This year, 2017, marks the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Thanksgiving holiday in the United States is also approaching. With these things in mind, I want to share what my father, Jim Hartley, put together about our ancestors involved with the Mayflower and their
journey to America seeking religious liberty. All of my Mayflower ancestors are
on my dad's side through Nancy Elizabeth Chase Miner -- my 2nd great-grandmother. Below are my father's own words:
Nancy Elizabeth Chase
Miner:
A Link to Our Extraordinary
Mayflower Ancestors
by
James E. Hartley (April 23, 2017)
11th
Great-grandson of Mr. and Mrs. James Chilton and of William and Alice Mullins
10th
Great-grandson of John and Priscilla Alden and of Richard and Elizabeth Warren
Some people value
their faith in God so much that they are willing to risk everything to preserve
His guiding influence in their lives. Such was the case with an extraordinary group
known in American history as the Pilgrims. With enormous sacrifice and
determination, they undertook a perilous voyage on a small wooden merchant ship
called the Mayflower and survived to help
carve out an English colony in what is now Massachusetts. That colony
eventually gave birth to a marvelous new nation that would be unlike any other
nation in the history of the world—The United States of America—a nation
conceived in a democracy that also protects religious rights. How grateful Americans
should be for those stalwart Pilgrims.
What a privilege it is if you are numbered among their descendants.
 |
| Moroni Miner & Nancy Elizabeth Chase Miner Moroni (1835-1935), Nancy (1845-1928) |
In fact, if you are a
descendant of Moroni Miner and his wife, Nancy Elizabeth Chase Miner, then you have
a pedigree that runs through Nancy directly back to four of the Mayflower’s original Pilgrim families: Chilton’s,
Mullins’, Alden’s, and Warren’s.
In the early 1600’s, James Chilton and his family were persecuted
by British authorities and the Church of England because they were religious Separatists.
Separatists believed
that many of the doctrines, rituals, holidays, and practices of the Church of
England and the Roman Catholic Church were not in harmony with the Bible.
Furthermore, unlike the Puritans, who wanted to work within the faith to purify
it, Separatists were convinced the Church could not be reformed. So, they
separated themselves in order to live according to their understanding of the
Bible and without a central religious authority to dictate their personal faith
and devotions.
Under King James 1st
and the Archbishop of York, Tobias Matthew, those who refused to support the Church
of England were fined. Many had their property confiscated. Numerous
individuals were imprisoned, and some were executed for sedition and heresy.
Consequently, tens of thousands fled England during the 1600’s to find religious
harbor in other countries. James Chilton and his family were among the
Separatists who sought refuge in the Netherlands.
James and his wife had
10 children, but only 3 daughters are known to have lived to maturity. (Note:
We are not certain of the name of James Chilton’s wife. For many years, people
thought that Mrs. Chilton was Susanna Furner. But, recent research suggests that
may not be true.) By profession, James was a tailor. In 1609, James’s wife was excommunicated
from the Church of England simply because she secretly attended the burial of a
dead child—an interment that was not done according to the mandatory authority
and burial rites of the Church of England. Not long afterwards, James Chilton
and his family left England and joined a Separatist congregation in Leiden, Netherlands.
The Leiden congregation referred to themselves using the Biblical term, “Saints.”
Sadly, even in the
Netherlands the Saints faced a degree of religious intolerance. In 1619, James
and his daughter, Isabella, were caught in the middle of rioters who violently protested
against those who did not profess Calvinist beliefs. James reportedly
confronted the mob. They began throwing cobble stones and rocks, and James was severely
wounded on the head, requiring a surgeon’s care.
Over time, the Saints
grew uneasy about Leiden. They were troubled that they did not fit in well with
the Dutch. Trade guilds would not accept immigrants, relegating the Saints to
menial and lesser paying jobs. Their children were losing their cherished
English language and identities. Worse still, Dutch influences were corrupting
the morals and faith of their followers. Furthermore, there were political rumblings
that Spain might again declare war on Leiden.
The Leiden Saints
decided to move to the New World, where they could worship according to their
consciences, govern themselves, and be insulated from moral corruptions. In
June 1619, the congregation obtained a land patent (deed) from the London
Virginia Company that allowed them to settle at the mouth of the Hudson River
near Jamestown, an established British colony in Virginia. They then negotiated
financing through the Merchant Adventurers, a group of wealthy, entrepreneurial
businessmen. In return, the colonists would repay their trip expenses with
interest over a seven-year period, and establish trade with the group.
 |
| The "Mayflower" |
The Mayflower finally departed Plymouth, England on September
6, 1620, very late in the season. During their second month at sea, strong North
Atlantic storms battered the ship and blew it off course. The ship began to
leak and one of its main beams cracked. The passengers and crew suffered from
widespread seasickness and wet, squalid living conditions.
Sixty-five days after leaving
England, the ship finally reached the New World. On November 9, 1620, they
sighted Cape Cod Hook in New England, far north of their intended destination.
They attempted to sail south to the Virginia Colony, but strong winter seas and
dangerous shoals forced them to abandon the effort. They returned to the bay at
Cape Cod and determined to establish the colony there.
 |
| Signing of the Mayflower Compact (1620) |
On November 11, they
anchored near what is now Provincetown. Although New England had been previously
claimed by the Merchant Adventurers, the colonists were uneasy
about the fact that they didn’t have authorization to settle there. They decided
to create a simple, but profound constitution that they called the “Mayflower
Compact.” It created a “civil Body Politick” governed by elected officials and
“just and equal laws” that would allow them freedom to practice their faith. It
also affirmed allegiance to England. Forty-one adult male passengers signed that
historic Mayflower Compact, including James Chilton.
The harsh winter made construction
on the site difficult. The colonists remained on board the Mayflower for at least another month as buildings were slowly
completed. Soon, malnutrition led to fatal cases of scurvy. The extremely cold,
wet conditions also caused a devastating epidemic of a contagious disease, probably
pneumonia or tuberculosis. The first building was completed toward the end of
January. It immediately became a hospital for the ailing Pilgrims. Thirty-one
of the company were dead by the end of February. By March of 1621, only 51 of
the 102 passengers and about half of the ship’s crew had survived. During the
worst of the sickness, only six or seven of the group were able to feed and
care for the rest.
At 64 years of age, James
Chilton was the oldest person on the Mayflower.
Neither he nor his wife survived that terrible first winter. But, their
youngest daughter, Mary, about age 13, survived and was likely cared for by the
Alden family. Sometime between 1623 and 1627, Mary married John Winslow, who arrived
in Plymouth in late 1621 aboard the Fortune,
the second ship sent by the Merchant Adventurers to provide additional
colonists. In about 1629, Mary’s oldest sister, Isabella, and her husband,
Roger Chandler, arrived in Plymouth along with the remainder of the Separatist
Saints from the Netherlands.
Nancy Elizabeth Chase is
a descendant of James Chilton and his wife through their daughter, Isabella.
Other descendants of James Chilton include Nicholas Gilman, a signer of the
U.S. Constitution; Lucretia Randolph Garfield, the first lady of U.S. President
James Garfield; LDS Church President George Albert Smith; and movie actors
Vincent Price and Christopher Lloyd.
William Mullins, his wife, Alice, their daughter, Priscilla (age 18), and their son,
Joseph (age 15), also made the perilous voyage on the Mayflower. Nancy Elizabeth Chase descended from William and Alice
through their daughter, Priscilla.
William was a
prosperous shoemaker and property owner in Dorking, Surrey, England, about 20
miles south-southwest of London. He owned shares in the Merchant Adventurers
group that financed the Mayflower’s
journey. But, he was also known as a religious “dissenter,” who could have been
either a Puritan or a Separatist. Thus, it is likely that William had both
financial and religious reasons for boarding the Mayflower with his family. He also brought a servant named Robert
Carter, as well as more than 250 shoes and 13 pairs of boots.
Upon their arrival in Cape
Cod, William Alden joined James Chilton and 39 others in signing the Mayflower
Compact. Sadly, William only lived an additional three months. On February 21,
1621, the deplorable health conditions took William’s life. He was about age 50.
He was soon followed in death by his wife, son, and servant. Only his daughter,
Priscilla, survived that first, dreadful winter.
At the time, Priscilla Mullins was the only single
woman of marriageable age in the colony. Long-standing Alden family tradition
tells of a rivalry between Captain Myles Standish, the colony’s military leader,
and John Alden, the Mayflower’s
cooper (barrel maker), to win Priscilla’s love.
 |
| John Alden and Priscilla Mullins |
Captain Standish
brought his wife, Rose, with him. But, she was one of the many who perished
during the first winter in Plymouth. According to the Alden family tradition,
the widowed captain cast his eye upon Priscilla and sent his roommate and best
friend, John Alden, to court her in his behalf while he was building defenses
and protecting the settlement from hostile Native American tribes. Faithful
John did his best to woo Priscilla for the Captain. But, she fell in love with
John instead. When John proposed marriage in behalf of Captain Standish,
Priscilla allegedly countered with, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John.” Secretly
in love with Priscilla himself, John ultimately did propose, and sometime
before 1623, Priscilla Mullins and John Alden were wed, perhaps the third
couple in Plymouth Colony to be married.
The Alden family’s
long-standing tradition regarding the Mullins-Standish-Alden love triangle was
romanticized in an epic nine-part poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Longfellow himself was a direct descendent of the Alden-Mullins union. His
famous poem is called “The Courtship of Miles Standish.”
John Alden was a
21-year-old, adventurous seafarer from Harwich, Essex, England, a seaport on
the North Sea about 70 miles northeast of London. John hired on with the Mayflower as the ship's cooper (barrel
maker). Besides normal crew duties, John had the vital task of maintaining the
ship's barrels, in which the Mayflower’s
food and drink were stored.
When the Mayflower
Compact was drawn up, John Alden was among the 41 who signed it.
John was also among those who
survived the decimating first winter in Plymouth. On April 5, 1621, when the Mayflower returned to England, John
chose instead to remain with the colony. He and Priscilla Mullins were married
sometime before 1623. They lived in Plymouth until the late 1630s, when they
moved north with Myles Standish, William Brewster, and others to found the
neighboring town of Duxbury. John and Priscilla had 10 living children, and
possibly an 11th who may have died in infancy.
Nancy
Elizabeth Chase is a direct descendent of John and Priscilla Alden through
their first child, Elizabeth, who was born at Plymouth Plantation.
Other descendants of
William and Alice Mullins and John and Priscilla Alden include three U.S. presidents,
John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Calvin Coolidge; poet Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow; Richard Warren Sears, the co-founder of Sears & Roebuck Company;
and movie actors Marilyn Monroe, Orson Wells, Dick Van Dyke, and Jodie Foster.
The fourth Mayflower family from whom Nancy
Elizabeth Chase descended is the Richard
Warren family. Little is known about the origins and ancestry of Richard
Warren. He may have been born about 1585 in the county of Hertfordshire,
England, which is immediately north of London. At the time of the Mayflower voyage, Richard was a
prosperous merchant in London with his wife, Elizabeth, and their five
daughters: Mary, Ann, Sarah, Elizabeth, and Abigail. He may have chosen to go
to the New World for religious reasons; he signed on as a member of the group
of Separatists from Leiden, Netherlands. Richard sailed alone on the Mayflower, wanting to be sure that
conditions in the New World were satisfactory before bringing over his family.
Like Chilton, Mullins, and Alden, Richard Warren was one of the signers of the
Mayflower Compact.
Richard participated in some
of the early explorations of Cape Cod seeking a suitable location for the
colony. On one of those excursions, they had their first skirmish—the “First
Encounter”—with native inhabitants, exchanging musket fire and arrows.
Richard was one of the
fortunate Pilgrims who survived the horrible winter months of 1620 to 1621. Two
years later, his wife and daughters came to him on the ship, Anne. Two sons, Nathaniel and Joseph,
were later born to Richard and Elizabeth at Plymouth. Richard died in 1628. One
historian eulogized that he was a “useful instrument,” and during his life he
“bore a deep share in the difficulties and troubles of the first settlement of
the Plantation of New Plymouth.”
All of Richard’s and
Elizabeth’s children survived to adulthood, married, and had large families.
Nancy Elizabeth Chase descended from their fourth daughter, Elizabeth.
Other descendants of Richard
and Elizabeth Warren include the Civil War general and U.S. President Ulysses
S. Grant; U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt; Alan B. Shepard, Jr., the first
American in space and the fifth person to walk on the moon; author and poet,
Henry David Thoreau; aviation pioneer, Amelia Earhart; and Sir Charles Tupper,
the sixth Prime Minister of Canada.
In America, the
Pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation initiated a new system of democracy and
religious rights that was later followed by the Massachusetts
Bay Colony (1628), Connecticut (1636), Rhode Island (1636), New Jersey
(1660), and Pennsylvania (1681).
These territories became safe havens for persecuted religious minorities
seeking to worship God according to their own consciences.
Thus, began one of the most significant chapters in American history,
accomplished by extraordinary people, such as the Chilton’s, Mullins’,
Alden’s, and Warren’s, who, because of their love for and trust in God, helped
shape America’s history, values, and government.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mayflower_passengers_who_died_in_the_winter_of_1620%E2%80%9321
https://familysearch.org/photos/artifacts/28108547 [Mullins Family History]
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