprisoned.
Joan of Navarre had been imprisoned being accused of witchcraft. This was orchestrated by Henry V who wanted to get his hands on her jewels and dowry. When Henry V died in 1422, Joan reasserted her authority and, de facto, acted as Dowager during Henry VI infancy and Katherine’s imprisonment.
Joan did have a Palace outside London – Leeds castle, Henry V family home.
When researching 1421, GM spent some time examining public records in the Museum of London, the Public Record Office, the British Museum and British Library and has found no hint of any foreign visit in the 1420’s. We would welcome any leads or clues to resolve this strange story one way or another.
Further information:
Huge stone wheels found in Portland Harbour, Maine, whilst it was being dredged in the 1950’s Also found was an urn made in the rope and coil method, and intricately carved with dragons on the outside (c11in high and 8in in width) The celestial Chinese dragon is comparable as the symbol of the Chinese race itself. (Al St. Amand)
Research into peat cores at Clinton, Connecticut, has revealed a huge pre-Columbian spike in copper that appears across the entire Clinton marsh over a distance of two miles. The phenomenon is referred to as the “mystery copper spike”. It has copper concentrations well beyond any pollution additions that occurred in the last two centuries and differs from industrial age pollution in that it is not associated with high zinc concentrations. Copper concentrations are 116 and 168 ppm while copper in the last two centuries had maximum values of 40-70 ppm. Short-lived values this high are unlikely to have a natural cause, the most likely explanation being a nearby source of copper pollution related to copper mining and production, i.e. an anthropogenic source. The “mystery copper spike” is placed in time, based on averaged radiocarbon ages at two sites, at 1350 AD. At one site a radiocarbon age at the base of the copper spike horizon is calibrated to 1398 AD (2 sigma range of 1290-1439). With some minor downward leaching of copper or a very slight error in the radiocarbon analysis, the copper spike could easily represent 1400-1450 AD. At another site peat samples at the copper interval date from 1302 AD (2 sigma range of 1248-1422). Right now there is no information to directly link the copper spike to Chinese explorer/settlers on the Connecticut coast, but one thing does appear to be certain: the simplest and best explanation to date is that there appear to have been people on the coast of Connecticut capable of producing a huge pollution source of copper 50-200 years prior to Columbus arriving in the New World. To our knowledge Native Americans did not mine and process copper (Jack Ridge).
Gloucester Massachusetts – numerous groups of archeologists have tried {unsuccessfully} to determine the origins of a large well-type structure, made of stone apparently like a large circular staircase that leads into the ground. “Local Wisdom” is that it was constructed by Norseman hundreds of years ago. It is estimated to be at least 300 or 400 years old, is inconsistent with Northern European masonry and would have required sophisticated construction knowledge. Perhaps at one point it went up as well as down. It is located at the top of a hill just above Annisquam, the first anchorable harbor or cove near the mouth of the Annisquam River, which is just below the Merrimack River (discussed in the book). This Harbor is the most protected of any on the North side of Cape Ann and provides access to Ipswich Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. (Peter L. Combs)
Legends and folklore
• New England – records show that local Indians spoke of a tall yellow Prince who taught them medicine and advanced building such as stone bridges and dams and this was in Waltham right next to and up the Charles from Watertown. (Anton)
