It has been said, with some justice, that the Pilgrims were not remarkable men, that they lacked genius or distinctive personalities. The same statement may be made about the women. They did possess, as men and women, fine qualities for the work which they were destined to accomplish;—remarkable energy, faith, purpose, courage and patience. These traits were prominent in the leaders, Carver and Bradford. Standish and Winslow, Brewster and Dr. Fuller. As assistants to the men in the civic life of the colony, there were a few women who influenced the domestic and social affairs of their own and later generations. From chance records, wills, inventories and traditions their individual traits must be discerned, for there is scarcely any sequential, historic record.
Death claimed some of these brave-hearted women before the life at Plymouth really began. Dorothy May Bradford, the daughter of Deacon May of the Leyden church, came from Wisbeach, Cambridge; she was married to William Bradford when she was about sixteen years old and was only twenty when she was drowned at Cape Cod. Her only child, a son, John, was left with her father and mother in Holland and there was long a tradition that she mourned grievously at the separation. This son came later to Plymouth, about 1627, and lived in Marshfield and Norwich, Connecticut.
The tiny pieces of a padded quilt with faded threads of silver and gold, which belonged to Rose Standish,[[35]] are fitting relics of this mystical, delicate wife of “the doughty Captain.” She died January 29, 1621. She is portrayed in fiction and poetry as proud of her husband’s bravery and his record as a Lieutenant of Queen Elizabeth’s forces in aid of the Dutch. She was also proud of his reputed, and disputed, inheritance among the titled families of Standish of Standish and Standish of Duxbury Hall.[[36]] There has been a persistent tradition that Rose was born or lived on the Isle of Man and was married there, but no records have been found as proofs.
In the painting of “The Embarkation,” by Robert Weir, Elizabeth Barker, the young wife of Edward Winslow, is attired in gay colors and extreme fashion, while beside her stands a boy of about eight years with a canteen strapped over his shoulders. It has been stated that this is the silver canteen, marked “E. W.,” now in the cabinet of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The only record there is[[37]] “presentation, June, 1870, by James Warren, Senr., of a silver canteen and pewter plate which once belonged to Gov. Edward Winslow with his arms and initials.” As Elizabeth Barker, who came from Chatsun or Chester, England, to Holland, was married April 3, 1618, to Winslow,[[38]] and as she was his first wife, the son must have been a baby when The Mayflower sailed. Moreover, there is no record by Bradford of any child that came with the Winslows, except the orphan, Ellen More. It has been suggested that the latter was of noble lineage.[[39]]
Mary Norris, of Newbury in England, wife of one of the wealthiest and most prominent of the Pilgrims in early years, Isaac Allerton, died in February of the first winter, leaving two young girls, Remember and Mary, and a son, Bartholomew or “Bart.” The daughters married well, Remember to Moses Maverick of Salem, and Mary to Thomas Cushman. Mrs. Allerton gave birth to a child that was still-born while on The Mayflower and thus she had less strength to endure the hardships which followed.[[40]]
When Bradford, recording the death of Katherine Carver, called her a “weak woman,” he referred to her health which was delicate while she lived at Plymouth and could not withstand the grief and shock of her husband’s death in April. She died the next month. She has been called “a gracious woman” in another record of her death.[[41]] She was the sister or sister-in-law of John Robinson, their pastor in England and Holland. Recent investigation has claimed that she was first married to George Legatt and later to Carver.[[42]] Two children died and were buried in Holland in 1609 and 1617 and, apparently, these were the only children born to the Carvers. The maid, Lois, who came with them on The Mayflower, is supposed to have married Francis Eaton, but she did not live long after 1622. Desire Minter, who was also of the Carver household, has been the victim of much speculation. Mrs. Jane G. Austin, in her novel, “Standish of Standish,” makes her the female scapegrace of the colony, jealous, discontented and quarrelsome. On the other hand, and still speculatively, she is portrayed as the elder sister and housekeeper for John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley, after the death of Mistress Carver; this is assumed because the first girl born to the Howlands was named Desire.[[43]] The only known facts about Desire Minter are those given by Bradford, “she returned to friends and proved not well, and dyed in England.”[[44]] By research among the Leyden records, collated by H. M. Dexter,[[45]] the name, Minter, occurs a few times. William Minter, the husband of Sarah, was associated with the Carvers and Chiltons in marriage betrothals. William Minter was purchaser of a house from William Jeppson, in Leyden, in 1614. Another record is of a student at the University of Leyden who lived at the house of John Minter. Another reference to Thomas Minter of Sandwich, Kent, may furnish a clue.[[46]] Evidently, to some of these relatives, with property, near or distant of kin, Desire Minter returned before 1626.
Another unmarried woman, who survived the hardships of the first winter, but returned to England and died there, was Humility Cooper. We know almost nothing about her except that she and Henry Sampson were cousins of Edward Tilley and his wife. She is also mentioned as a relative of Richard Clopton, one of the early religious leaders in England.[[47]]
The “mother” of this group of matrons and maidens, who survived the winters of 1621-2, was undoubtedly Mistress Mary Brewster. Wife of the Elder, she shared his religious faith and zeal, and exercised a strong moral influence upon the women and children. Pastor John Robinson, in a letter to Governor Bradford, in 1623, refers to “her weake and decayed state of body,” but she lived until April 17, 1627, according to records in “the Brewster Book.” She was only fifty-seven years at her death but, as Bradford said with tender appreciation, “her great and continuall labours, with other crosses and sorrows, hastened it before ye time.” As Elder Brewster “could fight as well as he could pray,” could build his own house and till his own land,[[48]] so, we may believe, his wife was efficient in all domestic ways. When her strength failed, it is pleasant to think that she accepted graciously the loving assistance of the younger women to whom she must have seemed, in her presence, like a benediction. Her married life was fruitful; five children lived to maturity and two or more had died in Holland. The Elder was “wise and discreet and well-spoken—of a cheerful spirit, sociable and pleasant among his friends, undervaluing himself and his abilities and sometimes overvaluing others.”[[49]] Such a person is sure to be a delightful companion. To these attractive qualities the Elder added another proof of tact and wisdom: “He always thought it were better for ministers to pray oftener and divide their prayers, than be long and tedious in the same.”
While Mistress Brewster did not excel the women of her day, probably, in education,—for to read easily and to write were not considered necessary graces for even the better-bred classes,—she could appreciate the thirty-eight copies of the Scriptures which were found among her husband’s four hundred volumes; these would be familiar to her, but the sixty-four books in Latin would not be read by the women of her day. Fortunately, she did not survive, as did her husband, to endure grief from the deaths of the daughters, Fear and Patience, both of whom died before 1635; nor yet did she realize the bitterness of feeling between the sons, Jonathan and Love, and their differences of opinion in the settlement of the Elder’s estate.[[50]]
A traditional picture has been given[[51]] of Captain Peregrine White of Marshfield, “riding a black horse and wearing a coat with buttons the size of a silver dollar, vigorous and of a comely aspect to the last,”[[52]] paying daily visits to his mother, Mistress Susanna White Winslow. We may imagine this elderly matron, sitting in the Winslow arm-chair, with its mark, “Cheapside, 1614,”[[53]] perhaps wearing the white silk shoulder-cape with its trimmings of embossed velvet which has been preserved, proud that she was privileged to be the mother of this son, the first child born of white parents in New England, proud that she had been the wife of a Governor and Commissioner of eminence, and also the mother of Josiah Winslow, the first native-born Governor of any North American commonwealth. Hers was a record of which any woman of any century might well be proud![[54]]