GENERATION 12

GENERATION 11

Biography

William Bradford wrote, in his history of Plymouth Plantation: "JOHN ALDEN was hired for a cooper (barrel maker) at Southampton where the ship Mayflower victualed, and being a hopeful young man was much desired but left to his own liking to go or stay when he came here; but he stayed and married here." and later wrote "JOHN ALDEN married PRISCILLA, Mr. MULLINS's daughter, and had issue by her as is before related."

In the strictest sense, it could be said that JOHN ALDEN was not a Pilgrim. He was not a member of the Leyden group of Separatists and Brownists, usually designated as Pilgrims, who had left England and settled in Amsterdam and Leyden. He was hired on as a cooper to look after the hogsheads of beer on the voyage to prevent loss of the contents by leakage.

JOHN ALDEN was an assistant for the Plymouth colony for many years, and was deputy governor for two years. His marriage to PRISCILLA MULLINS was the subject of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem, "The Courtship of Myles Standish", which although a classic has little factual basis. JOHN and PRISCILLA were among the founders of the town of Duxbury.

In 1634, JOHN ALDEN was on the Kennebec River assisting in the forceful removal of John Hocking who was illegally fishing and trading on land that had been granted to the Pilgrims. Hockings refused to leave, and when the party arrived at his ship by canoe to board and remove him, he shot and killed Moses Talbot. In return, Hockings was shot and killed. The Massachusetts Bay Colony took matters into its own hands, and arrested JOHN ALDEN (even though he was not the one who fired the shot). Myles Standish was sent by Governor Bradford to obtain ALDEN's release, which he successfully did.

In his later years, JOHN ALDEN was on many juries, including even a witch trial. Though, in that case the jury found the accuser guilty of libel and the alleged witch was allowed to go free. Plymouth Colony only had two witch trials during its history, and in each case the accuser was found guilty and punished.

JOHN and PRISCILLA ALDEN probably have the largest number of descendants of any Mayflower passenger, but with stiff competition from Richard Warren and John Howland. They are ancestors to Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Vice President Dan Quayle.

An excellent biographical discussion of JOHN and PRISCILLA ALDEN can be found on the site for the Aldren Kindred of America .... www.alden.org/index.cfm?p=explore.
 

Plymouth Colony

Life in Plymouth Colony was anything but easy. Half of those who arrived on the Mayflower in 1620, did not survive through the spring of 1621. Neither of PRISCILLA's parents survived that first winter. The facts of those early years are probably far different than the perceptions most Americans have of the actual events. Cape Cod was not the intended destination when the Mayflower set sail from England. It was headed for the mouth of the Hudson River, at the time in northern Virginia. Heavy seas and high winds made it unsafe to use sails at times, and the ship drifted north off course. It landed at Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod. It is now known that the Native Americans who were living in the area, had suffered greatly in the few years prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims. The indian population had been decimated by an epidemic. This allowed the Pilgrims to settle the area in relative peace, with little hostility from the indians. Samoset was the first indian the Pilgrims met. He spoke some English, learned from his interaction with English fisherman. On March 16, 1621, he wandered into the Plymouth encampment and welcomed the Pilgrims. He asked for beer. A week later Samoset returned with five others who came with deer skins to trade for more beer. Being Sunday, the Pilgrims declined to trade, but did offer food. On March 22, 1621, Samoset returned again, this time with Squanto, a Patuxet indian who spoke much better English. Squanto arranged a meeting with the Wampanoag chieftan Massasoit. The Wampanoag tribe and the Pilgrims coexisted in the Plymouth area, and may have shared food, sometimes described as a "Thanksgiving dinner." Indeed there was a feast of some kind held in the fall of 1621. But, it was not as if the Pilgrims "invited" the Wampanoag over for dinner. Rather, both sides were celebrating a successful hunt and joined together to prepare and eat the rewards of their hunt.