Ok Weve noted John Quincy Adams & Henry Wadsworth Longfellow have a place in our family tree. John Adams is father of John Quincy Adams & 2nd president of United States. Whats the Mayflower connection? Born in Massachusetts in 1735, a little more than a century after the Pilgrims’ arrival, America’s second president was a descendant of John Alden, a Mayflower crew member, and Priscilla Mullins, who traveled aboard the ship with her parents and a younger brother. Alden was a cooper, responsible for building and maintaining the ship’s barrels used for storing food and supplies, while Mullins’ father was a member of the Merchant Adventurers, a group of English merchants who funded the cash-strapped Separatists’ voyage in exchange for a share of future profits they might make through the fur trade, fishing and other activities. Mullins’ parents and brother all died not long after landing at Plymouth. Alden decided to stay in America, rather than return to England, and he and Priscilla were married around 1623. The couple went on to have at least 10 children, and Alden served as an assistant to the governor of Plymouth Colony for many years. He and Priscilla became the subject of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1858 poem “The Courtship of Miles Standish,” about a love triangle between the two of them and Standish, a fellow Mayflower passenger who served as the colony’s military leader. Longfellow, also an Alden descendant, based his popular poem on a family legend, although there’s no conclusive evidence the story is true.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 03:15:49 +0000
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