Mayflower Lives: Pilgrims in a New World and the Early American Experience

by Martyn Whittock

Overview

A fresh and revealing history of one of the most seminal events in American history as seen through fourteen diverse and dynamic figures.

Leading into the 400th anniversary of the voyage of the Mayflower, Martyn Whittock examines the lives of the “saints” (members of the Separatist puritan congregations) and “strangers” (economic migrants) on the original ship who collectively became known to history as “the Pilgrims.”

The story of the Pilgrims has taken on a life of its own as one of our founding national myths—their escape from religious persecution, the dangerous transatlantic journey, that brutal first winter. Throughout the narrative, we meet characters already familiar to us through Thanksgiving folklore—Captain Jones, Myles Standish, and Tisquantum (Squanto)—as well as new ones.

There is Mary Chilton, the first woman to set foot on shore, and asylum seeker William Bradford. We meet fur trapper John Howland and little Mary More, who was brought as an indentured servant. Then there is Stephen Hopkins, who had already survived one shipwreck and was the only Mayflower passenger with any prior American experience. Decidedly un-puritanical, he kept a tavern and was frequently chastised for allowing drinking on Sundays.

Epic and intimate, Mayflower Lives is a rich and rewarding book that promises to enthrall readers of early American history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643131320
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	08/06/2019
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Martyn Whittock has written numerous educational and history books, including titles on Viking and Anglo-Saxon history. He has been a consultant for the BBC, English Heritage, and the National Trust in the UK, and has written for Medieval History magazine and other historical journals. In addition, as a commentator and columnist, he writes for several print and online news platforms, and has been interviewed on TV and radio news programs exploring the impact of history on current events in the USA, the UK, and globally.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

1 The Master's Story: Christopher Jones, Master of the Mayflower 1

2 The Asylum Seeker's Story: William Bradford, a Saint Fleeing Babylon 19

3 The Mother's Story: Susanna White, Mother of the First Baby Born in New England 42

4 The Adventurer's Story: Stephen Hopkins, Survivor of Shipwreck and with Unique New World Experience 62

5 The Outsider's Story: Tisquantum (Squanto), Native American 85

6 The Teenager's Story: Mary Chilton, Reputedly the First to Step onto Plymouth Rock 106

7 The Exiled Little Servant's Story: Mary More, Unwanted Four-Year-Old 127

8 The Man Overboard's Story: John Howland, Indentured Servant, Negotiator, and Fur Trapper 142

9 The Preacher's Story: William Brewster, Saint, Diplomat, and Preacher 161

10 The Pamphleteer's Story: Edward Winslow, Pilgrim Leader, Colony Agent, and Lobbyist 188

11 The Soldier's Story: Captain Myles Standish, Commander of the Plymouth Colony Militia 207

12 The Lovers' Story: John Alden and Priscilla Mullins 227

13 The Rebels' Story: the Billingtons, the Soules, and Other Challenges to Morality and Order 241

14 The American Mariner's Story: Richard More, New World Sea Captain 256

15 Seeing the New England Forest for the Trees 270

Acknowledgments 273

Endnotes 275

Index 297

Editorial Reviews

05/13/2019

Historian and BBC consultant Whittock (When God Was King) pays homage to the upcoming 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s 1620 voyage with this slightly unfocused group biography. Using as a lens the lives of more than a dozen people associated with the ship, he explores religion, politics, economics, romance and family life, crime, and relations with Native Americans in the Plymouth settlement. Whittock looks at the Pilgrims’ religious faith in chapters on William Bradford and William Brewster. Four-year-old Mary More’s brief existence occasions a discussion of patriarchal norms: convinced that Mary and her three siblings, all under the age of eight, weren’t his biological children, Samuel More sent them off to America as indentured servants—and only one survived. Chapters on Squanto—an Algonquian who was kidnapped, taken to England, and returned before the Pilgrims arrived—and militia commander Myles Standish take up the often contentious relationships between native people and the new arrivals. The book’s organizing principle, one life per chapter, is dispensed with toward the end for a chapter on a love story and one on a variety of social rebels, and a somewhat simplistic conclusion lauds the colonists’ devoutness and courage. Readers looking for an introduction to the Pilgrims will be adequately served; others may come away unsatisfied. Illus. Agent: Robert Dudley, Robert Dudley Agency. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Whittock’s recounting of these seminal lives makes great reading for students of early colonial American history."

Booklist

"It’s perhaps not so surprising that such an assemblage of resolute men and women should contain a number of memorable lives, though it is surprising just how much historians have discovered about people who, with only two or three exceptions, remained unknown in their own day. Mr. Whittock has woven their stories together wonderfully."

Wall Street Journal

2019-05-12
A prolific British historian explores the makeup of the motley crew—both "Saints" (Puritan separatists) and "Strangers" (economic migrants)—who ventured by sea to a foreign American land four centuries ago.

Whittock (When God Was King: Rebels & Radicals of the Civil War & Mayflower Generation, 2018, etc.), an engaging writer who uses (sometimes overly) exclamatory prose, discusses the lives of 14 of these extraordinary characters, out of the original 130 Mayflower travelers, each in their own chapter. Throughout, the author emphasizes the stunning hardship of that first voyage as many of the English separatists, then living in the Netherlands, left everything behind to plunge into the unknown. Moreover, the crew was originally headed to Virginia on a different ship whose chronic leaking forced them to delay for months before setting out in the Mayflower, and then they were driven by severe storms back up the Atlantic coast to present-day Plymouth in November 1620. Fully half of the total died within a year in America, unable to survive the cold and meager provisions of the first winter. Whittock examines each of his chosen's backstory and upbringing in England, such as the Puritan leader William Bradford, radicalized as a teenager and one of the community in Leiden, who, with his wife, left their small son to sail to America—tragically, as his wife died shortly after arrival. The author's female stories prove especially poignant—e.g., Susanna White, the mother of the first child born in America; and Mary More, the orphaned, indentured 4-year-old servant and child of an adulterous father; she died shortly after arrival, probably from neglect. Whittock also includes a fantastic biography of so-called Squanto (Tisquantum), who had been kidnapped by Englishmen earlier in his life, spoke English, and was returning to his native land, which was denuded of population due to the devastation of European-spread disease.

Stories full of faith and struggle lose none of their mythological quality.

Kirkus Reviews

"It’s perhaps not so surprising that such an assemblage of resolute men and women should contain a number of memorable lives, though it is surprising just how much historians have discovered about people who, with only two or three exceptions, remained unknown in their own day. Mr. Whittock has woven their stories together wonderfully."

Wall Street Journal

"Whittock’s recounting of these seminal lives makes great reading for students of early colonial American history."

Booklist