Passenger Profiles

Mayflower Passengers Slider
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The Mayflower Passengers

We’re delighted you are interested in learning more about the lives of the Mayflower Passengers! The links (right) include profiles for those passengers and their families with known descendants and their lines of descent. There is also a second list naming those passengers who are not known to have either descendants or lines of descent.

The following sources were used to create these Passenger Profiles (additional sources noted on each Passenger Profile):

  1. Mayflower Families Through Five Generations (aka, The Silver Books); various volumes dedicated to each passenger
  2. Mayflower Passenger References (from contemporary records and scholarly journals) by Susan E. Roser

The first few months of the Pilgrims’ journey were truly a challenge; two months at sea, with 102 passengers and about 30 crew members – on a ship that clearly was not meant to hold so many people. Those who have visited Plymouth, and who not only have seen the replica of the Mayflower, but have been on board, will understand – and marvel at the living conditions of these courageous people.

Only one life was lost at sea, William Butten, a young servant to Dr. Samuel Fuller. One life was lost at Provincetown Harbor when William Bradford’s wife, Dorothy, fell overboard. There was a birth at sea, a son to Stephen and Elizabeth Hopkins whom they named Oceanus. William and Susanna White’s son Peregrine was born to them when the ship was anchored at Provincetown.

The Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, 1620

They arrived in November, when the weather was against them. At different times, three exploration parties went out on Cape Cod to determine the best place to settle; they would walk for miles, and as a result, the men became sick. They would spend days in the icy rain, cold temperatures and snow, with no shelters or dry clothes. As a result, their rate of death was high.

When scrolling through the short profiles of the passengers you will often see the words “died the first winter of 1620/21.” Half of their numbers perished the first winter. Particularly heartbreaking are the families who perished – The Tinkers, Turners and Tilleys; those orphaned –  Mary Chilton, Samuel Fuller, Priscilla Mullins and Elizabeth Tilley.

While nearly half of the 102 Mayflower passengers who arrived on the shores of Massachusetts died during the first winter, 26 families of passengers are known to have left descendants. 

Click the links below for passenger profiles.