JIGSAW GENS
Turnip Squeezers — The Post-Roanoke Microgeneration
As the youngest Parliamentarians and the oldest Concentrics, this cusp of Americans turned curiosity into grit
Last year, I launched my “Jigsaw Gens” anthology series. This has been my attempt to understand American history through what I consider to be a multigenerational lens. I mapped out 27 distinct generations of Americans; they begin in the late-Sixteenth Century and extend up through the present day.
These generational cohorts are as follows:
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
Today I’m going to focus on a microgenerational cusp born toward the end of the Sixteenth Century.
Historically, I’ve christened them as the Turnip Squeezers.
Who They Are
Turnip Squeezers were born approximately between 1572–1576 — give or take a couple of years on either end. This cusp forms a microgeneration that blends together the oldest Concentrics and the youngest Parliamentarians.
This mini-cohort would have included the older teens from the lost colony of Roanoke. They were adult parents (and grandparents) as Puritans settled at Jamestown and Plymouth. Some of them participated in the Anglo-Powhatan Wars…later sending their own sons and grandsons to fight in the Pequot War.
I coined their microgenerational nickname because they coped with fallout from increasing colonization of North America. Across continental shores and forests, they dealt with unfamiliar new neighbors and resorted to desperate measures for their families’ survival. Their lives (especially the first halves of them) could be likened to trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip.
For the Turnip Squeezers who survived, they felt the impacts of ascendency and imperialism. As they dealt with the uncertainty of the 1610s and 1620s, their communities got slapped by King James VI & I’s ongoing fights with the English Parliament. Disease brought across the Atlantic Ocean by Puritans ended up decimating countless Indigenous tribes. Later in their lives, the province of Lygonia was erected upstream of them. They were society’s elders while the Aninomian Controversy laid the groundwork for America’s future theological wars regarding how the Bible should be interpreted.
I call Turnip Squeezers “the Post-Roanoke Microgeneration” because they were central to the reinvigoration of fresh American settlements after Ralph Lane’s people perished. Word soon traversed the ocean to report on how Roanoke had collapsed. Mindful of their need to avoid succumbing to a similar fate, they expanded the geographic maps and agricultural techniques of the Parliamentarians who’d preceded them — while they also paved a path for withstanding unpredictable adversity that would be thrown at the Concentrics who’d succeed them.
Their Early Lives
As kids who were born into the mid-1570s, Turnip Squeezers had limited intercultural exposure. They began entering puberty throughout the mid- to late-1580s. At this juncture, explorations of North America by the British, the French, and the Spanish were scattered and decentralized.
Members of this microgeneration were preteens — or a couple of years into puberty — when Walter Raleigh founded Roanoke Colony in future Virginia. Therefore, the Turnip Squeezers at Roanoke may have perished when the community mysteriously disappeared. Some, as historians theorize, could have been absorbed by nearby Indigenous tribes in order to ensure their own survival.
At this point, most Tribal Nations each maintained their own sovereignty. They mainly interacted with other tribes in the same region; this could involve trading, warfare, or mutual-protection alliances. With limited documentation, much of what we know about late-Sixteenth Century Tribal Nations is based on oral histories.
Indigenous Turnip Squeezers would have been acquiring key roles amongst their tribes based on important life skills: hunters, warriors, artisans, farmers, and peer-group leaders. Again, their contact with European explorers was minimal.
Overall, there were very few White Turnip Squeezer children…and virtually none who were Black, Asian, or Middle Eastern.
For the limited number of Turnip Squeezers who lived at colonies such as St. Augustine or Roanoke, awareness of the late-Sixteenth Century Anglo-Spanish War would have weighed on their minds.
When They Came-of-Age
At the turn of the Seventeenth Century, the average life expectancy on the North American continent could be around the age of 25 in some regions. That meant a majority of Turnip Squeezers wouldn’t last very long into adulthood.
While being told of Roanoke Colony’s disappearance, this microgeneration was experiencing the second half of their adolescence in the 1590s. As colonial leaders slowly spread news about these 120+ vanished White settlers, many of the older colonists probably thought twice about bringing their younger European relatives to such unfamiliar shores.
Indigenous Turnip Squeezers owned a more accomplished perspective, having been born and raised on their ancestral tribal lands. Some of them ventured into neighboring regions, but others remained local. Either way, they knew how to survive in the wilderness with inviolable acumen.
Still, other nationalistic explorers approached North America from additional corners on behalf of their countries’ Crowns. News gradually traveled, reaching the European and Asian continents with varying quantities of detail and accuracy.
As Turnip Squeezers headed into their twenties, Juan de Fucua mapped what is now known as the Northwest Passage while sailing for Spain.
Meanwhile — 1,300 miles away — confrontations occurred between Filipino travelers and the Chumash tribe along the shores of California’s present-day Central Coast. There were Filipinos enslaved by Spaniards and Lusos; such colonized fleets arrived in California’s coastal waters in 1587 (instigating the Morro Bay attacks), and again in 1595 (with the San Augustin shipwreck).
Before long, more Turnip Squeezers would spend chunks of their adulthood making arduous journeys across oceans to transform this place that would soon become the United States.
How They Shaped The World
For those Turnip Squeezers who made it to the age of 25 — their lifespans could be extended by several decades under the right circumstances.
At the turn of the century, they’d entered the prime of their adulthood. The French Wars of Religion had just ended, with the Edict of Nantes signed. Europeans were founding settlements at San Diego, Jamestown, and Acadia. The Dutch East India Company fueled this colonization.
1609 was a key year for those on this cusp, since that’s when the Starving Time era would begin. While in their mid-thirties, Turnip Squeezers lost family members of all ages — or even their own lives. Those who survived felt the effects of tenacity led by the likes of Captain John Smith, Henry Hudson, and Adriaen Block.
Yet, even these icons of their day would flounder. Hudson was banished by mutineers in 1611. Around the same time, Smith fueled hostilities with Powhatans while exerting leadership at Jamestown — giving rise to the 1622 massacre, a decade later. The union of Pocahontas and John Rolfe popularized tobacco cultivation amongst White colonists, taught to them by Indigenous tribes.
Another watershed year for this microgeneration was 1619. Now squarely in their middle age, the Trans-Atlantic chattel slave trade began. The Virginia General Assembly and the House of Burgesses were established. One year later, the Mayflower Compact was signed. As the Dutch West India Company arose out of its eastern counterpart, King Charles I began his own decades-long battling with the British Parliament.
Making their way into their fifties, Turnip Squeezers took a backseat to younger leaders (Concentrics and Inflectors). The Dutch arrived in North America, founding New Amsterdam. Once English settlers built Salem and christened Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Winthrop Fleet harkened in a massive wave of migration. Puritans saw their leaders banish Roger Williams for sedition and heresy, ironically, in the shadow of the supposed enlightenment ushered in by Boston’s Harvard College.
Their Golden Years
Finally society’s elders, Turnip Squeezers proceeded to die of natural causes associated with aging. Retiring into more observational roles during their sixties, Americans on this cusp witnessed escalating conflicts: the Mystic Massacre, Kieft’s War, the execution of King Charles (back in Europe), the first Anglo-Dutch War, and the Battle of the Severn.
New Sweden was established by Scandinavian colonists in 1638, but New Netherland absorbed it within two decades (although there was some anti-Swedish violence, such as the murder of Barent Jansen Blom in 1665). The British-controlled areas northeast of New Amsterdam would then form the New England Confederation from which they’d face off against New Netherland.
Signs of future North American conflict were flashing: the anti-Catholic overtones of 1649’s Maryland Toleration Act; the first Navigation Act, which, in 1651, enshrined a monopoly on English goods for trade purposes; or the failed attempts by citizens of the Providence Plantations to restrict slavery in 1652.
For all they’d done, struggling to survive in primitive conditions…the longest-living Turnip Squeezers saw forthcoming omens of civil unrest and demands for justice. Persons-of-interest igniting such conflict ended up being members of the next three generational cohorts…
Anne Hutchinson, banished for espousing her beliefs as a Reform Puritan freethinker, and then being murdered by Indigenous raiders.
Salemites banishing Roger Williams for heresy…only for him to escape to Rhode Island Colony where he made anti-Pequot alliances with the Wampanoag and Narragansett Nations.
The deposition of Peter Stuyvesant by the British, after he led New Netherland in the hopes of maintaining sovereignty.
Most people on the Turnip Squeezer cusp wouldn’t live to see Josias Fendall’s failed rebellion in 1660. Subsequent generations would build upon the dissent that Fendall had directed toward Lord Baltimore and the Calvert family.
By the time they’d passed on, Turnip Squeezers had felt a confluence of pride and regret. They learned to face adversity with extremely limited amounts of tools at their disposal. They truly had squeezed blood out of metaphorical turnips.
Sadly, even after cultivating spacious fields of human potential…their leaders embroiled them in the flavors of bigotry and exploitation that, throughout upcoming centuries, would garnish the uniquely American “salad bowl.”
Here are 10 prominent Americans from the Turnip Squeezer cohort:
Members of the previous microgeneration were named…
Click here to subscribe to my stories.
