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THE WOMEN WHO CAME IN THE MAYFLOWER
By Annie Russell Marble
FOREWORD
This little book is intended as a memorial to the women who came in
_The Mayflower_, and their comrades who came later in _The
Ann_ and _The Fortune_, who maintained the high standards of
home life in early Plymouth Colony. There is no attempt to make a
genealogical study of any family. The effort is to reveal glimpses of
the communal life during 1621-1623. This is supplemented by a few
silhouettes of individual matrons and maidens to whose influence we
may trace increased resources in domestic life and education.
One must regret the lack of proof regarding many facts, about which
are conflicting statements, both of the general conditions and the
individual men and women. In some instances, both points of view have
been given here; at other times, the more probable surmises have been
mentioned.
The author feels deep gratitude, and would here express it, to the
librarians of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the New England
Genealogic-Historical Register, the American Antiquarian Society, the
Register of Deeds, Pilgrim Hall, and the Russell Library of Plymouth,
private and public libraries of Duxbury and Marshfield, and to Mr.
Arthur Lord and all other individuals who have assisted in this
research. The publications of the Society of Mayflower Descendants,
and the remarkable researches of its editor, Mr. George E. Bowman,
call for special appreciation.
ANNIE RUSSELL MARBLE. _Worcester, Massachusetts._
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
I ENDURANCE AND ADVENTURE: THE VOYAGE AND LANDING
II COMMUNAL AND FAMILY LIFE IN PLYMOUTH 1621-1623
III MATRONS AND MAIDENS WHO CAME IN "THE MAYFLOWER"
IV COMPANIONS WHO ARRIVED IN "THE FORTUNE" AND "THE ANN"
INDEX
CHAPTER I
ENDURANCE AND ADVENTURE: THE VOYAGE AND LANDING
"So they left ye goodly and pleasante citie, which had been ther
resting-place near 12 years; but they knew they were pilgrimes, &
looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to ye
heavens, their dearest cuntrie, and quieted their spirits."
--_Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantations. Chap. VII._
December weather in New England, even at its best, is a test of
physical endurance. With warm clothes and sheltering homes today, we
find compensations for the cold winds and storms in the exhilarating
winter sports and the good cheer of the holiday season.
The passengers of _The Mayflower_ anchored in Plymouth harbor,
three hundred years ago, lacked compensations of sports or fireside
warmth. One hundred and two in number when they sailed,--of whom
twenty-nine were women,--they had been crowded for ten weeks into a
vessel that was intended to carry about half the number of
passengers. In low spaces between decks, with some fine weather when
the open hatchways allowed air to enter and more stormy days when they
were shut in amid discomforts of all kinds, they had come at last
within sight of the place where, contrary to their plans, they were
destined to make their settlement.
At Plymouth, England, their last port in September, they had "been
kindly entertained and courteously used by divers friends there
dwelling," [Footnote: Relation or Journal of a Plantation Settled at
Plymouth in New-England and Proceedings Thereof; London, 1622
(Bradford and Winslow) Abbreviated In Purchas' Pilgrim, X; iv; London,
1625.] but they were homeless now, facing a new country with frozen
shores, menaced by wild animals and yet more fearsome savages.
Whatever trials of their good sense and sturdy faith came later, those
days of waiting until shelter could be raised on shore, after the
weeks of confinement, must have challenged their physical and
spiritual fortitude.
There must have been exciting days for the women on shipboard and in
landing. There must have been hours of distress for the older and the
delight in adventure which is an unchanging trait of the young of
every race. Wild winds carried away some clothes and cooking-dishes
from the ship; there was a birth and a death, and occasional illness,
besides the dire seasickness. John Howland, "the lustie young man,"
fell overboard but he caught hold of the topsail halyard which hung
extended and so held on "though he was sundry fathoms under water,"
until he was pulled up by a rope and rescued by a boat-hook.
[Footnote: Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation; ch. 9.]
Recent research [Footnote: "The Mayflower," by H. G. Marsden;
Eng. Historical Review, Oct., 1904; The Mayflower Descendant, Jan.,
1916] has argued that the captain of _The Mayflower_ was probably
not _Thomas Jones_, with reputation for severity, but a Master
Christopher Jones of kindlier temper. The former captain was in
Virginia, in September, 1620, according to this account. With the most
generous treatment which the captain and crew could give to the women,
they must have been sorely tried. There were sick to be nursed,
children to be cared for, including some lively boys who played with
powder and nearly caused an explosion at Cape Cod; nourishment must be
found for all from a store of provisions that had been much reduced by
the delays and necessary sales to satisfy their "merchant adventurers"
before they left England. They slept on damp bedding and wore musty
clothes; they lacked exercise and water for drink or cleanliness.
Joyful for them must have been the day recorded by Winslow and
Bradford, [Footnote: Relation or Journal, etc. (1622).]--"On Monday
the thirteenth of November our people went on shore to refresh
themselves and our women to wash, as they had great need."
During the anxious days when the abler men were searching on land for
a site for the settlement, first on Cape Cod and later at Plymouth,
there were events of excitement on the ship left in the harbor.
Peregrine White was born and his father's servant, Edward Thompson,
died. Dorothy May Bradford, the girl-wife of the later Governor of the
colony, was drowned during his absence. There were murmurings and
threats against the leaders by some of the crew and others who were
impatient at the long voyage, scant comforts and uncertain future.
Possibly some of the complaints came from women, but in the hearts of
most of them, although no women signed their names, was the resolution
that inspired the men who signed that compact in the cabin of _The
Mayflower_,--"to promise all due submission and obedience." They
had pledged their "great hope and inward zeal of laying good
foundation for ye propagating and advancing ye gospell of ye kingdom
of Christ in those remote parts of ye world; yea, though they should
be but as stepping-stones unto others for ye performing of so great a
work"; with such spirit they had been impelled to leave Holland and
such faith sustained them on their long journey.
Many of the women who were pioneers at Plymouth had suffered severe
hardships in previous years. They could sustain their own hearts and
encourage the younger ones by remembrance of the passage from England
to Holland, twelve years before, when they were searched most cruelly,
even deprived of their clothes and belongings by the ship's master at
Boston. Later they were abandoned by the Dutchman at Hull, to wait
for fourteen days of frightful storm while their husbands and
protectors were carried far away in a ship towards the coast of
Norway, "their little ones hanging about them and quaking with cold."
[Footnote: Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation; ch. 2.]
There were women with frail bodies, like Rose Standish and Katherine
Carver, but there were strong physiques and dauntless hearts sustained
to great old age, matrons like Susanna White and Elizabeth Hopkins and
young women like Priscilla Mullins, Mary Chilton, Elizabeth Tilley and
Constance Hopkins. In our imaginations today, few women correspond to
the clinging, fainting figures portrayed by some of the painters of
"The Departure" or "The Landing of the Pilgrims." We may more readily
believe that most of the women were upright and alert, peering
anxiously but courageously into the future. Writing in 1910, John
Masefield said: [Footnote: Introduction to Chronicles of the Pilgrim
Fathers (Everyman's Library).] "A generation fond of pleasure,
disinclined towards serious thought, and shrinking from hardship, even
if it may be swiftly reached, will find it difficult to imagine the
temper, courage and manliness of the emigrants who made the first
Christian settlement of New England." Ten years ago it would have been
as difficult for women of our day to understand adequately the
womanliness of the Pilgrim matrons and girls. The anxieties and
self-denials experienced by women of all lands during the last five
years may help us to "imagine" better the dauntless spirit of these
women of New-Plymouth. During those critical months of 1621-1623 they
sustained their households and assisted the men in establishing an
orderly and religious colony. We may justly affirm that some of "the
wisdom, prudence and patience and just and equall carriage of things
by the better part" [Footnote: Bradford's History of Plymouth
Plantation; Bk. II.] was manifested among the women as well as the
men.
In spite of the spiritual zeal which comes from devotion to a good
cause, and the inspiration of steady work, the women must have
suffered from homesickness, as well as from anxiety and illness. They
had left in Holland not alone their loved pastor, John Robinson, and
their valiant friend, Robert Cushman, but many fathers, mothers,
brothers and sisters besides their "dear gossips." Mistress Brewster
yearned for her elder son and her daughters, Fear and Patience;
Priscilla Mullins and Mary Chilton, soon to be left orphans, had been
separated from older brothers and sisters. Disease stalked among them
on land and on shipboard like a demon. Before the completion of more
than two or three of the one-room, thatched houses, the deaths were
multiplying. Possibly this disease was typhus fever; more probably it
was a form of infectious pneumonia, due to enervated conditions of the
body and to exposures at Cape Cod. Winslow declared, in his account of
the expedition on shore, "It blowed and did snow all that day and
night and froze withal. Some of our people that are dead took the
original of their death there." Had the disease been "galloping
consumption," as has been suggested sometimes, it is not probable that
many of those "sick unto death" would have recovered and have lived to
be octogenarians.
The toll of deaths increased and the illness spread until, at one
time, there were only "six or seven sound persons" to minister to the
sick and to bury the dead. Fifteen of the twenty-nine women who sailed
from England and Holland were buried on Plymouth hillside during the
winter and spring. They were: Rose Standish; Elizabeth, wife of Edward
Winslow; Mary, wife of Isaac Allerton; Sarah, wife of Francis Eaton;
Katherine, wife of Governor John Carver; Alice, wife of John Rigdale;
Ann, wife of Edward Fuller; Bridget and Ann Tilley, wives of John and
Edward; Alice, wife of John Mullins or Molines; Mrs. James Chilton;
Mrs. Christopher Martin; Mrs. Thomas Tinker; possibly Mrs. John
Turner, and Ellen More, the orphan ward of Edward Winslow. Nearly
twice as many men as women died during those fateful months of
1621. Can we "imagine" the courage required by the few women who
remained after this devastation, as the wolves were heard howling in
the night, the food supplies were fast disappearing, and the houses of
shelter were delayed in completion by "frost and much foul weather,"
and by the very few men in physical condition to rive timber or to
thatch roofs? The common house, twenty foot square, was crowded with
the sick, among them Carver and Bradford, who were obliged "to rise in
good speed" when the roof caught on fire, and their loaded muskets in
rows beside the beds threatened an explosion. [Footnote: Mourt's
Relation.]
Although the women's strength of body and soul must have been sapped
yet their fidelity stood well the test; when _The Mayflower_ was
to return to England in April and the captain offered free passage to
the women as well as to any men who wished to go, if the women "would
cook and nurse such of the crew as were ill," not a man or a woman
accepted the offer. Intrepid in bravery and faith, the women did their
part in making this lonely, impoverished settlement into a home. This
required adjustments of many kinds. Few in number, the women
represented distinctive classes of society in birth and education. In
Leyden, for seven years, they had chosen their friends and there they
formed a happy community, in spite of some poverty and more anxiety
about the education and morals of their children, because of "the
manifold temptations" [Footnote: Bradford's History of Plymouth
Plantation, ch. 3.] of the Dutch city.
Many of the men, on leaving England, had renounced their more
leisurely occupations and professions to practise trades in
Leyden,--Brewster and Winslow as printers, Allerton as tailor, Dr.
Samuel Fuller as say-weaver and others as carpenters, wool-combers,
masons, cobblers, pewterers and in other crafts. A few owned
residences near the famous University of Leyden, where Robinson and
Brewster taught. Some educational influences would thus fall upon
their families. [Footnote: The England and Holland of the Pilgrims,
Henry M. Dexter and Morton Dexter, Boston, 1905.] On the other hand,
others were recorded as "too poor to be taxed." Until July, 1620,
there were two hundred and ninety-eight known members of this church
in Leyden with nearly three hundred more associated with them. Such
economic and social conditions gave to the women certain privileges
and pleasures in addition to the interesting events in this
picturesque city.
In _The Mayflower_ and at Plymouth, on the other hand, the women
were thrust into a small company with widely differing tastes and
backgrounds. One of the first demands made upon them was for a
democratic spirit,--tolerance and patience, adaptability to varied
natures. The old joke that "the Pilgrim Mothers had to endure not
alone their hardships but the Pilgrim Fathers also" has been
overworked. These women would never have accepted pity as
martyrs. They came to this new country with devotion to the men of
their families and, in those days, such a call was supreme in a
woman's life. They sorrowed for the women friends who had been left
behind,--the wives of Dr. Fuller, Richard Warren, Francis Cooke and
Degory Priest, who were to come later after months of anxious waiting
for a message from New-Plymouth.
The family, not the individual, characterized the life of that
community. The father was always regarded as the "head" of the
family. Evidence of this is found when we try to trace the posterity
of some of the pioneer women from the Old Plymouth Colony Records. A
child is there recorded as "the son of Nicholas Snow," "the son of
John Winslow" or "the daughter of Thomas Cushman" with no hint that
the mothers of these children were, respectively, Constance Hopkins,
Mary Chilton and Mary Allerton, all of whom came in _The
Mayflower,_ although the fathers arrived at Plymouth later on
_The Fortune_ and _The Ann_.
It would be unjust to assume that these women were conscious heroines.
They wrought with courage and purpose equal to these traits in the
men, but probably none of the Pilgrims had a definite vision of the
future. With words of appreciation that are applicable to both sexes,
ex-President Charles W. Eliot has said: [Footnote: Eighteenth Annual
Dinner of Mayflower Society, Nov. 20, 1913.] "The Pilgrims did not
know the issue and they had no vision of it. They just loved liberty
and toleration and truth, and hoped for more of it, for more liberty,
for a more perfect toleration, for more truth, and they put their
lives, their labors, at the disposition of those loves without the
least vision of this republic, or of what was going to come out of
their industry, their devotion, their dangerous and exposed lives."