Priscilla was about twenty years old when she came to Plymouth. By tradition she was handsome, witty, deft and skilful as spinner and cook. Into her life came John Alden, a cooper of unknown family, who joined the Pilgrims at Southampton, under promise to stay a year. Probably he was not the first suitor for Priscilla’s hand, for tradition affirmed that she had been sought in Leyden. The single sentence by Bradford tells the story of their romance: “being a hop[e]full yong man was much desired, but left to his owne liking to go or stay when he came here; but he stayed, and maryed here.” With him he brought a Bible, printed 1620,[67] probably a farewell gift or purchase as he left England. When the grant of land and cattle was made in 1627, he was twenty-eight years old, and had in his family, Priscilla, his wife, a daughter, Elizabeth, aged three, and a son, John, aged one.[68] The poet, Longfellow, was a descendant of Priscilla Alden, and he had often heard the story of the courtship of Priscilla by Miles Standish, through John Alden as his proxy. It was said to date back to a poem, “Courtship,” by Moses Mullins, 1672. In detail it was given by Timothy Alden in “American Epitaphs,” 1814,[69] but there are here some deflections from facts as later research has revealed them. The magic words of romance, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” are found in this early narrative. There was more than romance in the lives of John and Priscilla Alden as the “vital facts” indicate. Their first home was at Town Square, Plymouth, on the site of the first school-house but, by 1633, they lived upon a farm of one hundred and sixty-nine acres in Duxbury. Their first house here was about three hundred feet from the present Alden house, which was built by the son, Jonathan, and is now occupied by the eighth John Alden. It must have been a lonely farmstead for Priscilla, although she made rare visits, doubtless on an ox or a mare, or in an ox-cart with her children, to see Barbara Standish at Captain’s Hill, or to the home of Jonathan Brewster, a few miles distant. As farmer, John Alden was not so successful as he would have been at his trade of cooper. Moreover, he gave much of his time to the service of the colony throughout his manhood, acting as assistant to the Governor, treasurer, surveyor, agent and military recruit. Like many another public servant of his day and later, he “became low in his estate” and was allowed a small gratuity of ten pounds because “he hath been occationed to spend time at the Courts on the Countryes occasion and soe hath done this many yeares.”[70] He had also been one of the eight “undertakers” who, in 1627, assumed the debts and financial support of the Plymouth colony.