Master Fancher’s Light unto Our Path, is a story of tragedy and triumph, as a young English lad faces his father’s death at the tender age of six. Unable to provide for himself, he spends time in houses of refuge until signing as servant to a master in the Colony of Virginia. Upon working out his servitude, the young man returns to England where through an apprenticeship with the Merchant Taylor’s he learns the craft of weaving, before returning to Virginia as a landowner.
After brief triumphs, tragedies continue as William and his wife sell their land in Virginia, and go meandering through New England. There they resort to a transient lifestyle highlighted by years of hardships and humiliations. “Wm Fancy owned it as his sin his oft drinking…" William’s lack of vision toward success, possibly magnified by his lifelong trend of non-channeled self-sufficiency plus his drinking, could have led to Katherine’s humiliating propositions as she worked as a handmaid.
