The First Thanksgiving -- The Few, The Proud, The WOMEN

 

On September 16, 1620, 102 passengers boarded the Mayflower at Plymouth, England, bound for Virginia. Of these, only 18 adult women boarded the ship, with three of them at least six months pregnant. These child-bearing women were Susanna White, Mary Allerton and Elizabeth Hopkins – all of whom braved the stormy Atlantic knowing that they would give birth either at sea in desperate conditions or in their hoped destination of America. Oceanus, son of Stephen and Elizabeth Hopkins, was the born on the Mayflower during the 66 day crossing?

All the adult women on the Mayflower were married. There were no single women – although there were a few teenage girls nearing marriageable age.

(Women of the Mayflower.” Mayflower 400. https://www.mayflower400uk.org/education/women-of-the-mayflower/.)

Note: Please access this site for detailed information on individual Pilgrim women: https://www.mayflower400uk.org/education/women-of-the-mayflower/

Women in 1620 had little rights and their history is patchy, given little thought was given to recording their endeavors. Governor William Bradford reported that the Pilgrims were worried that the "weak bodies of women" would not be able to withstand the rigors of a trans-Atlantic voyage and the construction of a colony.

This meant the Pilgrim husband, as head of the household, had an important and difficult decision to make. Building a colony would be hard on a woman's "weaker body." It might be safer and more healthy to leave her behind, and have her come later once the houses were built, and the general safety and success of the colony were better established. But that could be several years. Could he live several years without his wife? How strong was his wife anyway, could she really handle it? Was it right to put your wife's life in danger in this manner?

Prior to the Mayflower, very few English women had made the voyage across the ocean. Sir Walter Raleigh's Roanoke colony arrived in Virginia in 1587, and amongst those 120 colonists there were 17 women: a baby girl, Virginia Dare, was born after arrival. When re-supply ships came from England, they could not relocate the people. The colony had mysteriously disappeared, and was never seen again. The Jamestown Colony was founded in 1607, but relatively few women had yet made the voyage and taken up residence there.

According to The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Women Who Came in the Mayflower by Annie Russell Marble, there were women with frail bodies on the Mayflower, like Rose Standish and Katherine Carver, but there were strong physiques and dauntless hearts sustained to great old age, matrons like Susanna White and Elizabeth Hopkins and young women like Priscilla Mullins, Mary Chilton, Elizabeth Tilley and Constance Hopkins.

(Annie Russell Marble. The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Women Who Came in the Mayflower. Gurenberg.org. January 2005.)

When the ship arrived in Cape Cod, the men went to shore – spending two months trying to find a suitable place to settle before building storehouses and creating the beginnings of Plymouth. The women stayed on the Mayflower to care for the sick and the young – in damp, crowded and filthy conditions, which meant many would die before they were able to step foot on land.

“Women of Early Plymouth.” Caleb Johnson's Mayflowerhistory.com.)

While no women would die during the Mayflower's voyage, life after arrival proved extremely difficult. In fact, 78% of the women would die the first winter, a far higher percentage than for men or children. Dorothy Bradford was the first woman to die, and the only woman who died in the month of December. While many of the men, including her husband, were out exploring on Cape Cod, she accidentally fell off the Mayflower into the bitter cold waters of Provincetown Harbor.

Annie Russell Marble reports:

“The toll of deaths increased and the illness spread until, at one time, there were only "six or seven sound persons" to minister to the sick and to bury the dead. Fifteen of the twenty-nine women who sailed from England and Holland were buried on Plymouth hillside during the winter and spring. (Most of the women's death dates were not recorded – note.) They were: Rose Standish (January 29); Elizabeth, wife of Edward Winslow (March 24) ; Mary, wife of Isaac Allerton (February 25); Sarah, wife of Francis Eaton; Katherine, wife of Governor John Carver; Alice, wife of John Rigdale; Ann, wife of Edward Fuller; Bridget and Ann Tilley, wives of John and Edward; Alice, wife of John Mullins or Molines; Mrs. James Chilton; Mrs. Christopher Martin; Mrs. Thomas Tinker; possibly Mrs. John Turner, and Ellen More, the orphan ward of Edward Winslow.

“Nearly twice as many men as women died during those fateful months of 1621. Can we 'imagine' the courage required by the few women who remained after this devastation, as the wolves were heard howling in the night, the food supplies were fast disappearing, and the houses of shelter were delayed in completion by "frost and much foul weather," and by the very few men in physical condition to rive timber or to thatch roofs? The common house, twenty foot square, was crowded with the sick, among them Carver and Bradford, who were obliged 'to rise in good speed' when the roof caught on fire, and their loaded muskets in rows beside the beds threatened an explosion. [

Footnote: Mourt's Relation

Only five women survived the first harsh winter including an epidemic of disease that swept through the colony, felling nearly half the original group. One of the five survivors, Mrs. Katherine Carver, died in May of a "broken heart," her husband John having died of sunstroke a month earlier.

Some 78 percent of the women who had arrived on the Mayflower had died during the first winter, a far higher percentage than for men or children. “For the English, [the first Thanksgiving] was also celebrating the fact that they had survived their first year here in New England,” Tom Begley – the executive liaison for administration, research and special projects at Plimoth Plantation – points out.

(Sarah Pruitt. “Colonists at the First Thanksgiving Were Mostly Men Because Women Had Perished.” History.com. November 16, 2018.)

53 colonists are believed to have attended that first Thanksgiving, including 22 men, and only four married women, and more than 25 children and teenagers. The four women were Susanna (White) Winslow, Eleanor Billington, Elizabeth Hopkins, and Mary Brewster. Susanna Winslow was the widow of William White who died the first winter; she remarried to Edward Winslow, whose wife Elizabeth had also died the first winter.

Incidentally, all the wives who had been left behind were still living. Four of them came on the ship Anne in 1623, had additional children, and raised their families at Plymouth.

“Identifying the origins of the female pilgrims is a real challenge as there is generally so little information recorded about them – women had very few rights at that time, but they are so significant when painting the picture of the Pilgrim history.”

Nearly all of what historians have learned about the first Thanksgiving comes from a single eyewitness report: a letter written in December 1621 by Edward Winslow, one of the 100 or so people who sailed from England aboard the Mayflower in 1620 and founded Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. William Bradford, Plymouth’s governor in 1621, wrote briefly of the event in Of Plymouth Plantation, his history of the colony, but that was more than 20 years after the feast itself.

That means there are two (and only two) primary sources for the events of autumn 1621 in Plymouth: Edward Winslow writing in Mourt's Relation and William Bradford writing in Of Plymouth Plantation.

Pilgrim Hall Museum at Pilgrimhall.org. allows us to access the following information about the first Thanksgiving

The 53 Pilgrims at the First Thanksgiving

William Bradford lists the Mayflower passengers and also tells us who died during the first winter of 1620/1621 and spring of 1621. No other ships arrived in Plymouth until after the "First Thanksgiving" celebration. The Pilgrims at the "First Thanksgiving" are all the Mayflower survivors.

The attendees were:

4 MARRIED WOMEN: Eleanor Billington, Mary Brewster, Elizabeth Hopkins, Susanna White Winslow.

5 ADOLESCENT GIRLS: Mary Chilton (14), Constance Hopkins (13 or 14), Priscilla Mullins (19), Elizabeth Tilley (14 or15) and Dorothy, the Carver's unnamed maidservant, perhaps

18 or 19. ADOLESCENT BOYS: Francis & John Billington, John Cooke, John Crackston, Samuel Fuller (2d), Giles Hopkins, William Latham, Joseph Rogers, Henry Samson.

13 YOUNG CHILDREN: Bartholomew, Mary & Remember Allerton, Love & Wrestling Brewster, Humility Cooper, Samuel Eaton, Damaris & Oceanus Hopkins, Desire Minter, Richard More, Resolved & Peregrine White.

22 MEN: John Alden, Isaac Allerton, John Billington, William Bradford, William Brewster, Peter Brown, Francis Cooke, Edward Doty, Francis Eaton, [first name unknown] Ely, Samuel Fuller, Richard Gardiner, John Goodman, Stephen Hopkins, John Howland, Edward Lester, George Soule, Myles Standish, William Trevor, Richard Warren, Edward Winslow, Gilbert Winslow.

Note: Probably at least that many Wampanoag women were at the harvest feast. The Pilgrim men mentioned the Native men, but said little about any women from either side.

FAMILY GROUPS:

 ALDEN: John

 ALLERTON: Isaac with children Bartholomew, Mary, Remember; the Allerton servant William Latham

 BILLINGTON: John & Eleanor with sons Francis, John Jr.

 BRADFORD: William

 BREWSTER: William & Mary with sons Love, Wrestling; their ward Richard More

 BROWNE / BROWN: Peter

 CARVER: The Carver ward Desire Minter; the Carver servant John Howland; the Carver maidservant Dorothy

. CHILTON: Mary

 COOKE: Francis with son John

 CRACKSTON: John

 EATON: Francis with son Samuel

 ELY: Unknown adult man

 FULLER: Samuel with nephew Samuel 2d

 GARDINER: Richard

 GOODMAN: John

 HOPKINS: Stephen & Elizabeth with Giles, Constance, Damaris, Oceanus; their servants Edward Doty and Edward Leister.

 MULLINS: Priscilla

 ROGERS: Joseph

 STANDISH: Myles

 TILLEY: Elizabeth

 TILLEY: Tilley wards Humility Cooper and Henry Samson

 TREVOR / TREVORE: William

 WARREN: Richard

 WINSLOW: Edward & Susanna with her sons Resolved White & Peregrine White; Winslow servant George Soule

 WINSLOW: Gilbert Note: In Of Plymouth Plantation

Graphic of Mayflower Passengers who survived to First Thanksgiving in 1621 at Pilgrim Hall Museum. Plymouth, MA. Photo by Jim Steinhart011,

Pilgrim women lived in a society which believed that women were created by God for man’s benefit, and for him to subjugate. While women were required to submit to their husbands, the Pilgrims also believed that husbands were to love their wives. Life for these women was spartan and exceedingly difficult.

The horrors these faithful Pilgrim women endured were unimaginable – homeless and facing a new and alien country, they had to quickly adjust to a new way of life. Their supply of food was quickly disappearing, and completion of the housing was delayed by the foul weather and the lack of men strong enough to work.

These few Pilgrim women nursed the sick, cared for the children, and established new homes. Largely unsung today, they were strong, courageous, and vital to the success of the new colony. Their place in history should be uplifted.

“Faint not, poor soul, in God still trust;
Fear not the things thou suffer must;
For, whom he loves he doth chastise,
And then all tears wipes from their eyes.”

William Bradford
Plymouth Colony Governor