The Plymouth Colony Archive Project

Ages & Occupations

The Mayflower passengers consisted of fifty men, nineteen women, three of whom were pregnant, fourteen young adults, and nineteen children, a total of 102. One baby was born on the voyage across the Atlantic (Oceanus Hopkins), one after the ship’s arrival in Cape Cod Harbor (Peregrine White), and on 22 December 1620, Mary (Norris) Allerton had a still born son while the Mayflower was anchored in Plymouth Harbor. The sixty-nine adult passengers were mainly in their thirties, the fourteen young adults ranged between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, and the nineteen children were twelve and under. The average age of the men who sailed on the Mayflower, whose baptismal or birth dates are known or can be estimated was thirty-four.

 

            Listed below in alphabetical order are the names of the adult male passengers whose estimated age and/or occupation at the time of emigration is known. The data are based on information from Robert Charles Anderson’s three volume The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633 (New England Historic and Genealogical Society, 1995), Caleb Johnson’s Mayflower web pages at http://members.aol.com/calebj/mayflower.html and, for additional occupational information, The Mayflower Descendant CD ROM (Search & ReSearch Publishing Corporation). Anderson and Johnson only have been used for estimated ages. Where there is a difference, two are given, and Anderson precedes Johnson. It should be remembered that in the case of the Leiden passengers, many of the Separatists had to change their occupation when they took refuge in Holland, and were employed in trades (particularly the cloth trade) for which they had not necessarily been trained.

 

Alden, John (21, cooper)

Allerton, Isaac (34, tailor, merchant)

Allerton, John (29, seaman)

Billington, John (38)

Bradford, William (30, fustian maker)   

Brewster, William (54, printer)

Britteridge, Richard (39)

Brown, Peter (20)

Carter, Robert (servant to William Mullins)

Carver, John (35)

Chilton, James (64, tailor)

Cooke, Francis (37, wool comber)

Crackstone, John (45)

Doty, Edward (21/18-25, servant to Stephen Hopkins)

Eaton, Francis (25, house carpenter)

Ely, _____ (seaman, hired to stay a year)

English, Thomas (master of the Speedwell and then the shallop)

Fletcher, Moses (55, smith)

Fuller, Edward (45)

Fuller, Samuel (40, brother of Edward Fuller; say-weaver, surgeon)

Gardiner, Richard (38, seaman)

Holbeck, William (servant to William White)

Hopkins, Stephen (38/42, tanner & merchant)

Howland, John (21, servant to John Carver)

Langmore, John (21, servant to Christopher Martin)

Lester, Edward (18-25, servant to Stephen Hopkins)

Margesson, Edmund (34)

Martin, Christopher (38, merchant)

Mullins, William (52/48, boot & shoe maker/dealer)

Priest, Degory (41, hatter)

Rogers, Thomas (48)

Soule, George (18/18-25, servant to Edward Winslow)

Standish, Myles (27/36, military captain)

Story, Elias (18-25, servant to Edward Winslow)

Thompson, Edward (servant to William White)

Tilley, Edward (32)

Tilley, John (49, brother of Edward Tilley)

Tinker, Thomas (wood-sawyer)

Trevor, William (seaman, hired to stay a year)

Turner, John (30, merchant)

Warren, Richard (42, merchant)

White, William (30)

Wilder, Roger (25, servant to John Carver)

Williams, Thomas (38)

Winslow, Edward (25, printer)

Winslow, Gilbert (20, brother of Edward Winslow)

 

Origins and Connections

            The leadership and driving force of the emigration lay with the adult members of the Scrooby congregation from Leiden, Holland. They were part of a group of Separatists who had fled persecution in England to live in Holland in 1608, finally settling in Leiden in 1610. Scrooby is a little village in Nottinghamshire, about fifty miles south of the walled city of York, and the congregation there had attracted many Separatists.

Scrooby is located just south of Bawtry,
on this excerpt of a map of Nottinghamshire County
from Cary's New & Correct English Atlas (London: Printed for John Cary, 1787).

Some one hundred twenty-five eventually made their way to Leiden, and it was from this group that the leaders of the party of settlers on board the Mayflower came. They probably comprised some forty percent of those on board, as twenty-eight out of the sixty-nine adults who sailed on the Mayflower appear to have been congregational members. There is some question as to whether or not William and Susanna White embarked from Leiden — they may have boarded the ship in England — but it is possible that they were also a part of the Leiden congregation. The twenty-eight adults have been taken to be those listed below, followed by the young adults or children who accompanied them from Leiden. By no means all were born in Nottinghamshire. They came from a variety of English counties, but for the purposes of this listing it is their Leiden origin that is relevant.

 

 

Leiden

Adults                                                  Young Adults                          Children

 

Isaac and Mary Allerton                                                                       Bartholomew, Remember, Mary Allerton

(7/8, 5/6 & 3/4)

                                                                                   

William and Dorothy Bradford

William and Mary Brewster                                                                  Love and Wrestling Brewster (13/9 & 9/6)

John and Katherine Carver                   Desire Minter (15)

James and Susanna Chilton                   Mary Chilton (13)

Francis Cooke                                      John Cooke (15)

John Crackstone, Sr.                            John Crackstone, Jr. (18)

Edward Fuller and his wife                                                                    Samuel Fuller (12)

Samuel Fuller, Sr.

Moses Fletcher

Degory Priest

Thomas Rogers                                    Joseph Rogers (17)

John and Joan Tilley                              Elizabeth Tilley (15)

Thomas Tinker and his wife                                                                   Son

John Turner                                                                                          2 sons (5 & 3)

William and Susanna White                                                                   Resolved White (5)

Thomas Williams

Edward and Elizabeth Winslow

 

Myles and Rose Standish embarked from Holland with the Leiden settlers, but were not members of the Scrooby congregation. It has been suggested that Myles Standish was originally from the Isle of Man, but it has not been proven. Thomas English, master of the Speedwell, the ship in which the Leiden settlers left Holland for England prior to the voyage to America, is believed to have been a resident of Leiden, but there is no suggestion that he was linked to the Scrooby congregation.

 

            The members of the Leiden group were a close knit community, the majority being the younger, more vigorous members of the congregation. This was deliberate policy as they would have the hardest part of establishing the new colony. In addition to being friends, some were related, both by blood and marriage. It was believed that Surgeon Samuel Fuller had not only his brother Edward and Edward’s wife, on board, but his sister Susanna, married to William White, and two nephews, Samuel Fuller Junior and Resolved White. More recent evidence, however, indicates that the Susanna who was married to William White was not a Fuller. Degory Priest, who made the voyage ahead of his family, was married to Isaac Allerton’s sister Sarah. Allerton’s wife Mary had attended Elizabeth Barker at her marriage to Edward Winslow in 1618. There were also family connections with some of the passengers who joined them in London, passengers who in fact made up the greater proportion of those who sailed on the Mayflower. 

 

            Copies of the Leiden marriage records of some of the passengers on the Mayflower were published in The Mayflower Descendant in a series entitled "The Mayflower Marriage Records at Leyden and Amsterdam." They appear in the original Dutch with English translations. The records show relationships between the passengers which enrich our understanding of some of the dynamics at work between them. The relevant records published in The Mayflower Descendant (MD) are as follows:

 

Degory Priest to the widow Sarah (Allerton) Vincent, sister of Isaac Allerton who was married to Mary Norris, a double marriage on 4 November 1611. MD, vol. 6, no. 3, 1905, pp. 129-130.

Francis Cooke to Jennie (Hester) Mahieu, 30 June 1603. MD, vol. 8, no. 1, 1906, pp. 48-50.

            Edward Winslow to Elizabeth Barker, 12 May 1618. MD, vol. 8, no. 2, 1906, p. 100.

Samuel Fuller, widower to (1) Agnes Carpenter, 24 April 1613. Agnes Carpenter was accompanied by her sister Alice Carpenter, who ten days later married Edward Southworth, on May 4, 1613. After Southworth’s death, Alice married William Bradford in Plymouth on August 14, 1623.

Samuel Fuller, widower to (2) Bridget Lee, on 27 May 1617. MD, vol. 8, no. 3, 1906, pp. 129-130.

 

            The fifty-five passengers from England who joined the group from Holland (forty-seven in number, including Myles and Rose Standish and Thomas English, master of the Speedwell), were in fact in a small majority, forming an estimated fifty-four percent of the combined group. They came from a variety of counties in England, and the origin of slightly less than half the group is known. The rest have been listed as “unknown,” but where a possible point of origin has been suggested on reasonable evidence it has been included in parentheses. The information is based on data provided by Anderson in The Great Migration Begins (Boston, 1995) and from Caleb Johnson’s website http://members.aol.com/calebj/mayflower.html.

 

London

Richard Warren

Stephen and Elizabeth Hopkins, Constance, Giles, and Damaris Hopkins

 

Henlow, Bedfordshire

Edward and Ann Tilley, Humility Cooper, Henry Sampson

 

Billerica, Essex

Christopher and Marie Martin, Solomon Prower

 

Bristol, Gloucestershire

Francis, Sarah, and Samuel Eaton

 

Fenstanton, Huntingdonshire

John Howland

 

Shipton, Shropshire

Ellen, Jasper, Richard, and Mary More

Dorking, Surrey

William, Alice, Joseph and Priscilla Mullins

 

Droitwich, Worcestershire

Gilbert Winslow

 

Origins unknown

John Alden

John Allerton

John, Elinor, John Jr., and Francis Billington (possibly Lincolnshire)

Richard Britteridge (possibly Sussex)

Peter Brown

William Button

Robert Carter

Richard Clarke

Edward Doty

_____ Ely

Richard Gardiner (possibly Harwich, Essex)

John Goodman

William Holbeck

John Hooke (possibly Norwich, Norfolk)

John Langmore

William Latham (possibly Eccleston-by-Chorley, Lancashire)

Edward Lester

Edmund Margesson (possibly Swannington, Norfolk)

John and Alice Rigsdale

George Soule

Elias Story

Edward Thompson

William Trevor

Roger Wilder (possibly Rotherwick, Hampshire)

Dorothy _____