Captain John Alden, Sr. was a Mayflower crew member who arrived in Plymouth Colony in 1620 as the ship's cooper and chose to remain as a settler instead of returning to England. Believed to have come from the Alden family of Harwich, England, he acquired a 100-acre grant in Duxbury near the Bluefish River in 1628 and became a prominent Plymouth Colony leader, serving on the Governor's Council of Assistants and as acting governor. Priscilla Mullins, likely born in Surrey, England, came on the Mayflower at age 18 with her parents and brother, all of whom died during the first winter in Plymouth Colony, leaving her the only surviving member of her family in the New World. She married John Alden on May 12, 1622, and they had ten children. Little is known of Priscilla Alden's life in the colony; she died a few years before John, and both were buried in the Old Burying Ground, though their exact burial places are uncertain. Their son Captain Jonathan Alden, captain of the local militia and heir to the Duxbury farm, was ceremonially buried under arms in 1697, and the funeral sermon by Rev. Ichabod Wiswall is recognized as one of the earliest funeral sermons in the American colonies. About 50 years later, Jonathan's headstone was found by descendant Ezra Weston, IV, preserved by later descendants, and eventually returned to the Old Burying Ground; it is the cemetery's earliest surviving headstone. In 1930, the Alden Kindred of America installed reproduction gravestones for John and Priscilla near Jonathan's. Although Priscilla herself left little trace in the historical record, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's mostly fictional 1858 poem The Courtship of Miles Standish transformed John and Priscilla Alden, along with Myles Standish, into American folk heroes.

Photo: Brian Connors

Photo: Brian Connors

Photo: Brian Connors

South Duxbury, Massachusetts · USA