Honoring the Mayflower Mothers

I saac Allerton was a leading figure in the Plymouth Colony and among the first five signers of what would become known as the Mayflower Compact. He was also my maternal Pilgrim ancestor.

For longer than I can remember, my family’s Thanksgivings have included some remembrance of Allerton. It’s been said that being one of the first five signers of one of America’s earliest covenants in self-governance demonstrated prominent standing in the colony. In other words, Isaac was a big man on the Pilgrim campus.

Yes, 35 million other Americans are descended from someone on the Mayflower, too. But bear with me.

This year, we are remembering in a special way the three pregnant mothers who embarked on the Mayflower that fateful summer in 1620: Mary Allerton (Isaac’s wife), Elizabeth Hopkins, and Susanna White. Mary and her fellow passengers were unlike other Europeans who also made the hazardous crossing of the Atlantic. They were not Viking raiders, Spanish slavers, or French explorers; they were families, farmers, and artisans seeking to escape both a Church of England that they thought had lost its way and a monarch, King James, who did not agree that it had. They were joined by the “strangers,” who were not Pilgrims but, like them, commoners daring to leave the Old World.

Mary was well into her pregnancy when the Mayflower finally “loosed from Plymouth” after months of delays. Isaac and Mary’s children, age seven and younger — Bartholomew, Remember, and Mary — sailed with their parents. The Allerton family left behind an infant who had died and was buried in Leiden, Holland, earlier that year.

The crossing of the Atlantic surely caused suffering for every Mayflower passenger, but these mothers-to-be must have endured a particularly acute misery. The 180-ton Mayflower was a merchant ship built for freight — casks of wine and cognac — not people. They crammed themselves and their belongings into a five-foot-high “between” deck that measured 50 feet by 25 feet. Mary, Elizabeth, and Susanna shared this poorly ventilated space with 99 other humans, a spaniel, and a mastiff. Did I mention that the passengers included 14 teenagers?

During the 2,700-mile voyage, Elizabeth gave birth to a son, Oceanus, who joined siblings Giles, Constanta, and Damaris. Susanna White also had a son, Peregrine, a few days after arriving in the New World. Peregrine joined an older brother, five-year-old Resolved. One must love the names that Pilgrim parents gave their children.

On November 9, 1620, after 65 days at sea and battered by what William Bradford, who later became the colony’s governor, described as “many fierce storms,” a leaking Mayflower sailed into view of Cape Cod, a sliver of land well-known to European fishing vessels that had been given the name of the fish so plentiful along those shores. Just two days later, not long after sunrise, Isaac and 40 other men both Pilgrim and stranger pledged to “become a body politic, using amongst yourselves civil government” — in effect, a covenant for self-governance and the rule of law, the Mayflower Compact.

Like many Pilgrims and strangers, Isaac was no stranger to loss. His wife, Mary, gave birth to a stillborn son on the morning of a brutal December storm. By late February 1621, Mary succumbed to cold and disease, having never left the ship. Isaac later married Fear Brewster, so Fear reared Remember and her siblings, who certainly knew Oceanus, Resolved, Peregrine, and the others.

This Thanksgiving, my family will gather to share love, companionship, and a sumptuous feast. We’ll marvel at the courage of Mary, Elizabeth, and Susanna. We’ll remember their hardships and their sacrifices. We’ll talk about Mary’s lost son, who would never know Thanksgiving and the resilience, faith, and fortitude of his fellow Pilgrims. We’ll ponder why these refugees took the time, after a dangerous and miserable voyage, to write down their civic compact with one another.

And we’ll imagine what name Mary and Isaac would have given their son. “Covenant” somehow seems fitting.