| Notes |
- Priscilla Mullins was born probably in Dorking, Surrey, England, to William and Alice Mullins. She, her parents, and her brother Joseph all came on the Mayflower to Plymouth in 1620 as part of the London merchants contingent; they were not part of the separatists group seeking religious freedom. William Mullins was a shoe and bootmaker and brought many of those items with them on the Mayflower voyage, as well as a family servant. Priscilla’s parents, her brother and the servant died within months of arriving in Plymouth. She was shortly thereafter, in 1622 or 1623, married to John Alden, the Mayflower's Cooper, who had decided to remain at Plymouth rather than return to England with the ship.
John and Priscilla lived in Plymouth until the late 1630s, when they helped found the neighboring town of Duxbury. John and Priscilla would go on to have ten children, and have an enormous number of descendants, including poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, and Vice President Dan Quayle.
John Alden appears to have originated from an Alden family residing in Harwich, Essex, England, that was related by marriage to the Mayflower's Master Christopher Jones. He was about 21 years old when he was hired to be the Cooper, or barrel-maker, for the Mayflower's voyage to America. He was given the option to stay in America, or return to England; he decided to stay.
At Plymouth, he quickly rose up from his common seaman status to a prominent member of the Colony. About 1622 or 1623, he married Priscilla, the orphaned daughter of William and Alice Mullins. They had their first child, Elizabeth, around 1624, and would have nine more children over the next twenty years.
John Alden was one of the earliest freemen in the Colony, and was elected an assistant to the governor and Plymouth Court as early as 1631, and was regularly re-elected throughout the 1630s. He also became involved in administering the trading activities of the Colony on the Kennebec River.
Alden, and several other families, including the Miles Standish family, founded the town of Duxbury, MA, in the 1630s. They took up residence there, with John Alden serving as Duxbury’s deputy to the Plymouth Court throughout the 1640s. Alden also served as colony treasurer in the 1650s, and he built the house that still stands today (see media, below).
By the 1660s, Alden was given several land and cash grants by the Plymouth Court to assist him in providing for his wife and 10 children. Throughout the 1670s, Alden began distributing his land holdings to his surviving sons.
John Alden died in 1687 at the age of 89, one of the last surviving Mayflower passengers.
Priscilla Alden’s death date has not been pinpointed; it is sometime after 1651 but there is no record of it. Most sources list her death as between 1651 and 1687, when her husband John Alden died.
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Simmons-Truax-Godbout-Ames Family Tree
1602 -
