I recently took a flying interest in the Mayflower colonists
and found a list of passengers at mayflowerhistory.com that pretty much
satisfied my curiosity. Before I lost interest completely, I happened to follow
a link they provided that sent me to the website of the Archives of the State
Library of Massachusetts.
There I found a picture of a manuscript written by William
Bradford in 1651. He was governor of the Plymouth Colony from 1621 to about
1657, and for some reason, he took it upon himself to write down the names of
all the Mayflower passengers, grouping them by family and including, as
appropriate for each entry, the husband, wife, children, and any servants they
brought with them, including indentured ones. In the margin next to each entry he wrote the number of
people listed so that he could easily get an accurate count, which might have
been part of his motivation in writing it all down about thirty years after the fact.
It took me a while to get used to the antique handwriting,
what with the funny double-S and the word the
looking like a y with an e on top of it (which he doesn’t use all the time),
not to mention the old haphazard spellings, but by the time I had plowed
through about half of it, I was able to read it just fine. (In quoting from the
document here, I have spelled all the words the way he did; there are no
typos.)
At the top is his lengthy title:
“The names of those which came over first, in ye year 1620
and were (by the blessing of god) the first Beginers, and (in a sort) the
foundation, of all the plantations, and colonies, in New-England. (And their
families.)”
Bradford’s own entry is fourth on the list and reads:
“William Bradford, and Dorothy his wife, having but one
child, a sone left behind, who came afterward.”
After concluding the list of the original passengers, he
writes further, telling what has become of them all. This entry contains
familiar names:
“Mr. Molines [Mullins], and his wife, his sone, & his
servant dyed the first winter. Only his doughter Priscila survived, and maried
with John Alden, who are both living, and have .11. children. And their eldest
daughter is maried & hath five children.”
His accounts include nothing but prosaic facts: who “dyed,”
who is still living and how many children they have, all reported without
comment or criticism. All he says about John Billinton, for example, is, “executed,
for killing a man.”
All but one of them, that is, and this particular one is what I find so fascinating:
“John Turner, and his .2. sones all dyed in the first
siknes. But he hath a daughter still living at Salem, well maried, and approved
of.”
She must have been a very special person for him to
editorialize even that much.
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You can see the manuscript for yourself at:
