Segipt and his family, 1629 (The Merchants House - currently closed)

The Merchants House is one of the oldest preserved buildings in Plymouth. We don't know exactly when it was built but we do know that William Parker, a merchant and privateer, was its first recorded owner. He seems to have remodelled an older house on this site into the building you see in front of you sometime in the early 1600s.

Parker was a founding member of the Plymouth Company, whose purpose was to establish settlements in North America. Merchants often financed the voyages in return for repayment and a portion of the profits made. While Parker was primarily interested in the Virginia colonies (for more on these, see Point 1), the company also claimed areas farther north, including Nova Scotia in what is now Canada.

In the 1620s, Nova Scotia was claimed both by England and France. A group from Scotland, under the direction of Sir William Alexander, tried to settle in the Port Royal area with the approval of the Plymouth Company. In 1629, they sent a local Mi'kmaq leader, Segipt, his wife and son to England, supposedly to submit to the King's authority and to ask for his protection against the French settlers. It's likely that Alexander also saw this as a way to drum up interest in the settlement and a critic accused him of "making a show and ostentation" of these Indigenous visitors who had been billed as a King, Queen and Prince.

Segipt and his family landed at Plymouth before making their way to London to meet King Charles I. En route, they were entertained by Sir John Poulet at his estate in Somerset for a while, where they were "made much of" and Sir John's wife gave Segipt's wife a diamond necklace. The Mi'kmaq family apparently "took all in good part, but for thanks or acknowledgment made no sign or expression at all."

This diplomatic mission was not entirely successful. The group quietly returned to their homelands in 1630 and a year later, despite Charles I granting the Mi'kmaq peoples his protection, the English handed the area to the French. However, the English and French continued to fight for control of the region throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.