A little over 300 years ago, a War for Independence was fought against the British Empire; Britain conceded the defeat, and a nation celebrated its own birth. Years before that, however, men from many corners of Europe and the British Isles left their homelands in search of an elusive freedom. That search brought them to a land completely devoid of the amenities to which they were accustomed, and occupied by people who were more foreign to them than were the Orientals on the other side of the known world. There, surrounded by the dangerous and unfamiliar, the seekers found what they sought: the freedom to worship and teach as they believed was right, without the fear of soldiers knocking down their doors and delivering them up for harsh sentences.
