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THE WOMEN WHO CAME IN THE MAYFLOWER
THE WOMEN WHO CAME IN THE MAYFLOWER ANNIE RUSSELL MARBLE 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."
CHAPTER II
COMMUNAL AND FAMILY LIFE IN PLYMOUTH 1621-1623
Spring and summer came to bless them for their endurance and
unconscious heroism. Then they could appreciate the verdict of their
leaders who chose the site of Plymouth as a "hopeful place" with
running brooks vines of sassafras and strawberry fruit trees fish
and wild fowl and "clay excellent for pots and will wash like soap."
[Footnote: Mourt's Relation] So early was the spring in 1621 that on
March the third there was a thunder storm and "the birds sang in the
woods most pleasantly." On March the sixteenth Samoset came with
Indian greeting. This visit must have been one of mixed sentiments for
the women and we can read more than the mere words in the sentence
"We lodged him that night at Stephen Hopkins' house and watched him."
[Footnote: Mourt's Relation.] Perhaps it was in deference to the women
that the men gave Samoset a hat a pair of stockings shoes a shirt
and a piece of cloth to tie about his waist. Samoset returned soon
with Squanto or Tisquantum the only survivor of the Patuxet tribe of
Indians which had perished of a pestilence Plymouth three years
before. He shared with Hobomok the friendship of the settlers for many
years and both Indians gave excellent service. Through the influence
of Squanto the treaty was made in the spring of 1621 with Massasoit
the first League of Nations to preserve peace in the new world.
Squanto showed the men how to plant alewives or herring as fertilizer
for the Indian corn. He taught the boys and girls how to gather clams
and mussels on the shore and to "tread eels" in the water that is
still called Eel River. He gathered wild strawberries and sassafras
for the women and they prepared a "brew" which almost equalled their
ale of old England. The friendly Indians assisted the men as the
seasons opened in hunting wild turkeys ducks and an occasional deer
welcome additions to the store of fish sea-biscuits and cheese. We
are told [Footnote: Mourt's Relation] that Squanto brought also a dog
from his Indian friends as a gift to the settlement. Already there
were at least two dogs probably brought from Holland or England a
mastiff and a spaniel [Footnote: Winslow's Narration] to give comfort
and companionship to the women and children and to go with the men
into the woods for timber and game.
It seems paradoxical to speak of child-life in this hard-pressed
serious-minded colony but it was there and doubtless it was normal
in its joyous and adventuresome impulses. Under eighteen years of age
were the girls Remember and Mary Allerton Constance and Damaris
Hopkins Elizabeth Tilley and possibly Desire Minter and Humility
Cooper. The boys were Bartholomew Allerton who "learned to sound the
drum" John Crakston William Latham Giles Hopkins John and Francis
Billington Richard More Henry Sampson John Cooke Resolved White
Samuel Fuller Love and Wrestling Brewster and the babies Oceanus
Hopkins and Peregrine White. With the exception of Wrestling Brewster
and Oceanus Hopkins all these children lived to ripe old age--a
credit not alone to their hardy constitutions but also to the care
which the Plymouth women bestowed upon their households.
The flowers that grew in abundance about the settlement must have
given them joy--_arbutus_ or "mayflowers" wild roses blue
chicory Queen Anne's lace purple asters golden-rod and the
beautiful sabbatia or "sentry" which is still found on the banks of
the fresh ponds near the town and is called "the Plymouth rose."
Edward Winslow tells [Footnote: Relation of the Manners Customs
etc. of the Indians.] of the drastic use of this bitter plant in
developing hardihood among Indian boys. Early in the first year one of
these fresh-water ponds known as Billington Sea was discovered by
Francis Billington when he had climbed a high hill and had reported
from it "a smaller sea." Blackberries blueberries plums and cherries
must have been delights to the women and children. Medicinal herbs
were found and used by advice of the Indian friends; the bayberry's
virtues as salve if not as candle-light were early applied to the
comforts of the households. Robins bluebirds "Bob Whites" and other
birds sang for the pioneers as they sing for the tourist and resident
in Plymouth today. The mosquito had a sting--for Bradford gave a
droll and pungent answer to the discontented colonists who had
reported in 1624 that "the people are much annoyed with musquetoes."
He wrote: [Footnote: Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation
Bk. II.] _"They_ are too delicate and unfitte to begin new
plantations and colonies that cannot enduer the biting of a
muskeet. We would wish such to keep at home till at least they be
muskeeto proof. Yet this place is as free as any and experience
teacheth that ye land is tild and ye woods cut downe the fewer there
will be and in the end scarce any at all." The _end_ has not yet
come!
Good harvests and some thrilling incidents varied the hard conditions
of life for the women during 1621-2. Indian corn and barley furnished
a new foundation for many "a savory dish" prepared by the housewives
in the mortar and pestles kettles and skillets which they had brought
from Holland. Nuts were used for food giving piquant flavor both to
"cakes" baked in the fire and to the stuffing of wild turkeys. The
fare was simple but it must have seemed a feast to the Pilgrims after
the months of self-denials and extremity.
Before the winter of 1621-2 was ended seven log houses had been built
and four "common buildings" for storage meetings and workshops.
Already clapboards and furs were stored to be sent back to England to
the merchant adventurers in the first ship. The seven huts with
thatched roofs and chimneys on the outside probably in cob-house
style were of hewn planks not of round logs. [Footnote: The Pilgrim
Republic John A. Goodwin p. 582.] The fireplaces were of stones laid
in clay from the abundant sand. In 1628 thatched roofs were condemned
because of the danger of fire [Footnote: Records of the Colony of New
Plymouth.] and boards or palings were substituted. During the first
two years or longer light came into the houses through oiled paper in
the windows. From the plans left by Governor Bradford and the record
of the visit of De Rassieres to Plymouth in 1627 one can visualize
this first street in New England leading from Plymouth harbor up the
hill to the cannon and stockade where later was the fort. At the
intersection of the first street and a cross-highway stood the
Governor's house. It was fitting that the lot nearest to the fort hill
should be assigned to Miles Standish and John Alden. All had free
access to the brook where flagons were filled for drink and where the
clothes were washed.
A few events that have been recorded by Winslow Bradford and Morton
were significant and must have relieved the monotony of life. On
January fourth an eagle was shot cooked and proved "to be excellent
meat; it was hardly to be discerned from mutton." [Footnote: Mourt's
Relation.] Four days later three seals and a cod were caught; we may
assume that they furnished oil meat and skins for the household.
About the same time John Goodman and Peter Brown lost their way in
the woods remained out all night thinking they heard lions roar
(mistaking wolves for lions) and on their return the next day John
Goodman's feet were so badly frozen "that it was a long time before he
was able to go." [Footnote: _Ibid._] Wild geese were shot and
used for broth on the ninth of February; the same day the Common House
was set ablaze but was saved from destruction. It is easy to imagine
the exciting effects of such incidents upon the band of thirteen boys
and seven girls already enumerated. In July the cry of "a lost
child" aroused the settlement to a search for that "unwhipt rascal"
John Billington who had run away to the Nauset Indians at Eastham
but he was found unharmed by a posse of men led by Captain Standish.
To the women one of the most exciting events must have been the
marriage on May 22 1621 of Edward Winslow and Mistress Susanna
White. Her husband and two men-servants had died since _The
Mayflower_ left England and she was alone to care for two young
boys one a baby a few weeks old. Elizabeth Barker Winslow had died
seven weeks before the wedding day. Perhaps the Plymouth women
gossiped a little over the brief interval of mourning but the
exigencies of the times easily explained the marriage which was
performed by a magistrate presumably the Governor.
Even more disturbing to the peaceful life was the first duel on June
18 between Edward Lister and Edward Dotey both servants of Stephen
Hopkins. Tradition ascribed the cause to a quarrel over the attractive
elder daughter of their master Constance Hopkins. The duel was fought
with swords and daggers; both youths were slightly wounded in hand and
thigh and both were sentenced as punishment to have their hands and
feet tied together and to fast for twenty-four hours but says a
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