GENERATION 13

GENERATION 12

Biography

The Assembly Books of the corporation of Southampton show the name of GEORGE ALDEN, a fletcher (arrow maker) living in the parish of All Saints. His name appears regularly from 1587 to 1620 in the Court Leet Books of Southampton. Unfortunately, the early registers of All Saints do not now exist, but the Assembly Books show that he was surveyor of highways, 1600; a beadle in 1605; bondsman the same year (signing with a mark); surety for an alehouse keeper, 1619; with a last appearance of his name in July, 1620, in the stall and art lists when the Mayflower and Speedwell were lying at anchor in Southampton Water (Assembly Books, pp. 16, 39a).

JANE ALDEN, a widow, was taxed in the city subsidy for 1628 (Public Record Office 175/522).

From these records it is a fair presumption that JOHN ALDEN, said to have been born in 1599, residing in Southampton in 1620, may have been the son of GEORGE ALDEN, the fletcher, who disappeared, probably dying in that year, leaving JOHN an orphan, free to take employment overseas.

The marriage of JOHN and PRISCILLA MULLINS, a fellow-passenger, derives some contemporary interest from the fact that a WILLIAM MULLINS and a GEORGE ALDEN were both in the tax list of Holyrood Ward in 1602 (Assembly Book, fol. I). It is left to the imagination to infer that the famous romance of JOHN and PRISCILLA began in Southampton.

The foregoing explanation is, of course, open to dispute. For one thing, the name, George, does not appear in the families of John Alden or his descendants. The employment of JOHN "at Southampton" does not necessarily mean that he was a resident of that seaport as he may have only been at work there temporarily when the "Mayflower" arrived.