Caleb H. Johnson - The Mayflower and Her Passengers

The Mayflowerand Her Passengers

Caleb H. Johnson

Copyright 2006 by Caleb H. Johnson.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

I would first like to thank my wife Anna for her extreme patience with this extraordinarily time-consuming project. Her support made this book possible. One of the precursors to this book was our 1170- page Complete Works of the Mayflower Pilgrims, now out of print. That book, which my wife greatly helped me type, organize, and proofread, was also instrumental in making research for this book much more efficient.

Special thanks are due to Mike Haywood, who graciously painted the gorgeous cover artwork, Mayflowers Dawn, especially for my book. It depicts the Mayflower, anchored off the tip of Cape Cod, on the morning of arrival, 11 November 1620.

Researching records in England, especially records like the High Court of Admiralty and the Customs Books of the Exchequer that are written in Latin, is very expensive and time consuming. Thanks is therefore due to the following individuals who donated some of the needed money to make the research possible: Ben B. Johnson, MD; Carolyn Rust; Peter Ansoff; Elsie J. Wagner; Henry B. Stevens; John F. Hoffman; George A. Hall; Bryce Stevens; Deborah Saller; Michael Mott; Karri Samson; H. J. Dalton Jr.; Sammy Lee Ehrnman; and Andrew McClellen.

The researcher who carried out most of my projects in English records was Simon Neal, who deserves much credit for his thorough and careful work. Without him, many of the discoveries and findings would not have been possible. In the course of this project, he provided translations and transcriptions of more than a hundred pages of requested documents, from the Public Records Office to the British Library to local county records offices across England. I would also like to thank Leslie Mahler and David Greene for occasional correspondence regarding ongoing Mayflower research, and for sharing unpublished research, especially on the Billington and Allerton families. Leslie Mahler has also supplied me, on many occasions, with copies of records, especially from parish registers and probates, some of which I have used in this work.

Thanks is also due to Alicia Crane Williams and the Alden Kin Search Project, and to Frank Soule and the Soule Kindred in America, who supplied funds in support of research into the Mullins family of Dorking, and the Soule family, respectively.

Preface

The story of the Pilgrims and the voyage of the Mayflower has been told and retold in seemingly countless books. Generally, Mayflower passengers have been treated as a collective unit. There have certainly been a few biographies written about some of the more notable passengers, the leaders of the colony, such as William Brewster, William Bradford, and Edward Winslow. But for the most part, the names and lives of the other hundred passengers remain almost unknown. Many were just ordinary men, women, and children for whom not enough historical material could ever be gathered to write a full biography. Nonetheless, each Pilgrim family was unique. Understanding who the Pilgrims were as individuals is necessary to more fully understand them as a collective group.

With the few scant records available, I have attempted to write short biographies of each family group or individual that came on the Mayflower, whenever possible, tracing their lives from baptism to burial through England, Holland, and America. Additionally, I have attempted to put together a biography of the ship itself, using Admiralty Court and customs records to trace the ships movements and the business dealings of her owners.

During the course of the eight years it took to compile and research all the material found in these biographies, I managed to make several new discoveries. Some of my more significant discoveries have already been published, including the English origins of Mayflower passenger Stephen Hopkins, and the English origins of Mayflower passenger Peter Browne. Several other English origins are published here for the first time, including the origins of John Hooke, John Crackston, and the probable origins of Thomas Williams.

We know who all the Mayflower passengers were because William Bradford, governor of Plymouth, recorded a list of them all in his manuscript history Of Plymouth Plantation. But for some of the passengers, that enumeration in the passenger list is the only record of their existence. Some passengers are known only by name. And if the name is Richard Clarke, for example, there are literally thousands of men with that name living in England during the early seventeenth century. There is no practical way to identify such passengers. Nonetheless, a surprising number of Mayflower passengers have been conclusively identified, many discovered in the last few decades as computer-assisted searching and genealogical research techniques have matured.

William Bradfords

Mayflower Passenger List