Under the date of June 1622, the colonial records of Plymouth Colony note: �Came into our harbor two ships of Mr. Weston�s, the Charity, 100 tons, the Swan, 30 tons, with letters of Apr 10, and fifty or sixty men, sent at his own charge, under Capt. John Sanders, overseer, to settle a plantation in the Massachusetts Bay, of which he has procured a patent.�
Sanders settled the colony at Weymouth in the Fall of 1622. The enterprise was abandoned by Spring, however, because of insufficient supplies. In London is recorded on 23 May 1623, �Captain Sanders and Company arrived at Southampton.�
Undaunted by the failure of the Weymouth Colony, Sanders made several visits to the colonies over the next several years (his son John settled in Salem in 1628). Many of these trips were to Virginia, a colony under the control of Sir Edwin Sandys (the source believes there is some relation and that Sandys became Sanders). In 1638 he traveled back to England for a new patent to found a colony and was granted a patent with 11 others for a 75 mile wide strip from the Atlantic Ocean to the Merrimack and Hampton Rivers: Salisbury. On his return, he brought his daughter Sarah, who soon married Maj. Robert Pike.