Isaac Allerton
Isaac Allerton sailed in the Mayflower accompanied by his wife, son, and two daughters, one of whom, Mary, would live long enough to be the last survivor of the Mayflower voyagers. Allerton was the son of a tailor but chose blacksmithing as his trade, being apprenticed to a London blacksmith for a period of seven years. He did not complete the apprenticeship, fleeing to Leiden about 1611, where he worked in his father’s trade as a tailor. He married Mary Norris and the Allerton family, though not particularly active in the affairs of the Separatists in Leiden, joined the passage in Mayflower in 1620. Upon arrival in American waters Isaac Allerton signed the Mayflower Compact.
Allerton had sufficient prestige and business skills to be selected as the assistant to Plymouth’s first governor, John Carver. Following the death of Carver William Bradford became governor and Allerton served as his assistant until 1624. Allerton expressed a lively interest in the colony’s finances and as he developed his own trading business, establishing with Edward Winslow a fur trading post on the Kennebec River in Maine, he frequently intertwined his own money with that of the colony. He is likely the first example of government malfeasance in America. Allerton returned to England to negotiate with the Merchant Adventurers, obtaining better terms for Plymouth’s debt and for his personal business ventures.
It was Allerton who first employed Richard More as a fisherman and trader. He also established a second fur trading post on the Kennebec, owned personally, and thus entered into competition with the colony. Through the competition and his continual mishandling of Plymouth’s affairs he became wealthy considering his time and place, much of his wealth obtained at the expense of the colony. In 1631 he left the Plymouth Colony and relocated to the Marblehead area of Salem, setting up additional fur trading posts, and leaving Plymouth in a financially precarious position.
Salem was in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and officials there soon had their fill of the less than scrupulous Allerton, who had been tolerated as long as he had in Plymouth by virtue of his second wife being the daughter of William Brewster. Allerton fled to the New Haven Colony where he continued his shady business dealings, establishing a fur trade with the Dutch in nearby New Amsterdam. This trade was lucrative enough that Allerton acquired a second residence in the Dutch colony, and entered into the politics which governed there. He continued to amass personal wealth while serving on the equivalent of a city council in New Amsterdam.
Allerton’s first wife did not survive the winter of 1620-21. His second wife, the daughter of William Brewster, died in Plymouth in 1634. He married a third time in New Haven, and his third wife outlived him. He died in New Haven in 1659. Allerton was an important figure in establishing the economic viability of the Plymouth Colony, proving that the venture could generate profits for its investors, but his mismanagement of colony funds led to his undoing. William Bradford as governor would have benefited greatly from Allerton’s trading acumen had it been offered for the benefit of the colony rather than his own.