In a certain future history an interstellar ship crash-lands on an Earth-like planet. The crew all die in the crash, but there are hundreds (thousands?) of passengers, whose great desire is to get back to civilization. Alas, they are all rather uneducated, being petty criminals, or at least people convicted of crimes, so they know they will not manage it in their lifetimes. Nothing daunted, they decide to do it for their descendants. They manage to write down a lot of memories and build a village with a rather puritan set of mores. At some time some people break away from the village, and eventually someone from the rebels gets into the atomic motor of the remains of the spaceship and blows it up. This is just about the time the village is making a daughter colony on an estuary.
Does anyone remember this story? It was serialized in a magazine ca. 1960. The first 3 installments were combined in a book hight “Children of the Stars”. Who was the author? Were the next 3 installments put into a book and, if so, what was its name? I imagine there was a 3rd volume. Any ideas about that? Google, Goodsearch, Wikipedia, Amazon, ALibris – all lead nowhere relevant. Anyone here know?