John Alden, "Mayflower" Passenger

John Alden (c.1599 - 12 September 1687 South Duxbury, Plymouth Colony) John Alden is said to be the first person from the Mayflower to set foot on Plymouth Rock in December of 1620.

Birth date

The gravestone for John Alden states he died sometime in 1687 (exact date illegible on gravestone though his profile states September 12, 1687) "aged near 88 years." Admittedly, this gravestone was erected in 1980 by Alden Kindred of America, but I presume that group would have been in best position to adjudicate competing claims about his birth year.

If we generously assume he was born 12/31/1598 and died January 1, 1687, then he would have been 87 years and one day (or perhaps two). It seems dubious anyone would describe such an individual as "aged near 88 years." Thus, unless the gravestone is assumed to be incorrect, the overwhelming probability is that John was born in 1599, as documented by numerous sources.

Lineage

• Efforts to locate John Alden's birthplace and have so far been inconclusive. Although he joined the Mayflower at Southampton County, Hampshire, England, no records have been found of John in Southampton, and he was not necessarily a native of that place.
• John Alden's parentage is unknown. Genealogy depends on original documentation for proof of lineage. If you cite a link, please make it to a place that shows original documents - NOT Wikipedia or other non-primary sources.

Marriage

Priscilla Mullens (also spelled 'Mullins') (c.1603 Dorking, Surrey, England - c.1688 Duxbury, Plymouth County present-day Massachusetts), daughter of William Mullens (c.1578 Dorking County, Surrey, England - 21 February 1621 Plymouth, Plymouth, Massachusetts) and Alice Mullens (c.January 1574 St. Martin, London, Middlesex, England - c.1620 Plymouth, Plymouth, Massachusetts)

The Alden Children

Priscilla and John Alden had ten children, with a possible eleventh dying in infancy. Although not documented, it's presumed that the first three children were born in Plymouth, and the remainder in Duxbury.

1. John Alden, Jr. (1623 - 1701) Born at Plymouth, John moved to Boston and married Elizabeth Phillips Everill, widow of Abiel Everill, 1 April 1660 at Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts; John and Elizabeth had thirteen children. He was a mariner and became a naval commander of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was a member of the Old South Church of Boston and his headstone is embedded in the wall there. On a trip to Salem John Alden was accused of witchcraft and spent fifteen weeks in a Boston jail. He escaped shortly before nine other accused were executed during the Salem witch trials. Later exonerated, Captain John Alden died at Boston, Massachusetts, on 14 March, 1701.
2. Elisabeth Alden (c.1624 - 1717) married William Pabodie (also recorded as 'Peabody'), a civic and military leader of Duxbury, where all thirteen of their children were born. They later moved to Little Compton, Rhode Island, where Elizabeth died on 31 May, 1717, at the age of ninety-four.
3. Joseph Alden (c.1627 - c.1697) Moved to Bridgewater where he farmed land purchased from the Indians by his father and Myles Standish. He married Mary Simmons and they had seven children. Died 8 February 1696/97 at Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Massachusetts
4. Jonathan Alden (c.1632 - 1697) married Abigail Hallett on 10 December 1672 at Duxbury, Plymouth County, Massachusetts. Jonathan and Abigail lived in Duxbury and raised six children in the original Alden home, which he received from his father, and which passed to his son upon his death on 14 February, 1697.
5. Sarah Alden (c.1628 - 1674), whose marriage to Alexander Standish, son of Miles Standish, belies any idea of a feud between the Aldens and the Standish family. Sarah and Alexander had at least seven children and lived in Duxbury until Sarah’s death on 12 August 1674.
6. Ruth Alden (1634 - 1674) married John Bass 12 May 1657; had seven children; died 12 October 1674 at Braintree, Norfolk, Massachusetts.
7. Priscilla Alden (1639 - 1689) No record of marriage nor children
8. David Alden (c. 1645 - 1719) married Mary Southworth, daughter of Constant Southworth of Plymouth Colony, and had six children. Described as "a prominent member of the church, a man of great respectability and much employed in public business."
9. Rebecca Alden (c.1649 - 1688), married Thomas Delano of Duxbury before30 October1667. They had nine children.
10. Robert Alden (1649 - 1685)
11. Mary Alden (c.1659 - c.1688) No record of marriage nor children

NOTE: Zachariah Alden and Henry Alden have been incorrectly identified as sons of John and Priscilla Alden in various publications. For information on the genealogy of Henry Alden, see Mayflower Descendant 43:21-29,133-138; 44:27-30,181-184.

Biographical Summary

John Alden (1599?–September 22, 1687) was a tradesman who emigrated to America in 1620 with the Pilgrims on the Mayflower and was among the founders of the Plymouth Colony. He was originally hired by William Bradford and others to be their cooper. Though he could have returned to England the following year, he chose to stay in the new colony.

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 had 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, and in 1634 witnessed a trading dispute escalate into a double-killing, as Moses Talbot of Plymouth Colony was shot at point-blank range by trespassing John Hocking, who was then shot and killed when other Plymouth men returned fire. John Alden was held in custody by the neighboring Massachusetts Bay Colony for a few days while the two colonies debated who had jurisdiction to investigate the murders. Myles Standish eventually came to the Bay Colony to provide Plymouth's answer in the matter.

There are several theories regarding Alden's ancestry. According to William Bradford's Of Plimoth Plantation, he was hired as a cooper in Southampton, England just before the voyage to America. In The English Ancestry" and "Homes of the Pilgrim Fathers, Charles Edward Banks suggested that John was the son of George and Jane Alden and grandson of Richard and Avys Alden of Southampton. However, there are no further occurrences of the names George, Richard, and Avys in his family, which would have been unusual in the seventeenth century. Another theory is that John Alden came from Harwich, England where there are records of an Alden family who were related by marriage to Christopher Jones, the Mayflower's captain. In this case, he may have been the son of John Alden and Elizabeth Daye.

In 1634 Alden was jailed in Boston for a fight at Kenebeck in Maine between members of the Plymouth Colony and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. While Alden did not take part in the fight (which left one person dead) he was the highest ranking member the Massachusetts Bay colonists could get their hands on, and it was only through the intervention of Bradford that he was eventually released.

Alden, and several other families, including the Standish family, founded the town of Duxbury in the 1630s and took up residence there. He served as Duxbury's deputy to the Plymouth Court throughout the 1640s, and sat on several committees, including the Committee on Kennebec Trade, and sat on several Councils of War. He also served as colony treasurer. In the 1650s, he built a house in Duxbury, which still stands today. By the 1660s, Alden's frequent public service, combined with his large family, began to cause his estate to languish, so the Plymouth Court provided him a number of land grants and cash grants to better provide for his family. Through the 1670s, Alden began distributing his land holdings to his surviving sons. He died in 1687 at the age of 89, one of the last surviving Mayflower passengers.

Notes

• John Alden is remembered chiefly because of a popular legend, put into verse in 1858 as The Courtship of Miles Standish by his descendant Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, concerning his courtship of Priscilla Mullins. There is no known historic basis to the legend.
• A rifle supposedly owned by John Alden is in the collection of the National Firearms Museum (National Rifle Association), Fairfax, Virginia: "The most valuable item in the museum's collection is a .66-caliber Italian wheel lock carbine that came over on the Mayflower in 1620 with Pilgrim John Alden."
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a descendant of John Alden, as were John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Orson Welles, Dan Quale, Raquel Welch, Frank Nelson DOubleday, Samuel ELiot Morison, Gamaliel Bradford, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Herbert Henry Dow, Martha Graham, Martha Stewart, Adlai Stevenson III, Jam Garrigue Masarysk, Dick Van Dyke, Julia Child, William Cullen Bryant, John Trumbull, Ned Lamont, Matt Hasselbeck, Jordan Narvey, Lila Battis, and (presumably) Marilyn Monroe.

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John Alden's House, built ca. 1653, in Duxbury, Massachusetts, on the north side of the village, on a farm which is still in possession of their descendants of the seventh generation. He made no will, having distributed the greater part of his estate among his children during his lifetime. John Alden's House, now a National Historic Landmark, is open to the public as a museum. It is run by the Alden Kindred of America, an organization which provides historical information about him and his home, including genealogical records of his descendants.

Alden and his wife Priscilla lie buried in the Miles Standish Burial Ground in Duxbury.

References:

1. Wiki Bio - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Alden_%28Pilgrim%29
2. Pilgrims of Plymouth - http://pilgrims.net/plymouth/history/
3. John Alden site - http://tinyurl.com/JohnAldenWerelate
4. http://www.jscott.tierranet.com/ancestry/taylor/hayden.htm
5. "The Alden Family: Passenger Profile". The Mayflower Society. < link >
6. WikiTree contributors, "John Alden (abt.1598-1687)," WikiTree: The Free Family Tree, (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Alden-63 : accessed 19 December 2024). cites
7. Esther Littleford Woodworth-Barnes, comp., and Alicia Crane Williams, ed. Mayflower Families through Five Generations. Vol. 16, part 1 of 3. General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 1999, pages 1-13, 20-22: John Alden and Priscilla Mullins. Source not available online - checked 4/12/22 by Thiessen-117. Can be purchased through The Mayflower Society: < link >
8. Eugene Aubrey Stratton, FASG. Plymouth Colony: Its History & People. Provo, Utah: The Generations Network, Inc., 1986, pp. 232-233, 331. < GoogleBooks >
9. Alicia Crane Williams, "John Alden: Theories on English Ancestry," in The Mayflower Descendant , 39: 111-22 (1989), 40: 133-26 (1990), 41: 201 (1991). Available on AmericanAncestors.org (with subscription).
10. Caleb Johnson's Mayflower History: John Alden
11. Robert Charles Anderson. The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633. Vol. I. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1995, pp. 21-26. Online at AmericanAncestors.org (with subscription): John Alden. < Ancestry.com >; page 23-24 (document attached)
12. Addison, Daniel Dulany. "The Life and Times of Edward Bass, First Bishop of Massachusetts". Houghton, Mifflin, 1897
13. Plymouth Colony Records ("PCR"), 7:256. Archive.org
14. Thomas Prince. A Chronological History of New-England. Boston: N.E., Printed by Kneeland & Green, 1736, p. 73, 84-86. Archive.org.
15. Thomas Prince. A Chronological History of New-England. New edition. Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, and Co., 1826, p. 190. Archive.org.
16. PCR 2:177
17. A short history of the Alden property written by Curator James W. Baker and published by the Alden Kindred of America HERE (.pdf). It is a revised version of what was published in Alden House History: A Work in Progress (Duxbury, 2006).
18. PCR 1:3.
19. PCR 1:52
20. Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674-1729, vol. 1. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1878, p. 190. Archive.org.
21. Estate Inventory of John Alden transcription. "Plymouth County Probate Records", in The Genealogical Advertiser. Cambridge, MA: Lucy Hall Greenlaw, March 1898. Vol. 1, no. 1, p. 18. Google Books: #10.
22. "Massachusetts, Plymouth County, Probate Records, 1633-1967," images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-897D-J8KC : 20 May 2014), Probate records 1686-1702 and 1849-1867 vol 1-1F > image 12 of 490; State Archives, Boston.
23. George Ernest Bowman. "John Aldens' Inventory and the Settlement of His Estate." in The Mayflower Descendant 3:10-11. AmericanAncestors.org (with subscription): cites Plymouth County Probate Records, Volume I pages 10 & 16
24. "Massachusetts, Plymouth County, Probate Records, 1633-1967," images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-997D-J875 : 16 March 2023), Probate records 1686-1702 and 1849-1867 vol 1-1F > image 15 of 490; State Archives, Boston.
25. Find a Grave, database and images (accessed 9 April 2022), memorial page for John Alden Sr. (1598–12 Sep 1687), Find A Grave: Memorial #15, citing Standish Burial Ground, Duxbury, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, USA; Maintained by Find a Grave: photographs of markers erected in 1930 by Alden Kindred of America
26. William Bradford. History of Plymouth Plantation, vol. 2. Boston: The Massachusetts Historical Society, 1912, page 406. < Archive.org >
27. Timothy Alden. A Collection of American Epitaphs and Inscriptions with Occasional Notes, Vol. 3. New York: S. Marks, 1814, pages 264-266. Google Books.
28. SAAM: https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/why-dont-you-speak-yourself-john...
29. Alden Kindred of America website
30. Alden House National Historic Site https://alden.org/
31. Robert C. Anderson. The Pilgrim Migration: Immigrants to Plymouth Colony, 1620-1633. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2004, pp.17-23: John Alden. < search inside GoogleBooks >

See also:

1. Alden, Ebenezer. Memorial of the Descendants of the Hon. John Alden Randolph, MA: Samuel P. Brown, 1867. < Archive.org >.
2. Andrews, Charles M. The Colonial Period of American History: The Settlement, Volume 1. Simon Publications, 2001, pp. 269-270. < Archive.Org >
3. Baker, James W. Alden House History: A Work in Progress. 2014. < Summary PDF >
4. Banks, Charles Edward. The English Ancestry and Homes of the Pilgrim Fathers Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc. 1976, pp. 27-28. < Hathitrust >
5. Bowman, George Ernest. The Mayflower Reader. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1978. < search inside GoogleBooks >
6. Fielding, Harriet Chapin. The Ancestors and Descendants of Isaac Alden and Irene Smith, His Wife. 1903, pp. 7-8. < GoogleBooks >.
7. Landis, John T. Mayflower Descendants and Their Marriages for Two Generations after the Landing. Baltimore, MD: Southern Book Co., 1956. Image 13 of 52. < libraryofcongress.gov >
8. Pope, Charles Henry. The Pioneers of Massachusetts, a descriptive list, drawn from records of the colonies, towns and churches and other contemporaneous documents. Boston: C.H. Pope, 1900, p. 12. < Archive.org >
9. Thayer, Elisha. Genealogy of Fourteen Families of the Early Settlers of New England. Hingham: J. Farmer, 1835, p. 9. , GoogleBooks >.
10. Willison, George F. Saints and Strangers. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1943.< search at Archive.Org > (free ID to borrow) Page 495 Alden, John, 130-31, 133, 263, 297-98, 310-11, 314, 373, 381, 386, 410, 442, 457, 469, 480; ass't governor, 297, 442, 456; held for murder, 298, 305; leads heresy hunt, 378; death, 407-08; ref. to, 320, 441; Longfellow and, 130, 336, 430, 481, 485-86; wife, see Alden, Priscilla; children, 314, 336, 407, 442, 481; granddaughter, 403 ; descendants, 476, 478
11. Caleb Johnson's Mayflower History website: John Alden
12. Pilgrim Hall Museum website: John Alden
13. Pilgrim Hall Museum website < PDF >
14. : John Alden 17th Century Documents
15. Encyclopaedia Britannica: John Alden and Priscilla Alden
16. Wikipedia: John Alden
17. Wikipedia: Mayflower
18. Wikipedia: Mayflower Compact
19. MayflowerDNA.org wiki
20. Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Apr 16 2018, 5:39:34 UTC
21. Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Apr 16 2018, 5:40:10 UTC
22. Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Apr 15 2018, 18:18:35 UTC
23. Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Apr 15 2018, 18:23:17 UTC
24. "Memorial Stones of John and Priscilla Alden" < Historical Marker Database >
25. Alden, Ebenezer. "Memorial of the Descendants of the Hon. John Alden". S.P. Brown, 1867
26. Hawthorne, Julian. "The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910 Volume 1: 1492-1910". BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2007. ISBN 1426485417, 9781426485411.; p.61-62
27. Longfellow, H.W. "The Courtship of Miles Standish", 1858
28. National Society of Colonial Dames. "First Record Book of the Society of Colonial Dames", 1897; Ch.75
29. Waters, Henry Fitz-Gilbert. "The New England Historical and Genealogical Register". New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1898; p.435-440
30. Find-A-Grave memorial - http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=15
31. Washington Post article - http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/museums/national-firearms-museum,...
32. National Firearms Museum - http://nra.nationalfirearms.museum/tour/gallery/Gallery2.asp
33. Mayflower Passengers - http://www.mayflowerhistory.com/Passengers/JohnAlden.php