John Alden
Mayflower was provisioned as were all ships of the time for a long voyage, with a supply of salted meat, ship’s biscuit, and water. It also contained a liberal amount of beer, as water kept in wooden casks quickly became tainted to the point of being undrinkable. These supplies were all stored in wooden barrels which required constant care by the ship’s cooper. It was the cooper who supervised the ship’s hold and rotated the barrels, examining them for evidence of rot. John Alden was Mayflower’s cooper, coming aboard ship in Southampton. He may have been from the port of Harwich, but his story is unknown prior to coming aboard the ship.
It is possible that Alden joined the voyage with the original intent of remaining in the New World, but he was hired as part of the ship’s crew by its Captain, Christopher Jones. He was not a Separatist and was unknown to any of the expedition when he came aboard, but it is possible he was familiar to Jones as an experienced seaman. During the voyage he became friendly with Miles Standish and others of the Separatists, and at some point he decided that he would remain with them rather than return to England in Mayflower the following year.
As such, he was a signatory to the Mayflower Compact, signed in November of 1620. He joined in some of the exploratory trips during the winter to various sites ashore, and helped scout the placement of the artillery which the Separatists had the foresight to bring with them. Within a few weeks of arrival it was evident to Captain Jones that his ship would have to winter in Cape Cod Bay as nearly half of his crew became ill with the same contagious illness which had begun to ravage his passengers. The illness which killed so many during that winter aboard ship has never been accurately diagnosed, but by then all of the travelers were showing signs of scurvy as well.
By the time the Pilgrims went ashore in the spring of 1621 only 53 of them were still alive. Temporary huts were quickly erected and Mayflower’s holds emptied of the supplies, tools and weapons brought by the colonists, its weight replaced by stones brought from shore to ballast the ship. Mayflower departed for England on April 5, 1621. By that time the only surviving unmarried woman of marriageable age in the colony was Priscilla Mullins. Whether Longfellow’s poem is true or not, Alden and Mullins were married in the spring of 1622. During the course of their marriage they had ten children.
Alden served in several positions of authority in Plymouth, including assistant governor, treasurer, and as a member of the Duxbury militia formed by Miles Standish. The rival Massachusetts Bay Colony arrested him in 1634, for a fight in which he was not involved. The Bay colonists arrested Alden because he was the highest Plymouth official they could lay their hands on. He was released through the intervention of the governor. John Alden died in Duxbury in September 1687, the last of the Mayflower Pact signatories. One of his sons, John Alden Jr, was later tried for practicing witchcraft at Salem, but managed to survive the hysteria and publish an account of the trial.