Isaac Allerton (Mayflower Pilgrim) - Life in Plymouth Colony

Life in Plymouth Colony

Of Isaac Allerton and his first wife, William Bradford recorded: “Mr. Allerton's wife died with the first, and his servant John Hooke. His son Bartle is married in England but I know not how many children he hath. His daughter Remember is married at Salem and hath three or four children living. His daughter Mary is married here and hath four children. Himself married again with the daughter of Mr. Brewster and hath one son living by her, but she is long since dead. And he is married again and hath left this place long ago.”

The colony government chose John Carver as their first governor. Allerton was his assistant from 1621 to 1624, and afterwards serving on the colony civil affairs council. After the early death of John Carver in April 1621, William Bradford was elected governor in Carver's place.

In 1626 Allerton became involved in the colony’s finances. With the dissolving of the merchant adventurers there was a great need for the colonist to pay their debts. William Bradford, Allerton and others took on the colony’s debt to the merchant adventurers with the provison that they be given a monopoly in the fur trade.

Isaac Allerton traveled to London in 1626 to negotiate a new agreement with the Merchant Adventurers group which had given much money for the trip and the maintenance of the colony.

In the 1627 division of cattle (equal to a census) the Allerton family is listed with wife Fear and children Bartholomew, Remember, Mary and Sarah.

About 1628 a young man came to work as an apprentice under Allerton. This was Mayflower passenger Richard More, who then was about age 15 then and a world away from his parents in England. Richard had been part of a historic incident in which he and three siblings were placed aboard the Mayflower in 1620 by their mother’s husband, Samuel More, without her knowledge, after her admission of adultery. All three of Richard’s siblings perished the first winter in America, with only he surviving. Richard worked under Allerton for the usual seven years in which he learned to be a sailor working largely in the fishing and coastal cargo-transport business and in Allerton‘s business development in Maine. By 1635 Richard was in London, but the reason for the trip is unknown. His name appears on the manifest of the Blessing in 1635. Later More was an Atlantic ship captain.

Allerton returned from England in 1628 He made a payment to the Merchant Adventurers investment group thus reducing the colony's debt to them. The debt was still a tremendous amount of money estimated into the thousands of pounds. He had obtained a land grant at Kennebec (in present-day Maine), provided by the Council for New England. The Kennebec grant was officially authorized in January 1629, and the Plymouth colonists began to build a fortified trading structure at Cushnoc on the Kennebec River, with Edward Winslow as overseer in charge of the operation.

Allerton was not dealing honestly with the colony and was mixing their money with his from the proceeds of the furs and other goods. And as a result of Allerton's mismanagement and Bradley's lack of business skill, the colony's debts were not only not being paid off but, in fact, increased. Also, Allerton started his own trading post at Kennebec at the same time as the colony was trading there and became a competitor. As a result, it took many years for the colony to repay its debt to the merchant adventurers and they only did so by selling off some of their land.

Allerton also brought some unscrupulous persons from England to the colony. One was as a pastor for the Plymouth church and another was Thomas Morton, his clerk. Morton was eventually deported twice for his transgressions but came back because William Brewster was his father-in-law. This pattern of incompetence continued when, upon his return in 1630, it was revealed that Allerton had also failed to bring much needed supplies.

Plymouth had built a trading posts at Pentagoetand in 1630 Allerton built his own trading post there (near Castine) putting Edward Ashley in charge. This man was also disreputable and eventually replaced with another agent in mid-1631 after a Pentagoet local gave a disposition in Plymouth. Although Allerton had begun honestly handling the colony's business dealing he wound up enriching himself greatly at the colony's expense and was finally removed from his position.

In September 1631 Allerton moved from Plymouth and settled at Marblehead Neck in Salem Harbor.

Under the year 1631 in colony records William Bradford wrote “Mr. Allerton doth wholly desert them (the people of Plymouth Colony) having brought them into the briars, he leaves them to get out as they can … and sets up a trading house behind Penobscot to cut off trade from there also.”

By 1633 Allerton had set up yet another trading post in Machias, but lost it with the Treaty of Saint-German-en-Laye of 1632, when England ceded most of the Maine coast to France. Charles La Tour arrived, killing some of Allerton's men and bringing goods and also prisoners to Port Roual to be ransomed.

In 1634, more misfortune came to the colony with disease killing over many people, among them were Allerton's wife Fear, daughter of William Brewster, as well as her sister Patience, wife of Thomas Prence, who would later be governor of the Plymouth Colony.

Allerton was finally banished, along with some of his unscrupulous friends from Massachusetts Bay. He then moved to the colony of New Haven (Connecticut). One of Allerton’s contacts in London was William Vassall, who had come to Massachusetts in 1630 but shortly returned to England to fight for the rights of those who had not joined the church in Massachusetts. In mid-1635 Vassall returned to Massachusetts with his family on the ship Blessing. Vassall's daughter Judith married Resolved White who was William's eldest son, in 1640.) Vassall proposed to Allerton to go to a Caribbean island in which he had an investment in sugar cane.

By 1646 Allerton lived in New Haven, Connecticut and also had some property in New Amsterdam (later New York City). He died in February 1658/9.

Isaac Allerton was buried in 1659 in the churchyard of Center Church on the Green in New Haven, Connecticut. His first wife, Mary Norris Allerton, who died in 1621, was buried in Cole's Hill Burial Ground, Plymouth, Massachusetts with her remains later interred in The Pilgrim Memorial Tomb, Cole's Hill, in Plymouth. The burial place of his second wife, Fear Brewster, is unknown."