Person:William White (32)

Citing Thomas Prince, A Chronological History of New England

Little is known about Pilgrim William White. Governor Bradford says that among the Mayflower passengers were “Mr. William White and Susanna his wife and one son called Resolved, and one born a-shipboard called Peregrine, and two servants named William Hobeck and Edward Thompson.” In 1651 he added that “Mr. White and his two servants died soon after their landing. His wife married with Mr. Winslow… His two sons are married and Resolved hath five children, Peregrine two, all living. So their increase are seven.”

William and Susanna White left England with son Resolved. At Cape Cod, on November 11, 1620, according to the old calendar, William was one of the forty-one signers of the Mayflower Compact. Two to three weeks later son Peregrine was born, the first English birth in Plymouth Colony. Susanna was widowed in February. She became the first colony bride in May, marrying Edward Winslow, a Mayflower passenger who had lost his wife a few weeks before. At least five children were born to Susanna and Edward Winslow.

About 1638, the Winslows with young Peregrine and Resolved White, moved to Green Harbor, now called Marshfield. Edward Winslow rose to prominence as Governor of Plymouth Colony, became Colony representative to England, and at last was persuaded to use his diplomatic skills for Oliver Cromwell, heading up a joint commission with the Dutch to award reparations for damage caused to Danish ships. Interesting though it may be to imagine Susanna sharing those years in London with him, hostess to officials from various governments, no evidence has been found to indicate that she accompanied her husband on any of his trips to England. One of the few extant documents mentioning her by name is a “Bill of Sale” in which “Susanna Winslow wife of Mr. Edward Winslow of Marshfield and his Agent in this tyme of the Absence in England” sold for ten years the services of an Indian man. The agreement was dated 12 (11) 1647.

Edward Winslow spent the last six years of his life in England. His will in 1654 as a resident of London, leaves his land in New England to son Josiah “hee allowing to my wife a full third parte thereof for her life also.” If Susanna were living in London at that time, it would have been natural to provide for her there as well.

No further record of Susanna has been found. She must have died before 1675 when her son Josiah Winslow made no proviso for her in his will, although he made bequests to numerous relatives and friends. This surely refutes the claim of some that she died at Marshfield with two weeks of Josiah’s death in 1680. It seems strange that this woman who was the wife of one colony governor and mother of another, first Plymouth Colony bride and mother of the famed Peregrine White, should have left no record of her passing in town, church, court or press.

Susanna (-------) (White) Winslow was not the sister of Dr. Samuel Fuller as is often claimed. Samuel and Edward Fuller who came on the Mayflower were sons of Robert of Redenhall, England. Robert had no daughter Susanna. He did have a daughter Anna, born about 1578, far too old a bride for Edward Winslow who would not be born till 1595. The will of Robert Fuller in 1615 mentions no daughter Susanna, nor a daughter married to William White. Dr. Samuel Fuller’s will in 1633 mentions only one sister, Alice Bradford – actually his sister-in-law. The only positive clue to Susanna’s ancestry seems to be a letter from Edward Winslow to “Uncle Robert Jackson” in 1623, in which he sent news of Susanna, her late husband, and her children. He also sent his regards to his father-in-law in England, by which time Robert Fuller was nine years dead. A cursory investigation of the Jackson family has shed no light on the subject.

The name White occurs too often in England to make an extensive search for William’s ancestry practical. Alexander and Eleanor White of Sturton-le-Steeple, Notts, in the heart of Pilgrim country, had daughters Katherine, Bridget and Jane who married Gov. Carver, The Rev.Robinson and Randolph Thickins. They had no son William, but a nephew named William White might be worth investigation.

For many years genealogists have assumed that Pilgrim William White spent his early married years in Holland, marrying at Leiden in 1612 and burying children there in 1615 and 1616. A critical examination of Leiden sources casts heavy doubt on this assumption. Before 1620 there are five mentions of a William White in Leiden, but no proof that they apply to the Pilgrim. They may all apply to the William White who was still living there in 1621. There is no proof that Pilgrim William White was ever in Holland.

An entry in the bible says that William White married "Susannah Tilley" the "3d day of March 1620"; but the records at Leyden, Holland, show that in 1612 William White married Susanna Fuller, sister of Dr. Samuel Fuller and that they had two children who died in Leyden. Another child, Resolved, was born in Leyden, came with his parents in the Mayflower, married and has numerous descendants now living, who will resent the statement that William White did not marry until 1620, and that they are not descended from the mother of the first white child born in New England, from the first bride and from the mother of the first native-born governor.

William White baptized 25 Jan 1587 Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, England son of Edward White and Thomasine Cross. Thomasine Cross dau of John and Jacomine Cross married first John May and was grandmother of Dorothy May wife of Gov. William Bradford of the Mayflower. The authors discuss conclusive evidence regarding the English origins of he and his family.