Mayflower | History, Voyage, Landing, & Facts (2024)

FAQs

What are 5 facts about the Mayflower? ›

“There's no telling how many people can trace their ancestry back to the few dozen passengers who survived illness and danger on the Mayflower voyage,” Beiler says. 6. Nearly half of the Pilgrims and Puritans died during the voyage. Only 50 of the original 102 passengers survived the first winter.

The Mayflower set sail on 16th September 1620 from Plymouth, UK, to voyage to America. But its history and story start long before that. Its passengers were in search of a new life – some seeking religious freedom, others a fresh start in a different land.

The Death of William Butten, the First of Many

Given the dangers of the journey and the rough conditions aboard the Mayflower, it was a miracle that only one person out of 102 perished on the 66-day voyage. Sadly, the Pilgrims' fortunes changed for the worse once they landed at Cape Cod in early November.

While the Mayflower's passengers did not bring slaves on their voyage or engage in a trade as they built Plymouth, it should be recognised the journey took place at a time when ships were crossing the Atlantic to set up colonies in America that would become part of a transatlantic slavery operation.

James Chilton (c. 1556 – 1620) was a Leiden Separatist passenger on the historic 1620 voyage of the ship Mayflower and was the oldest person on board. Upon arrival in the New World, he was a signer of the Mayflower Compact.

How many descendants of the Mayflower are alive today? According to the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, there may be as many as 35 million living descendants of the Mayflower worldwide and 10 million living descendants in the United States.

John Adams

The second president of the United States descended from John Alden and Priscilla Mullins through their son William Mullins, who was also a Mayflower passenger. Adams isn't the only president to descend from a Mayflower passenger—George W. Bush, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Ulysses S.

The youngest girl on the Mayflower was Humility Cooper, just about 1 year old. Her mother had died, so she came on the Mayflower in the custody of her aunt and uncle, Edward and Ann (Cooper) Tilley. Her cousin, 16-year old Henry Samson, rounded out the family.

The fate of the Mayflower remains unknown. However, some historians argue that it was scrapped for its timber, then used to construct a barn in Jordans, England. In 1957 a replica of the original ship was built in England and sailed to Massachusetts in 53 days.

How many trips did the Mayflower make? ›

The 1629 voyage began in May and reached Plymouth in August; this ship also made the crossing from England to America in 1630 (as part of the Winthrop Fleet), 1633, 1634, and 1639.

Re-informing the history of Thanksgiving

James wrote a scathing indictment of the Pilgrims. He described how they desecrated Native American graves, stealing food and land and decimating the population with disease.

They held many of the same Calvinist religious beliefs as Puritans, but unlike Puritans (who wanted a purified established church), Pilgrims maintained that their congregations should separate from the English state church, which led to them being labeled Separatists.

Births on the Mayflower

Elizabeth Hopkins gave birth to her son, Oceanus, during the voyage; Susannah White gave birth to her son, Peregrine, while the ship was anchored in Provincetown Harbour; and Mary Allerton sadly gave birth to a stillborn child in February 1621.

The children, as a group, fared best with only five children dying (servant John Hooke, Ellen, Jasper and Mary More, and the Tinker family's infant son). Twenty-five children survived, meaning a full half of the remaining Colony was under 18 years old!

The captain and quarter-owner of the Mayflower was Christopher Jones (1570-1622 CE) who commanded a crew of 30 men and was contracted by Thomas Weston (1584-1647 CD) in the interests of the Puritan separatists living in Leiden, the Netherlands, to transport them to the New World to found their own settlement.

After more than two months (66 days) at sea, the Pilgrims finally arrived at Cape Cod on November 11, 1620. A few weeks later, they sailed up the coast to Plymouth and started to build their town where a group of Wampanoag People had lived before (a sickness had killed most of them).

Only 53 passengers and half the crew survived. Women were particularly hard hit; of the 19 women who had boarded the Mayflower, only five survived the cold New England winter, confined to the ship where disease and cold were rampant.