Mrs. Dorothy (May) Bradford’s age (the first
wife of the Governor) is
fixed at twenty-three
by collateral data, but she may have been
older. She was
probably from Wisbeach, England. The manner of
her
tragic death (by drowning,
having fallen overboard from the ship in
Cape Cod harbor), the
first violent death in the colony, was
especially sad, her
husband being absent for a week afterward. It
is not known that her
body was recovered.
Dr. Samuel Fuller, from his marriage record at Leyden,
made in 1613, when
he was a widower, it
is fair to assume was about thirty, perhaps
older, in 1620, as he
could, when married, have hardly been under
twenty-one. His
(third) wife and child were left in Holland.
William Butten (who died at sea, November 6/16), Bradford
calls
“a youth.”
He was undoubtedly a “servant"-assistant to
the doctor.
Isaac Allerton, it is a fair assumption, was about
thirty-four in 1620,
from the fact that he
married his first wife October 4, 1611, as he
was called “a
young man” in the Leyden marriage record.
He is
called “of London,
England,” by Bradford and on the Leyden records.
He was made a “freeman”
of Leyden, February 7, 1614. Arber and
others state that his
early occupation was that of “tailor,”
but he
was later a tradesman
and merchant.
Mary (Norris) Allerton is called a “maid of
Newbury in England,” in the
Leyden record of her
marriage, in October, 1611, and it is the only
hint as to her age we
have. She was presumably a young woman.
Her
death followed (a month
later) the birth of her still-born son, on
board the may-Flower
in Plymouth harbor, February 25/March 7, 1621.
Bartholomew Allerton, born probably in 1612/13 (his
parents married
October, 1611), was
hence, as stated, about seven or eight years old
at the embarkation.
He has been represented as older, but this was
clearly impossible.
He was doubtless born in Holland.
Remember Allerton, apparently Allerton’s second
child, has (with a
novelist’s license)
been represented by Mrs. Austin as considerably
older than six, in fact
nearer sixteen (Goodwin, p. 183, says,
“over 13"), but
the known years of her mother’s marriage and
her
brother’s birth
make this improbable. She was, no doubt, born
in
Holland about 1614—She
married Moses Maverick by 1635, and Thomas
Weston’s only
child, Elizabeth, was married from her house at
Marblehead to Roger
Conant, son of the first “governor” of
a
Massachusetts Bay “plantation.”
Mary Allerton, apparently the third child, could hardly
have been much
more than four years
old in 1620, though Goodwin ("Pilgrim
Republic,” p.
184) calls her eleven, which is an error. She
was
probably born in Holland
about 1616. She was the last survivor of
the passengers of the
may-Flower, dying at Plymouth, New England,
1699.