Tracing Back to Mayflower Ancestors

The Mayflower, a 180-ton vessel that brought the Pilgrims to New England, sailed from Plymouth, England, on Sept. 16, 1620 (New Style calendar), and arrived in America with 101 aboard. The voyage took nearly eight weeks.

Tracing your family back through American history to one of these famous families is a research adventure. If you can do so, you are eligible to join the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, whose headquarters is at 4 Winslow St., Plymouth, Mass. 02360. It has chapters throughout the country.

Two of the most famous Mayflower ancestors you may be able to claim as your progenitors are John Alden and Priscilla Mullins. Theirs is one of the most famous American love stories, immortalized in Longfellow’s poem, “The Courtship of Miles Standish.” However, the experts believe Longfellow took some poetic license in relating that John Alden originally pleaded Miles Standish’s cause to Priscilla.

John Alden was born in England in 1599. He was originally a cooper of Southampton and was employed as such on the Mayflower. Some accounts say he was the first to step ashore in America. He married Priscilla Mullins about 1623. In 1627 they moved from Plymouth to Duxbury, where he acquired a farm of about 169 acres.

For more than 50 years Alden was a colonial magistrate and highly esteemed. At the time of his death on Sept. 12, 1687, he was the last surviving signer of the Mayflower Compact.

Alden may have been the son of George and Jane Alden. Genealogical researchers have found a George Alden and a William Mullins (possibly Priscilla’s father) both on a tax list of Holyrood Ward in 1602, leading to speculation that the famous romance of John and Priscilla may have begun in Southampton, England.

Other researchers have discovered that an Alden family resided in Harwich, County Essex, England, in the middle of the 17th Century and they were related by marriage to Capt. Christopher Jones of the Mayflower. This Alden family was engaged in seafaring pursuits and among them was a young John Alden of about the same age as the one who sailed on the Mayflower. Family connection would easily explain John Alden’s employment on the ship and how he came to make the famous voyage.

Alden was employed as a cooper to look after the hogsheads of beer on the voyage to prevent leakage. He was not in any sense a Pilgrim, as that term was applied by Gov. William Bradford to his Leyden group who had wandered from England to Holland and then to America. Gov. Bradford noted that Alden “was free to go or stay . . . but he stayed.”

No doubt his reason for staying was Priscilla.

Priscilla Mullins (often spelled Mullens) was the daughter of William Mullins, and it is believed that this family once lived in Dorking, County Surrey, England.

William Mullins was probably about 50 years old when he came to America. He left behind a married son and a married daughter in Dorking, undoubtedly by a first marriage. His famous daughter, Priscilla, and younger son, Joseph, were issue of his second wife, Alice, who accompanied him on the Mayflower. William Jr., his elder son, was married by 1617 and three of his children were baptized in Dorking. He immigrated to New England in 1636.

William Mullins’ will, dated 2 April 1621, the first made in New England, shows that he held nine shares in the Adventurers Company and that his estate consisted principally of a stock of boots and shoes. Two of the witnesses to this will were Dr. Giles Heale, surgeon of the Mayflower, and Capt. Christopher Jones, its master.