As
the Mayflower swung at anchor in Plymouth Harbor on November 19th,
1620, it must have been an uneasy refuge for passengers and crew. Behind them
lay three months of delay, stormy seas, severe overcrowding, two deaths and now
an unintended landing hundreds of miles farther north than their destination in
the “Virginia” territory. Facing a New England winter, with no time to build
suitable housing and with their start-up provisions already largely consumed,
there was little except their faith to buoy them up. Yet, two hopeful events
took place aboard the Mayflower between their arrival and the establishment of
the Plymouth community which deserve to be celebrated even today.
First there was the writing and
mutual signing of an agreement to become a self-governing colony known today as
“The Mayflower Compact”, a constitution voted into law by the common consent of
the governed. At nearly the same time – probably on November 19th,
1620 – a son, named Peregrine White was born on shipboard to William and
Susanna White, thereby becoming the first English settler to be born as a
citizen of America. With them, the couple had brought from London a five-year
old son named Resolved. Their father, William had only sixty days to live,
since by February of that cold winter, the great dying was well underway, and
the young father would be one of 17 who would be laid to rest in that one
month. Susanna would in fact be the only
widow to survive that deadly pioneering period which saw more than half the
Colony sleeping in the graves which soon marked the nearby hillside, women and
children being the most numerous.
Under-nourished to begin with and
now confined to the Mayflower’s cramped and unhealthy quarters while the men
labored ashore to lay out building plans for spring, pneumonia and other
illnesses took a terrible toll. Without a dock for small-boat travel, the work
crews had to wade ashore, and though the men no doubt benefited from manual
labor and fresh air, they were never able to really dry out from daily doses of
the cold bay waters.
Somehow, I am struck by the image of
that first birth, a harbinger of hope perhaps, in the midst of so much death
and suffering during those early “moments” of nationhood there on the outermost
shore of a “promised land”. Even the name – Peregrine – has a stirring and hopeful ring to it, arising from an
ancient Latin word meaning “wanderer”, “traveler from a distant land”. How
fitting that this first offspring of a “pilgrim” people searching for a place
of freedom and new beginnings should be heir to so meaningful a cognomen,
especially when teamed with a five-year-old brother named Resolved!
Among our Pilgrim Parents a
researcher cannot help but find inspiration in first names: Moses Fletcher, Remember Allerton, Humility
Cooper, Love Brewster and Oceanus Hopkins to name just a few,
(although I have no explanation for Wrestling
Brewster and Desire Minter!).
The widow Susanna White remarried
widower Edward Winslow, with whom she had five more children including a future
Governor of Plymouth. Peregrine went on to be an early resident of Marshfield,
Representative to the General Court, a Militia officer and respected citizen.
Today, 393 years after his birth aboard an anchored vessel, I pause to
editorially call attention to a “traveler from a distant land”, and the
much-overlooked birthday of America’s first-born Mayflower citizen.
On
November 11, 1620, in the confined space of the “Mayflower’s” main cabin, a
handful of pioneer travelers drew up what Winston Churchill would call “one of
the remarkable documents in history”, the “Mayflower Compact”.
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