The Women Who Came in the MayflowerMarble, Annie Russell
History
The Women Who Came in the Mayflower
Marble, Annie Russell
Massachusetts -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775; Mayflower (Ship); Women -- Massachusetts
A traditional picture has been given [Footnote: The Pilgrim Republic;
John A. Goodwin; foot-note, p.181.] of Captain Peregrine White of
Marshfield, "riding a black horse and wearing a coat with buttons the
size of a silver dollar, vigorous and of a comely aspect to the last,"
[Footnote: Account of his death in _Boston News Letter_, July 31,
1704.] paying daily visits to his mother, Mistress Susanna White
Winslow. We may imagine this elderly matron, sitting in the Winslow
arm-chair, with its mark, "Cheapside, 1614," [Footnote: This chair and
the cape are now In Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth; here also are portraits of
Edward Winslow and Josiah Winslow and the latter's wife, Penelope.]
perhaps wearing the white silk shoulder-cape with its trimmings of
embossed velvet which has been preserved, proud that she was
privileged to be the mother of this son, the first child born of white
parents in New England, proud that she had been the wife of a Governor
and Commissioner of eminence, and also the mother of Josiah Winslow,
the first native-born Governor of any North American commonwealth.
Hers was a record of which any woman of any century might well be
proud! [Footnote: More material may be found in Winslow Memorial;
Family Record, Holton, N. Y., 1877, and in Ancestral Chronological
Record of the William White Family, 1607-1895, Concord, 1895.]
In social position and worldly comforts her life was pre-eminent among
the colonists. Although Edward Winslow had renounced some of his
English wealth, possibly, when he went to Holland and adopted the
trade of printer, he "came into his own" again and was in high favor
with English courts and statesmen. His services as agent and
commissioner, both for the Plymouth colony and later for Cromwell,
must have necessitated long absences from home, while his wife
remained at Careswell, the estate at Green Harbor, Marshfield, caring
for her younger children, Elizabeth and Josiah Winslow. By family
tradition, Mistress Susanna was a woman of graceful, aristocratic
bearing and of strong character. Sometimes called Anna, as in her
marriage record to William White at Leyden, February 11, 1612,
[Footnote: The Mayflower Descendant, vii, 193.] she was the sister of
Dr. Samuel Fuller. Two children by her first marriage died in 1615 and
1616; with her boy, Resolved, about five or six years old, she came
with her husband on _The Mayflower_ and, at the end of the
voyage, bore her son, Peregrine White.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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