John Alden
Born: About 1599, England
Died: Sep. 12, 1687, Duxbury, Massachusetts
Relation to Author: 10th Great Grandfather in Law
Priscilla Mullins (married name Alden)
Born: c. 1603, England (maybe Dorking or Guildford)
Died: After 1650 (maybe as late as 1685), Duxbury, Massachusetts
Relation to Author: 10th Great Grandmother in Law
William Mullins
Born: Unknown, England
Died: Winter 1621, Plymouth, Massachusetts
Relation to Author: 11th Great Grandfather in Law
Alice Mullins
Born: Unknown, England
Died: Winter 1621, Plymouth, Massachusetts
Relation to Author: 11th Great Grandmother in Law? (so little is known about her that researchers do not know if she was the mother for some, all or none of William’s children)
The Mayflower arrived in America, reaching Cape Cod, on November 9, 1620 after more than two months at sea. They were arriving during a New England winter, which as you probably know, can be pretty harsh. And while we now know that North America was experiencing the Little Ice Age, the winter was less harsh than usual for the time. Even so, the first winter was really bad for the Mayflower passengers and crew.
They arrived at the ocean side of the cape and tried sailing south in uncharted waters hoping to get to New York, which was 220 miles south. However, they ran into dangerous waters, particularly Pollack Rip, a famously treacherous area between Cape Cod and Nantucket, and after retreating from the rip, decided to turn around and sail north instead, where the coastline was better mapped because of many previous European fishing expeditions to the American coast. They sailed around to the bay side of Cape Cod, staying for a while in Provincetown Harbor while they scouted for a place to settle.
Before disembarking, the passengers wrote and agreed to the Mayflower Compact. This agreement - seen as an early American founding document - was necessary because they were choosing to settle in New England even though they were legally chartered to go to the mouth of the Hudson River (New York but at the time considered part of Virginia), and because there were essentially two groups of people: the Puritans and the Merchant Adventurers. They needed to unite two separate groups under a common understanding. The compact was signed by the adult male passengers, including ancestors William Mullins and Robert Alden.
