John Alden and the Mayflower

Jerry & Joanne's

Mayflower Connection

Descendants of John Alden

Generation No. 1

1. JOHN ALDEN was born ca. 1599 in England, and died December 12, 1687 in Duxbury, MA. He married Priscilla Mullins ca. 1623¹, daughter of William Mullins and Alice Mullins. She was born ca. 1603.

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. John was about 21 years old when he became the cooper, responsible for making and maintaining the storage barrels for the Mayflower's voyage to America. Once in Plymouth, 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, 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 trespasser John Hocking, who was then shot and killed when other Plymouth men returned fire. 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 Plymouth's 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 both cases the accuser was found guilty and punished.

Alden served as Duxbury's deputy to the Plymouth Court throughout the 1640s, and served 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 build a house at left, in Duxbury, which still stands today. By the 1660s, Alden's frequent public service, combined with his large family of wife and ten children, 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.

Excerpts from The Great Migration, NEHS
Original data: Robert Charles Anderson. The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633, vols. 1-3. Boston, MA: NEHGS 1995.
Database available online @ancestry.com

John Alden ORIGIN: Southampton
MIGRATION: 1620 on Mayflower
FIRST RESIDENCE: Plymouth
REMOVES: Duxbury 1632
OCCUPATION: Cooper

BIRTH: About 1599 (deposed aged 83 on 6 July 1682 [MD 3:120]; in his 89th year at death on 12 September 1687 [MD 9:129]; "about eighty-nine years of age" at death on 12 September 1687 [MD 34:49]).

DEATH: Duxbury 12 September 1687 [Sewall 150; MD 9:129, 34:49].
MARRIAGE: Plymouth about 1623 PRISCILLA MULLINS, daughter of WILLIAM MULLINS; she died after 1651, when she is mentioned in Bradford's summary of Mayflower passengers.

FREEMAN: In "1633" Plymouth list of freemen, among those admitted prior to 1 January 1632/3
[PCR 1:3]; also in lists dated in or near 1637, 1639 and 1658 (in the latter two listed as of Duxbury) [PCR 1:52, 8:174, 198].

EDUCATION: Although there is no direct evidence for his literary and educational attainments, his extensive public service, including especially his appointments as colony treasurer and to committees on revising the laws, certainly indicates that he must have been well-educated.

OFFICES: "Mr. John Alden Sen[ior]" is in the Duxbury section of the 1643 list of men able to bear arms [PCR 8:189].

LAND & PROPERTY GRANTS:

1623 Plymouth land division grant: Unknown number of acres as a passenger on the Mayflower in 1620 [PCR 12:4].
1627 Plymouth cattle division: Included in company of John Howland, along with wife Priscilla, daughter Elizabeth and son John [PCR 12:10].
25 March 1633 and 27 March 1634: Assessed £1 4s. in Plymouth tax lists of [PCR 1:9, 27].
14 March 1635/6, 20 March 1636/7: Assigned mowing ground for the year, [PCR 1:40, 56].
06 March 1636/7: "A parcel of land containing a knoll, or a little hill, lying over against Mr. Alden's land at Blewfish River, is granted by the Court unto the said Mr. John Alden in lieu of a parcel of land taken from him (next unto Samuel Nash's lands) for public use" [PCR 1:51].
05 February 1637/8: Granted "certain lands at Green's Harbor," [PCR 1:76].
02 July 1638: Granted to Miles Standish and John Alden three hundred acres "on the north side of the South River," [PCR 1:91].
03 September 1638: "A little parcel of land... lying at the southerly side of his lot," [PCR 1:95].
03 June 1657: "Liberty is granted unto Mr. John Alden to look out a portion of land to
accommodate his sons withall, and to make report thereof unto the Court, that so it may be
confirmed unto him" [PCR 3:120].
13 June 1660: "In regard that Mr. Alden is low in his estate, and occasioned to spend much time at the courts on the country's occasions, and so hath done this many years, the Court have allowed him a small gratuity, the sum of ten pounds, to be paid by the Treasurer" [PCR 3:195].
07 June 1665: Granted "a competency of land" at Namasskett, [PCR 4:95].
04 March 1673/4: Granted one hundred acres at Teticutt, [PCR 5:141].

In addition to grants of land, John was involved in land purchases and sales. A description of the land of "Mr. John Aldin, of Duxbery," is entered under date of 4 December 1637, but with the modern annotation that this is a later entry, and with the internal statement that one of the abuttors was "Philip Delano, deceased," which means that the entry must have been made in 1681 or later; this is immediately followed by an entry for another parcel of land which Alden bought of Edward Hall in 1651 [PCR 1:71, 73].

In the 1670s, Alden began distributing his land holdings to his surviving sons. Probate records of his estate (he did not leave a will) mention no land holdings, so it must all have been distributed before his death, which would account for the smallness of the estate, only £49 17s. 6d.

08 July 1674: John Alden of Duxbury "for love and natural affection and other valuable causes and considerations" deeded to "David Alden his true and natural son all that his land both meadow and upland that belongs unto him situate or being at or about a place called Rootey Brook within the Township of Middleborough ... excepting only one hundred acres," containing about three hundred acres [PLR 3:330].
01 April 1679: John Alden gave to his son Joseph "all that my share of land... within the township of Bridgewater" [PLR 3:194].
01 January 1684/85: John Alden Sr. of Duxbury for "that real love and parental affection which I bear to my beloved and dutiful son Jonathan Alden" deeded to him all my upland in Duxbury, for which "see old book of grants and bounds of land anno 1637 folio 137," and all other lands at Duxbury whether granted by court at Plymouth or town of Duxbury [PLR 6:53].
13 January 1686/87: John Alden Sr. of Duxbury for "that natural love and affection which I bear to my firstborn and dutiful son John Alden of Boston" deeded him one hundred acres at Pekard Neck alias Pachague with one-eighth of the meadow belonging to that place, and one hundred acres at Rootey Brook (brother David Alden is to have first right of purchase if John should wish to sell this hundred acres), together with a sixteen shilling purchase being the fifteenth lot, all in Middleborough, and one hundred acres, the first in a division of one thousand acres in Bridgewater [PLR 5:427].
19 August 1687: John Alden Sr. of Duxbury, cooper, gave to his sons Jonathan and David Alden five acres of salt marsh at Duxbury and "my whole proportion in the Major's Purchase commonly so-called being the thirty-fifth part of said purchase" [MD 9:145, citing PLR 4:65].

~~~~~~~

John Alden died in 1687 at the age of 89, one of the last surviving Mayflower passengers. The inventory of his estate was taken on 31 October 1687 by Jonathan Alden, and totalled £49 17s. 6d., all movables. On 13 June 1688 the heirs of John Alden Sr. of Duxbury signed a release in favor of Jonathan Alden, stating that they had received their portion of the estate; those signing were Alexander Standish (in the right of his wife Sarah deceased), John Bass (in the right of his wife Ruth deceased), Mary Alden, Thomas Delano, John Alden, Joseph Alden, David Alden, Priscilla Alden and William Pabodie [PPR 1:10, 16; MD 3:10].

Plymouth County Probate Records, Volume 1, pages 10 and 16.
INVENTORY £ s d (Taken October 31, 1687

Neate Cattell sheep Swine & one horse 13
one Table one forme one Carpit one Cubert & coubert Cloth
2 Chaires 5 . .
bedsteds Chests & boxes 15
Andirons pot hookes and hangers . . . 8 6
pots Tongs one quort kettle . . 10
by brass ware . . I: 11.
by 1 ads 1s 6d & saws 7s . . . 8 . 6
by Augurs and Chisells . . . 5 . .
by wedges 5s to Coupers tooles l£ 2s . 17 . .
one Carpenters Joynters . . . 1 .6
Cart boults Cleavie Exseta . . 13 . .
driping pan & gridirons . . . 5 . .
by puter ware 1 pound 12s by old Iron 3s . 1 15 . .
by 2 old guns . . 11
by Table linen & other linen . . 1 . 12 .
To beding .. . 5 : 12
One Spitt Is 6d & baggs 2s .. . 3 . 6
one mortising axe . . . 1 . .
marking Iron a Case of trenchers with other things . . . . 7 .
hamen and winch exse . . . 2 . 6
by one goume and a bitt of linnin Cloth . . . 7 . .
by one horse bridle and Saddle liberary and Cash and weareing Clothes 18 .9
by other old lumber . 5

Included in the final statements of settlement, was this charming statement by John Alden's son Jonathan:

Before Nathaniel Thomas Esqr Judge of the Inferior Court of Common
Pleas the 8th day of November 1687 Leiut Jonathan Alden made oath that
this is a true Inventory of the Estate of his father Mr John "Alden deceased
soe farr as he knoweth & when he knoweth more he will discover the same".

John and Priscilla Alden probably have the largest number of descendants
of any Mayflower passenger. They are ancestors to Presidents John Adams
and John Quincy Adams, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Vice President
Dan Quayle . . . . and my grandmother, Inez Maud Estabrook, born of Canadian parents, George Estabrook and Sarah "Sadie" Sipprell.

Children of JOHN ALDEN and PRISCILLA MULLINS

with excerpts from Robert Charles Anderson.
The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633, vols. 1-3.
Boston, MA: New England Historic Genealogical Society,

i.    ELIZABETH2 ALDEN, b. Bet. 1623 - 1625, Plymouth, MA⁴; d. 31 May 1717,
         Little Compton, RI⁵; m. WILLIAM PABODIE, December 1644, Plymouth, MA;
   b. ca. 1620. she d. Little Compton 31 May 1717 [LCVR 143], "a. 92" [Boston
   News-Letter]. (Her tombstone at Little Compton gives her age at death as "in the
         94th year of her age," but as the current monument was erected in 1882, this may
         not have been on the original stone.)

ii. JOHN ALDEN^6,7, b. Aft. 22 May 1627, Plymouth, MA⁷; d. 1696; m. Boston 1 April 1660

   "Elizabeth Everill, widow, relict of Abiell Everill, deceased" (although the correct date
should prob. be 1659, as a child was born to John and Elizabeth Alden 17 Dec 1659
[BVR   69], and in the original form of the vital records, given in the second of the
following citations but not in the first, this record is imbedded among others for 1659) [BVR
76; NEHGR 18:333; but see NEHGR 52:162 and Munsey-Hopkins 55, which interpret
the 1659 birth record to imply that John Alden had had an earlier wife, also named
   Elizabeth]; she was born before 1640, daughter of William Phillips, and m. Boston
   6 July 1655 Abiel Everill [BVR 52]; John Alden d. 14 March 1701/2 [Sewall 463]

2 iii. JOSEPH ALDEN, b. Aft. 22 May 1627, Massachusetts; d. 08 Feb. 1696/97,
   Bridgewater, MA.   m. by about 1660 Mary Simons, daughter of MOSES and SARAH
   SIMONS or SIMONSON . [MD 31:60].

iv.    PRISCILLA ALDEN, b. ca. 1630⁸.   Living unm. in 1688 [PPR 1:16].

v.    JONATHAN ALDEN⁹, b. ca. 1632^10,11; d. 14 February 1696/97, Duxbury, MA^12,13;
"in the 65 year of his age" [MD 9:159; NEHGR 52:365]. (The date on the tombstone is
14 February 1697, but the double-dating problem is resolved by the probate papers,
as administration on the estate was granted on 8 March 1696/7 [MD 6:174-78].)   He
m. Duxbury 10 December 1672 Abigail Hallett.

vi.    SARAH ALDEN¹³, b. ca. 1634¹⁴; d. Bef. 13 June 1688¹⁵; m. ALEXANDER
STANDISH, ca. 1660. Date of her birth also reported as Aft. 22 May 1627^16,17

vii.   RUTH ALDEN^18,19, b. ca. 163519; d. 12 October 1674, Braintree¹⁹;

viii. MARY ALDEN^19, b. ca. 1638^20,21.

   ix.   REBECCA ALDEN²¹, b. Bef. 1640^22,23; ; m. THOMAS DELANO'
         Subject of unfounded rumor that she was "with child," 1 October 1661 [PCR 4:7];

m. in 1667, before 30 Oct, Thomas Delano [PCR 4:168, 8:122; NEHGR 102:83, 86].

Thomas Delano was fined for "haveing carnall coppulation" with his wife (Rebecca,