392 Years Ago ...

18th/19th October 2025

... my 10th-great-grandfather, John Brundish and his wife, Rachel (née Hubbard), left their home in Felsham, England in Suffolk county for the new world. In 1633, John and Rachel would have been 40 and 33, respectively, and they sailed with two children, settling in what is today Connecticut, but was then part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. For reasons unknown, they dropped the "-ish" and replaced it with an "age" and thus the North American Brundages began.

I like to think I'm pretty adventurous, but this was only twelve years after the Mayflower sailed. Talk about gutsy!

Their first "New World" born child was John Jr in 1635, my 9th great-grandfather, who went on to become a founding father of Rye, New York ... and had the awesome moniker, Stout Old John**.

In the early 2000s, one of my uncles put together a 100+ page document that researched the Brundages in America and traced our heritage back to this small village. The Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names shows that ‘Brundish’ comes from the Old English ‘burna’ and ‘edisc’ meaning ‘a stream with pasture’. So, while I cannot find any reference to "swimming Brundages" until my Dad came along and began his swimming career in Florida in the 1950s, we've at least been near water for a long time: records show this area being called "Burnedich" as far back as 1177.

With my wife still traveling with her parents, I decided to go on a mini-Brundage family history tour, starting in the town that sur-named me, and then checking out the towns that were influential in John and Rachel's lives before leaving England.

Oh ... and swimming in new pools, naturally!

Though I was driving and not walking, the map looked better this way. I started east and headed west, because that seems to be what my people did.

Though the family name came from the village of Brundish, by the time my uncle tracked down my 11th-great-grandfather, Thomas Brundish, born around 1550, he and his wife Anne were settled in Rattlesden. John, their sixth of eight children, eventually settled in Felsham, but his wife, Rachel, hailed from Mendlesham.

Of course, I had to split my Saturday journey up, after seeing Brundish and Mendlesham, with a 2,200-meter swim at the Mid-Suffolk Leisure Centre in Stowmarket, now pool #760 on my #1001Pools quest.

While the pool doesn't look like much, there were only 2-3 of us in the double wide fast lane, so I was able to get in a solid workout, with my new standard, fly-oriented warmup and then a main set of 10 x 100 freestyle where I was focusing on building up my underwater dolphin kicks, getting to seven off each wall by the end.

Back to the town tours, the one consistent piece of architecture that would have been around in John & Rachel's time were the churches. The Church of St Lawrence in Brundish itself had information placards around the grounds referencing structures back to the 1100s :

... but the churches John and Rachel would have likely attended as a married couple would have been in Felsham and Rattlesden (where their first three children were christened) ...

St. Peters Church in Felsham and St. Nicholas Church in Rattlesden

Beyond the churches, as one would imagine, there's not a lot of structures that survive four centuries, but I did come across three buildings that would have been around in some form during their era:

Weald House Mendlesham (15th century), Six Bells Felsham (16th century), Brewers in Rattlesden (16th century)

• Weald House appears to date to the late 15th century

• The Six Bells Pub in Felsham was likely named in the 18th century (and the bells refer to the St. Michaels church across the road), but pub history sites point to parts of this structure dating to 16th century

• The last one, where I had a fantastic dinner (check out Brewers if you are ever in the area), has interior structures dating to the 15th/16th century, but the facade would have post-dated my ancestors' departure

I stayed overnight in a very comfortable Airbnb, spent a little bit of time mooching around the larger town of Bury St Edmunds in the morning, and, of course, grabbed a swim in pool #761, the Bury Leisure Centre before making my way back to London. This is a decent enough tank, but it's the ring of windows up top that make it a far more inviting place to swim than if you just consider the pool itself.

As I sat at home on Sunday night, reflecting on the ambition it took my forebears to make the ardurous journey across the Atlantic, it makes my country moves over the last few years (to Canada in late 2018 and to the UK a couple of years ago) seem incredibly tame. I'm in awe of John and Rachel and wish I could know more about them, about what they were leaving behind and what they were seeking. I appreciate my uncle John so much for doing the research that he did, so that I could come back full circle and at least see the geography, much of it still devoted to farming, John and Rachel would have grown up in.

I also thought to myself, "Lame though my #1001Pools quest is, knowing that my car is not due back until 8am on Monday morning, John and Rachel would have wanted me to make the most of life."

So, I got up early to trek out to St Albans to swim in the beautiful Westminster Lodge Leisure Centre, pool #762, a very, very nice pool just north of London.

** I'm blaming him, then, genetically, for my lack of six-pack abs ;)