Thanksgiving History:
The Teenagers of the Mayflower
On the Mayflower there were about 51 men, 22 boys, 20 women, and 11 girls. Some of the teenagers were:
Mary Chilton
Age: thirteen
Legend has it that she was the first female ashore at Plymouth.
Constance Hopkins
Age: thirteen
Her younger brother, Oceanus, was born while the Mayflower was at sea, so she probably spent a lot of time taking care of her mother's needs.
Giles Hopkins
Age: eleven or twelve
Younger brother to Constance.
Elizabeth Tilley
Age: thirteen
Her parents, John and Joan, died the first winter, and she married John Howland.
Francis Billington
Age: fourteen
Got hold of his father's gun and shot it off inside the Mayflower, sending sparks flying everywhere and starting a fire.
John Billington
Age: sixteen
Ran away into the woods and was captured by the Nauset Indians.
Desire Minter
Age: 15 - 17 (?)
She caught the eye of a young man named John Howland but didn't like America and went back to England within a few years. John Howland married Elizabeth Tilley but named his first daughter Desire.
Priscilla Mullins
Age: 15 - 17 (?)
The eldest girl on the Mayflower. She was the only girl approaching marriageable age on a ship with well over fifty young and single men. She married John Alden, a marriage which inspired the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem, The Courtship of Myles Standish.
William Butten
Age: unknown
"In all this voyage there died but one of the passengers, which was William Butten, a youth, servant to Samuel Fuller [the doctor], when they drew near the coast." - passenger's diary
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