The Mayflower

102 passengers, 66 days at sea, and the founding of Plymouth Colony. Four of the family's ancestors were aboard.

The Voyage

On September 6, 1620, the Mayflower departed Plymouth, England with 102 passengers and approximately 30 crew. The ship was a merchant vessel, about 100 feet long, not designed for passenger transport.

• September 6. The Mayflower leaves Plymouth.
• September to November. 66 days crossing the North Atlantic through autumn storms. Passengers were confined below decks in a space roughly 80 by 20 feet with 5-foot ceilings.
• October. William Butten, a servant of Samuel Fuller, dies at sea, the only death during the crossing.
• October. Oceanus Hopkins is born aboard, the only birth during the voyage.
• November 9. Land sighted: Cape Cod, after more than two months at sea.
• November 11. 41 adult male passengers sign the Mayflower Compact in Provincetown Harbor.
• December. The colonists reach Plymouth and spend the first winter living mostly aboard the ship while building shelters on shore.
• Spring 1621. Roughly half of the passengers and crew have died from disease, exposure and malnutrition. Only 53 of the original 102 passengers survive.

The Compact

On November 11, 1620, before going ashore, 41 adult male passengers signed the Mayflower Compact in Provincetown Harbor. It was the first governing document of the Plymouth Colony.

“We whose names are underwritten… do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic… and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws… as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony.” The Mayflower Compact, November 11, 1620.

The signers agreed to a government by consent of the governed, a radical idea in 1620.

The First Winter

The colonists did not reach Plymouth until December 1620. Disease, exposure and malnutrition ravaged the colony through the winter. By spring 1621, only 53 of the original 102 passengers were alive.

Among the dead was Degory Priest, one of the family's Mayflower ancestors. He signed the Compact but did not live to see spring.

Our Connection

Four Mayflower passengers stand in the family tree. The lines are set out on the Mayflower Passengers line page.

• Francis Cooke. Sailed with his son John. John married Sarah Warren, daughter of fellow passenger Richard Warren, a double Mayflower connection. The line reaches the family through the Hathaway and Peckham families.
• Richard Warren. Father of Sarah Warren, who married John Cooke. The Warren surname appears again much later in the family, in Rachel Warren, Papa's mother, but her Warrens were a Philadelphia family and no Plymouth connection has been found (see Warren & Arden).
• Degory Priest. Signed the Compact and died the first winter. His daughter Mary married Phineas Pratt, and through the Coleman families the line reaches the family via Nantucket.
• George Soule. Came as a servant of Edward Winslow. Through his daughter Susannah and the Barber family, the line reaches the family through the Peckhams of Rhode Island.

The crossing, the Compact and the first winter are among the best-documented events in early American history; the primary accounts are William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation and Mourt's Relation. Footnotes for this chapter are in preparation.