JIGSAW GENS
Starving Timers — The Jamestown Microgeneration
As the youngest Concentrics and the oldest Inflectors, this cusp of Americans digested the earliest memories of Atlantic crossings
To confront ageism, my “Jigsaw Gens” anthology series looks at experiences — whether parallel or extenuating — that affected the lives of specific age groups. The following 27 American generations have spanned more than 450 years:
Parliamentarians | Concentrics | Inflectors
Kingdomites | Cavaliers | Magnas
Glory Warriors | Lumineers | Enlightening Rods
Septennials | Liberty Lords | Goodpublicans
Madisonians | Unimpressionists | Transcendentals
Redeemers | Golden Renegades | Stowegressives
Missionaries | Hemingrebels | GI-Gens
Traditionalists | Baby Boomers | GenXers
Millennials | Zoomers | Alphas
There was one “cusp” (microgeneration) of Americans stuck in-between larger generations who would have been the final cusp born entirely within the Sixteenth Century. They emerged into the world as that century was winding down.
Based on the events marked by historians who existed long before I was born, I’ve designated members from this cusp as the Starving Timers.
Who They Are
Starving Timers were born approximately between 1589 to 1593 — give or take a couple of years on either end. This cusp forms a microgeneration that blends together the oldest Inflectors and the youngest Concentrics.
Members of this microgeneration were teenagers during the decade leading up to the founding of Jamestown. While a sliver of these English colonists were adolescents themselves, local Algonquin tribes would have had many teenagers transitioning into adulthood. Their young adulthood saw the rise of New Netherland by Dutch explorers. Throughout their forties and fifties, Starving Timers were affected by events such as the Mayflower Compact, the Pequot War, the Antinomian Controversy, and the Massachusetts Body of Liberties.
I label them as “Starving Timers” because those who survived Jamestown’s brutal winters in 1609 and 1610 shaped the trajectory of Seventeenth-Century colonization and subjugation. This cusp followed renegade leaders who sought to make sure community resilience would prevent future Jamestown-style suffering. They sought out better infrastructure and community-wide creeds. John Wheelwright was perhaps the most notable member of this cusp, expanding New England after being exiled to modern-day New Hampshire.
Further enduring the Anglo-Powhatan Wars and the Trans-Atlantic Chattel Slave Trade, Starving Timers inspired younger generations of their offspring (Inflectors and Kingdomites) to forge new cultural norms. Such visionaries included Roger Williams spearheading the Providence Plantations (future Rhode Island), Thomas Mayhew Jr. founding Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, John Harvard establishing the university system, and Oliver Cromwell mapping a template for religious freedom during the English Civil War & Restoration.
I call Turnip Squeezers “the Jamestown Microgeneration” because they escalated leadership — some of it oppressive, some of it collaborative — when seeing how only 12% of Jamestonians were able to beat the odds. After navigating three additional decades of upheaval, they approached their golden years as the New England Confederation coagulated to set centuries’ worth of precedent for asymmetric warfare.
Their Early Lives
Born near the turn of the decade between the late-1580s and early-1590s, Starving Timers emerged into the world as Roanoke Colony was collapsing. A vast majority of their members belonged to Indigenous tribes on American shores. We have limited documentation of individuals who were instrumental in tribal leadership structures.
As kids from the final end of this cusp were born, Greek mariner Juan de Fuca informed his Spanish royal employers about the contours of Pacific coastlines. Seeing how Spaniards had already been battling Franks for control of St. Augustine and Fort Caroline, they realized the enormity of the North American continent.
Thus, Philip II and Philip III attempted to get the upper hand over Elizabeth I, James VI & I, Henry IV, and Louis XIII, preemptively. These parent-and-child monarchs continued to send resources to the northern chunk of New Spain. Yet, France and England would have concurrent success with fur-trading and coastal towns covering much of the North American continent to the Mississippi River’s east.
Until the dawn of the Seventeenth Century, most Starving Timers born in Europe, Asia, and Africa would know very little about the continent to which they’d travel in subsequent decades. 1599’s devastating hurricane and monastery fire would have been one of the few newsworthy events reported back to the people of Spain.
When They Came-of-Age
Starving Timers went through adolescence from the turn of the Seventeenth Century up through the mid-1610s. That meant they were hitting puberty during a time when North Americans’ average life expectancy would range from between 25–30 years. This was especially relevant to the Jamestonian teenagers who went from being startled by Captain John Smith’s 1608 firecrackers to battling famine alongside of their kin as they got closer to adulthood.
For those who survived into this century’s second decade, youthful Starving Timers watched elders get swept up into the tobacco-growing exchange forged between Indigenous farmers and White farmers. Such a dynamic would soon fuel the Anglo-Powhatan Wars amidst the Puritan-driven “Great Migration.”
With human life expectancy being so fragile, older White colonists sought out ways to prolong their survival. Spain began mapping coastlines and delivering rites near present-day San Diego in 1602. Four years later, England’s Virginia Crown Colony launched the importance of Jamestown as a port village and gateway for European immigration onto the continent. Henry Hudson’s “Half Moon Expedition” scouted the key riverway that would eventually be named after him.
As more Starving Timers trekked further into their teen years surrounded by North American upheaval, the self-preservation modeled by their parents and grandparents stuck with them. The interracial marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe perhaps most vividly exemplified this altered trajectory.
How They Shaped The World
As young adults, Starving Timers saw the beginning of chattel slavery in the future United States. African slaves from the Starving Timer cohort (along with the youngest Inflectors) were at peak strength and bodily stimuli.
Women who survived to young adulthood sometimes lived into their thirties and forties, which gave White Starving Timers a desire to begin populating the Atlantic coast. Christopher Levett and Walter Neale explored modern-day New Hampshire and Maine, respectively. The Dutch set up New Amsterdam and Fort Orange, while the English founded Boston and Salem. Following the death of King James VI & I, fleeing Puritans created Massachusetts Bay Colony under the desire to escape religious persecution. By 1630, the Winthrop Fleet departed from Yarmouth in hopes of solidifying the “Great Migration.”
The years 1619 and 1620 had high significance for these Starving Timer adults. Virginian colonists set up the House of Burgesses on North American shores; this coincided with the first enslaved Africans inhumanely exported to this continent. One year later, the Mayflower landed and established Plymouth Colony. 1621 saw the Dutch West India Company formed to complement its eastern counterpart — folding anti-Hispanic and anti-Luso racism into Dutch economic forces.
While Starving Timers immigrated, were invaded, or were kidnapped…warfare was brewing, globally. The Thirty Years War and the British Civil Wars raged on the European continent. Amidst the already-flaring Anglo-Powhatan Wars, Opechancanough’s 1622 massacre of English settlers exacerbated Indigenous/British conflict.
Another key year for Starving Timers was 1636. By this point, surviving members of their cohort were approaching their fifties. In the aftermath of Roger Williams being banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony, Puritans accelerated their own dictatorial tendencies — ironically, paralleling those from which they’d previously escaped. Their 1636 Town Act spawned a legal code for criminal behavior. Wheelwright, along with Anne Hutchinson and John Cotton, pushed back against dominant theology during the Antinomian Controversy. At the same time, the Pequot War broke out and Harvard College was founded.
This microgeneration transitioned into foremost elder status throughout the 1640s. White colonists developed the Massachusetts Body of Liberties as a comprehensive expansion of the Town Act. The Dutch in America — led by William Kieft — waged war against Tribal Nations. Religious freedom began to evolve, as anti-Catholic violence of the Plundering Time preceded “the New England Way” serving as the basis for Congregationalism. At the century’s midpoint, all Christians had been granted basic religious freedom via the Maryland Toleration Act.
The 1640s saw Hutchinson murdered while in exile; across the sea, King Charles I was beheaded for treason. British-imposed Navigation Acts would restrict Colonial America’s economic freedom as the final members of the Starving Timer cohort prepared to die out.
Their Golden Years
Now full-fledged senior citizens, those who remained from the Starving Timers were amongst the oldest Americans to live to see William Berkeley’s dictum that only White male landowners could be allowed the right to vote. While they brushed against their seventies, they glimpsed Josias Fendall making one of the earliest attempts to overthrow American government with a bloodless coup.
Mary Dyer of the Kingdomite generation would serve as a symbol for young people challenging the status quo. Dyer and the Boston Martyrs viewed the Half-Way Covenant as falling short insofar as what the Separation of Church and State should espouse. William Penn and Samuel Gorton picked up the torch advocating for Quakers and freethinkers. Meanwhile, Puritans would proceed to indoctrinate Indigenous Americans through the Eliot Bible.
In their final years of life, Starving Timers witnessed Charleston being founded and John Usher securing America’s first copyright law. Most of this cohort had died by the beginning of King Philip’s War — although a few would linger on Earth during Bacon’s Rebellion, Penn’s Charter of Privileges & Liberties, and “The Glorious Revolution.”
Starving Timers didn’t live to see the Salem Witch Trials or the later French and Indian Wars. However, those whose old age coincided with any of the first five Navigation Acts could detect forthcoming power struggles between Big Government and individual liberty. The “young people” of their twilight years — Inflectors, Kingdomites, Cavaliers, Magnas, and Glory Warriors — would go on to fight for religious independence that only some Starving Timers had the energy to demand.
Here are 10 prominent Americans from the Starving Timer cohort:
Members of previous microgenerations were named…
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