William Mullins (c.1572-1621 ) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 8) Theme: "Prosperity"

Prosperity is hard to find in my family tree. Most ancestors seem to have attained, at most, a modicum of comfort and security. But prosperity can be a relative term: if you seem to be a bit better off than your neighbours, perhaps they see you as prosperous. This might be said of my 11X great grandfather William Mullins. With 2020 marking the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Mayflower in America, this story centers on its relatively prosperous passenger William Mullins who made the voyage at about 50 years of age.

Although people love to claim Mayflower ancestors, these were not high society wealthy immigrants! They were, in the main, religious dissidents. But not all the Mayflower passengers were Pilgrims (sometimes called "Saints"); this was the group that were persecuted in England for their desire to separate from the established church, a wish that landed them in hot water over and over again with the church authorities. Many of the people who eventually made their way aboard Mayflower were just regular English folk: craftsmen and tradesmen. The Mullins were among the latter group, although there is a strong suggestion that William was taken to court in Surrey, England for his religious leanings. He was probably a Puritan.

William Mullins was from Dorking, Surrey, just southwest of London. He had been a shopkeeper there for many years and had been married at least a couple of times before making the decision to leave England with wife Alice and his youngest children: Joseph and  Priscilla.

William Mullins purchased this building of 4 unit street-front shops on 28 December 1612
Photograph by Richard Slessor / Antique shops in West Street, Dorking 
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Probably in anticipation of his move, in May of 1619 William sold the Dorking property pictured above to Ephraim Bothell for 280 pounds. He made a large investment as part of the Merchant Adventurers group that financed the Mayflower journey.

When the Mayflower left Plymouth, England in September of 1620, William Mullins was aboard, along with wife Alice and children Joseph and Priscilla and a servant named Robert Carter. He also packed aboard over 250 shoes and 13 pairs of boots. No, he didn't plan to wear all these himself! William was a shoemaker and planned to establish a shop in America.

Mayflower II (replica vessel) in Plymouth Harbour 1999

It was not an easy journey and they did not land in America until far too late in the season. Landing off Cape Cod instead of  the intended destination of Virginia meant that some sort of self-government agreement was required until they could obtain approval from England. When the Mayflower Compact was signed on 11 November 1620 as the ship lay at anchor off the tip of Cape Cod, William Mullins was one of the signatories.

Signatories of the Mayflower Compact
(William Mullins half-way down left column)

Much has been written about the tough winter the newcomers endured. Lacking clean warm shelter and adequate food, half of the 102 original passengers and crew died that winter in what was called the "General Sickness". One of the first to die was William Mullins on February 21. Wife Alice and son Joseph soon died too, as did their servant Robert Carter. (Of the Mullins family, only daughter Priscilla, my 10X great grandmother, survived the General Sickness that winter.  On 12 May 1622 she married the Mayflower's cooper John Alden, went on to have ten children with him and lived into her 80s.)

William Mullins listed in Coles Hill Burying Ground Memorial
Photo by Marina Williams Findagrave website

William Mullins was buried secretly with all the others who died that winter on a hill overlooking Plymouth Rock in the Coles Hill Burial Ground, Plymouth. The bodies were buried under cover of darkness to prevent the Native Americans from realizing just how vulnerable the colonists had become.

Memorial to Mayflower passengers who died during the winter of 1621
Photo by Emjay on Findagrave website

Relatively well-off, William Mullins never got to set up his shop to prosper by selling all those boots and shoes in the new settlement. He did, however, leave a lasting legacy in the multitude of descendants who claim him as an ancestor.

Some Resources:

• Williston, George F., Saints and Strangers (Being the Lives of the Pilgrim Gathers & Their Families, with Their Friends & Foes; & an Account of Their Posthumous Wanderings in Limbo, Their Final Resurrection & Rise to Glory, & the Strange Pilgrimages of Plymouth Rock), New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1945.
• Johnson, Caleb H., The Mayflower and Her Passengers, Xlibris Corporation 2006. Also Caleb Johnson's Mayflower webpage on William Mullins.
• Roser, Susan E., Mayflower Increasings 2nd Edition, Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1997.
• Wikipedia entry for William Mullins  which contains many additional references.
• Find a Grave website for the Coles Hill Burial Ground located online.